sensory processing disorder and team sports

[teafor1]

Hi, I strongly suspect my son has sensory processing disorder but isn't diagnosed, basically because he gets by ok. He is very sound sensitive but at nearly 6 is now able to handle the hand dryers at school and the vacuum cleaner etc. When we are in public washrooms he covers his ears just in case someone else uses the hand dryers. He is in year 1 now and all I've heard from school is that he has trouble "listening" at times and settling down after breaks to sit calmly on the carpet. Though his year 1 teacher is saying that after no more than 2 reminders he will be fine. Anyway, to the subject of my post. Once a week he's got a team sport and he loves it. It is so frustrating for me to watch though because he gets so overstimulated that he has trouble listening to the coach, following directions, chews on things and also has hand and vocal stims. Basically he can't regulate himself. What can I do to calm him down? He's got about 10 minutes between school end and the sport where he gets changed into his PE kit. Would chewing gum help as heavy work for his mouth? Any other ideas?

You could try hard hugging [if he will let you] or jumping, could he sit on a ball while he listens to the instructions? He would get alot of sensory feedback from that so might not fidget so much.

We were recommended last week to give Dd3 raw carrots or hard mints to crunch to help her to settle to her homework so that might help.

Does the football coach do a decent warm up? That should help too.

Its great that he wants to do a team sport though and I hope you can help him to continue to enjoy it. Good luck

Thanks. :) Carrots are a great idea. He loves carrots and will provide some crunching. I really want him to succeed at this, as I think it's good for him and he really loves it. I had a talk with him today about listening to the coach and behaving himself and he just looked really sad. I felt terrible. Unfortunately he can't sit on a ball because it's instructions on the fly to 12 loud kids in either the outer field or worse the echo filled gym. I hope with our talk and trying some things out he'll improve.