Peaks and Valleys

As with all things in life, everyone goes through peaks and valleys at different times. Right now, the Beeman's are going through a shallow valley. As Carson has grown and developed, I've always felt that he was behind where Gabby was at each milestone. Crawling, pulling up on things, walking and even talking. I always tried not to think about it too much as I knew boys were most always behind girls in development and I didn't think I should be comparing the two.
Carson really didn't start saying much of anything and I just thought it was no big deal. When he turned two, he had a handful of words he could say pretty clearly and so I thought things would improve from there. As time went on and we entered summer, I noticed he was not progressing at all. In fact, he was regressing. the few words he was saying on his birthday, he was now not pronouncing as clearly and we noticed other behaviors that didn't seem quite right to us. The behavior I was willing to pass off as a "boy thing" but the speech was really starting to worry me.

After working with kids right out of college and having some experience with autism and asperger's syndrome, I knew there were some things that were just "off" in Carson. I finally got concerned enough and noticed his temper becoming more and more unmanageable that I called an agency called First Steps here in Indiana. They only work with kids up to age 3 so I knew if I had any chance of getting in, I had to act now. They got us right in and came to our home to do an evaluation on Carson. What we found out was somewhat of a surprise but not really....

....obviously we knew he was delayed in his speech and qualified for speech services but he was also diagnosed with Sensory Perception Disorder. For those of you that have never heard of SPD, here is a somewhat "paraphrased" definition off the SPD website.

Our brain communicates with our five senses to tell us what is going on around us. It is the way the nervous system gets messages from the senses and turns them into the right motor and behavioral responses.
When you have SPD, the sensory signals do not get organized in the brain.

SPD comes in many different forms. Carson is a mild form and yet the symptoms are there. Here are just a few things that we have noticed with him....
1. He overreacts to minor scrapes (they are more painful to him)
2. He avoids messy play
3. He hates dirty hands, hair cuts or to have his hair washed or combed.
4. Putting lotion on him causes a melt down of more than 15 minutes
5. He walks on his toes ALOT
6. He only eats a few select foods because he doesn't like the texture of so many others.
7. It's very difficult to achieve eye contact with him.

The list goes on and on. You may be sitting there thinking to yourself, "that sounds like a lot of kids" and you're right but not all kids carry a large amount of symptoms. they may posess just a few. We all have SPD to a certain extent, some of us don't like the sound of a fingernail on a chalkboard, others don't like certain textures of clothing but it doesn't affect all of our senses.

Because of the way these things affect him and due to the fact he isn't talking, it's hard for him to communicate what is wrong and therefore, we get a lot of screaming. With this, also comes the inability to transition from one thing to another without difficulty. It is hard with Carson because he is a strong willed child so Brad and I have had to work really hard at deciphering whether he is frustrated or if he needs disciplined.

His hearing is another concern for us so we are working on getting him a hearing evaluation as soon as possible to see if there are hearing problems. We will soon be starting Speech and Occupational Therapy 2-4 times per week in our home so things are going to be even more busy than normal for us but we're thankful at this point that we can get services for him. Since we caught it at such a young age, there is a very good chance that he will be coping with his SPD very well by the time he goes to school and will have no problems in class. He will function as a normal child as he is considered high functioning.

Please keep us in your prayers as we begin a new journey. Not only for Carson but also for Gabby as she is trying to understand it all and I don't even know if we as parent's can always totally understand. I am so glad I majored in this type of thing in college as I feel like i have a pretty good grasp of what's going on but at times it's so hard to explain it to others and I also feel as if I need a break from it all.

I will keep you posted on how therapies are going but I thought it was time to update on what we've been going through here. All of this has caused me to step back and figure out what I need to take off my plate of responsibilites so that I can put more on. I've evaluated and had to decide what's really important and what can be let go for someone else to pick up. It's not been easy but we are never promised that parenting will be easy! I truly believe we will be rewarded one day when we see all of our hard work pay off in Carson. If you'd like to learn more about SPD, you can go to their website at: www.spdfoundation.net

Thanks for reading!