Hi all,
This forum seems so quiet, and I would really appreciate it if someone could come back to me, I've tried to google this but there's just not much info.
We fired our first OT after she told the teacher my son's problems in class aren't sensory and there's something else "wrong" with him - after she told us the opposite, stating the SIPT shows huge modulation problems.
Our new OT (we are only starting with her today, I just met with her once to go over previous assessment results) - said that kids with modulation problems will inevitably hit sensory overload, and then their central nervous system will shut down and they will seem to daydream / not engage. She says these are often the kids you see in almost a "zombie-like" state.
This matches what the teacher has said about my son, who after Wednesday, just doesn't do anything at all in class. She says it's not an academic problem, as academically he's ahead of his class. It's just that he doesn't perform at all.
Yesterday I could tell he was hitting major overload. He wasn't registering even half of what I was saying to him and replied mostly in grunts. He will automatically reply "I don't know", and will then plead with me to stop asking questions. If I ask how school is, he will automatically say "fine" even if it wasn't fine.
Yesterday is the worst I've seen this in him though. First in the morning it was like everyhting I was saying was ricocheting. On thursday evenings he has a gymnastics class which he absolutely loves, but afterwards he seemed to go straight back into his "funk". When I asked him if he had fun he said I don't know, and then when I tried to rephrase and asked if he'd enjoyed it he put his head in his hands and again asked me to stop asking so many questions. (Please don't think I am interrogating this poor child, I usually ask 3 questions after school - how was his day? What did he like most? What did he not enjoy - that's it.)
We then went to a supermarket to pick up some stuff, and when we pulled into the parking lot he got very upset and almost angry and kept saying "Why are people going to eat at Breakfast!?" I had to work out that he had meant a restaurant we usually eat breakfast at - when we do eat there, which isn't often. I then had to ask him if he meant the restaurant - it took 3 attempts to get him to hear me. I then had to state 5 times that that restaurant also serves supper/dinner food. He had again put his head in his hands and after the 5th time went quiet and then just said "really?". He seemed to calm down after that. (I did manage to stay calm and talk quietly through all this but it's not always the case, especially if I have the girls with me as well, but I'm trying to be more sensitive to his overloading and talking quietly and trying very hard not to raise my voice and talk in a calm way.)
Is this normal!?!??!?! Is THIS what the OT actually meant about a CNS shut down??? It seems like nothing gets through to him, and that thinking is really really hard and things that he can and does say often and easily become really hard for him.
He is bright (in South Africa the kids only start to learn to read in grade 1, at age 6 or 7 - he learnt last year, with my helping with sight words that aren't phonetic, and is now already on level 4 readers and ahead of his class. He's also usually great with numbers though the disconnection he's experiencing with language when in an overloaded state seems to also affect this.)
I am completely stressed out. His sensory overload just increases as he gets further through the school week. he's in a class of 30 kids and the only available smaller classes are the remedial classes where they tell me the pace is super slow and he will get extremely bored very quickly.
They will start doing assessments from next week - ONLY on Fridays!!! This is the worst news for my boy.
On mondays he's a star pupil (I'm told), and manages very well. By Wednesday the wheels are loose and by Thursday they are completely off.
Can anyone share some experience please, and let me know if there's anything that might help that we can do at home. I just know he needs a lot of help - he is just so miserable right now - and I don't know how to help him. We do sensory diet stuff but don't have a lot of time for this so I have to try do little bits of the exercises I think might help the most...
If anyone can shed some light on all this I would just appreciate it so much.
I can't ask for help from the teacher, she's told me she "knows all about" sensory integration and in her opinion based on her experience, his issues are not sensory. She's pushing for ADD assessments (he just did one at the end of last year, which showed no evidence of ADD or any other learning problems!) and medication. She also refuses to read any information I send into school because she claims she's reading stuff she "already knows". aaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggh.
Thanks in advance.
