Your Son Is Not A Gingerbread Boy (Part 1 Of 3: Your Goal)

Your Son Is Not a Gingerbread Boy Why we don’t take a “cookie cutter” approach to SPD therapy: every child is unique and needs a unique strategy

Another look at the library: many types of SPD means many strategies are needed

If you refer back to our graphic of a Sensory Processing Disorder Library, you can see at a glance how many different types of processing disorders there are, each one with many different sets of behaviors and responses. So it makes perfect sense that there is no one single approach to therapy that will work for every child. Different strategies will calm, or stimulate, different children. What may be organizing for one child may be very disorganizing for another. This is why we have to be so careful about not taking a “cookie cutter” approach to therapy.

As we have discussed, some children are over-responsive (overly sensitive to sensory stimuli), and may overreact to their environment. They may become fearful, over-excited, restless, upset or shut down. They may not know what to focus on and what to filter out. Other children are under-responsive (under sensitive to sensory stimuli), and they may seek out intense sensory experiences to compensate. They may seem very tired, withdrawn, and may not pay attention to their surroundings. It is also possible to have a combination of responses depending on the type and intensity of sensory stimuli.
 

Your goal

The goal of therapy is get each individual child to an “ideally balanced” emotional state. There are many therapeutic strategies that are effective in getting there, and the challenge is figuring out which strategies work best for the specific needs of each child, and when. Once you know that, you can use those strategies to help your child cope every day.

Looking ahead:

In the next post, we will make a plan for your process of discovery, how you will figure out which strategies work best for your son or daughter.

Have you encountered a ‘one size fits all’ approach to getting therapy for your child? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below. Also, let me know there or via email what topics you would like to discuss or hear more about.

Feel free to share or quote from this blog (with attribution, please, and if possible, a link), and to repost on social media.

I look forward to hearing from you!

 

All the best,
Miriam