Hellobee

Straight up, I’m exhausted from this past summer, but it was worth it to help our little guy make progress. My plan at the beginning of the summer was to immerse our little guy in tons of different activities, new experiences, and people to hopefully spur his language development. It worked. He finally had a language boom, however, the sensory issues that came up were extreme.

At the beginning of summer, the church where BeBe went to preschool offered a free camp for the week. I signed both kids up, and went along to help with the two-year-old group. The first day of camp, I took our little guy into the small building for arts and crafts. He sat down at the table, not paying attention, and got paint on his finger. You would have thought he dipped his finger into acid. He started screaming, and barreled his way out of the room. The rest of the week when we approached the craft building, he would scream, claw at the railings and me, to not go in. It was awful, but we persevered.

I literally dragged him into the craft building kicking and screaming every day. And by the end of the week he would tolerate sitting in the same room as the kids doing arts and crafts, but only on the other side of the building, in my lap with toys. While, I don’t necessarily want or need him to sit and do crafts, I do want him to tolerate being in a room with other kids doing crafts at school. Even worse, I can see that he wants to join in with the other kids, but the sensory issues override his ability to sit and play. He seemed so sad, and kept asking for the kids to play trucks with him and not paint.

With these strong sensory reactions, his OT determined he had maximum aversion to tactile issues, which we all knew at that point. We had worked through his sensory issues before with fear of movement and balance issues. He made great progress in those areas. He loves gymnastic class with friends now, whereas before he would run to the door to escape. To help him with this new tactile sensory issue, we began exposure therapy.

Basically, we take something he loves, like trucks, and combine it with something he hates, like shaving cream or paint. We put an old sheet on the floor and then a tray with shaving cream and paint, and drive the toy trucks through the mixture. At first he would run out of the room, screaming “No” and “Go bye-bye” at his OT. But, we didn’t pressure him to touch it. Slowly, he started sitting in the other room watching us play with the trucks. Then he became comfortable to push the lid on the top of the shaving cream and spray the shaving cream. Finally, he let us put tiny drops of shaving cream on his toe and wipe it off quickly with a towel.

This kid loves anything with wheels, and we use that to help with his therapy.

Just like with other areas of his development, it appeared we were making little to no progress with therapy, until one day he just did it. He drove his truck through the paint, splattering it all over himself. I was ready for him to scream and bolt from the room. Instead, he laughed and grabbed gobs of paint and smeared it all over his chest, arms, face and hair. He loved it! After months of frustrating therapy and sensory melt-downs, we had a break through. And I’ve never been so happy to clean-up a big mess!