4 yo DS diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder - any experience of the benefits of occupational therapy?

[hopefulno2]

Hi there -

I was wondering if anyone out there had any experience of using occupational therapy to successfully help their DC to overcome some of the issues connected to Sensory Processing Disorder.

My 4yo DS has just been diagnosed with issues relating to the two invisible senses 'vestibular' and 'proprioception'. All of his behaviours are localised to the nursery environment where he gets very amped up and excited and cant bring himself back into a state of calm. It prevents him from being able to listen or concentrate properly.

We have been recommended 6-12 months of occupational therapy at Maximum Potential. So my question is, has anyone's child made a notable improvement following occupational therapy? It is a lot of money so i'm keen to speak to anyone that has had a positive, or negative, experience of this sort of treatment. Im also keen that he gets this under control before starting primary school in September next year.

Thanks so much in advance

You can do most of it at home yourself if I’m honest I recommend these books.

The out of sync child

Understanding your child’s sensory signals.

Raising a sensory smart child.

Google / Pinterest sensory diet and there is so so much you can do at home x

Hmmm.

I'm guessing this is a private clinic? Keen to get you on weekly appointments at £80 an hour or thereabouts?

Been there, done that and DS had a super time swinging, climbing, colouring and playing with mosaic tiles with the therapist dealing with these "invisible senses" and we bled cash hoping it would all calm him down.

Do your own reading (though books like ("The Out of Sync Child" are pure anecdotes and disappointingly thin on the evidence- side).

Have a look at the other side too like:

quackwatch.org/related/sid/

... if you do buy into it, remember you can actually do it all yourself and 10 mins a day is better than 55 minutes one a week.

Did it help? Um, well, DS matured and grew out of anything "sensory", most of the improvement came in the summer hols not having weekly "sessions" but doing lots of active playing outside, going to climbing walls, learning to ride a bike and body surf and so on.

You'll get others who swear it helped their child and that's awesome, but there isn't much evidence to back it up.

The out of sync child has fun has lots of different activities that you can do at home with a chapter for each sense. It’s very practical.

Who diagnosed your son OP?

Treatment for SPD used to be available on the NHS. My DD was diagnosed with what's now called SPD (thankfully changed from Sensory Integration Dysfunction and then something else I can't remember) by the NHS Paediatric Sensory OT over 15 years ago.
They lent me A.Jean Ayres' book 'Sensory Integration and the Child ' to read as there wasn't much info around then. It certainly explained a lot about my DD's behaviour that had been puzzling me for years and the interventions and exercises that the OT tailor-made for both home and school were definitely very helpful.

My DD is an adult and has in no way grown out of her SPD, despite interventions, she still cannot do any of the things that ketchupthebear's son can as outlined above, nor can she do a lot of others like run, walk up or down steps with no handrail, judge distances between herself and another person or object.

However, maturity, being female, her own masking skills and social convention have taught her not to visibly react in the same way she did when she was a young child wherever possible, so a casual observer may think she's grown out of some of the sensory issues she displayed as a child.

Back to the OP All of his behaviours are localised to the nursery environment where he gets very amped up and excited and cant bring himself back into a state of calm. It prevents him from being able to listen or concentrate properly

There are lots of things you can do at home for this, knobbly cushions give proprioceptive feedback whilst the task is ongoing. If that's not enough, give him a 'job' to do whilst carrying a rucksack with a few books in it before he's expected to sit still and pay attention.
Have a look online for interventions, try any of the suggestions that will not cause harm, even if they sound a bit odd and see what works for your son. every child is different. Also see if any of the interventions for ADD will help.

If you've made absolutely no progress after a few months, then do consider getting specialist OT help. If you find the cost is excessive, then if your son is eligible for DLA that should help.

Thank you all for your replies. So helpful to have some insight!

@danni0509 and @openupmyeagereyes ill get the book this weekend and have a good read. Thank you

@ketchupthebear - yes it is a private clinic and around that price. Ive noticed already that just with talking to him more and stopping screentime, plus nursery doing some basic calming exercises, that he is already being better at listening and concentrating. SO im a bit on the fence about it all. I really appreciate your input.

@BlankTimes we were recoomended by his nursery to get him assessed. We took him to Maximum Potential on their recommendation. The assessment said it was the invisible senses, but not sever enough to say he actually has the disorder. Given he starts school in Spet next year im happy to pay for 6 months of treatment to see if it helps him out. Dont think it will do him any harm either way!

@hopefulno2 we had the same attitude as you and went with it on the basis of nursery pointing us to an OT practice and we figured no harm done and we could afford it.

The cost to me really was that it was yet another activity to get to, I had to have childcare for my other kids, they were not keen that we skip sessions or reschedule when something came up and it was a grind.

I found out later that the OTs at the private OT clinic went in regularly and gave "training" to the nursery staff in SPD / SI.
I'm not so cynical as to suggest there was a financial kickback for "referrals", but I do think the lovely nursery staff were then spotting "vestibular issues" and "proprioceptive problems" left, right and centre after all the pseudo-science they had been fed.

I'm genuinely pleased it seems to work for some, and will say that when we overhauled our lives - screen time, sugar, late bed times and massively upped the amount of challenging whole-body exercise / balancing / motor skills we did, we did see results and we would not have done that had the OT not suggested, but as a parent very worried about their child, I feel a bit conned by the money spent on weekly sessions and want to sound a note of caution.

The books that have been recommended are ones I would recommend. If I were going to make a recommendation for treatment it would be on a much shorter term basis with a strong emphasis on helping you and nursery put in strategies to help.
There’s a lot I like about SI interventions but I think there needs to be caution in viewing it as a stand alone treatment.
Hard to say without knowing your son but a good OT would be one helping you to incorporate these strategies into daily life rather than saying he needs an hour a week for a year at an expensive clinic.

thanks for this @ketchupthebear - i must admit I do have a little cynicism about the whole thing. He is a very active just-turned-4 year old, and is in a very structured Montessori nursery. I wonder if a lot of his behaviour is to do with not being able to go out and run around when he needs to and to have some autonomy to play rather than being instructed to sit down and quietly concentrate on activities

@hopefulno2 that may well be part of the answer, you might want to observe how he is in other normal environments like playgrounds and so on.

My ds does not have SPD, he is autistic and we have used a private OT since he was 4 - paused since COVID. She would go into his school once a fortnight for an hour and work with him and his TA and then give the TA activities to do with him at school in between. She worked on gross and fine motor skills as well as sensory motor activities. I think it made a difference and I think the school definitely took notice of what she said.

I agree with Mycircusmymonkey that these activities need to be incorporated into daily life. Ours suggested that she could step back to going in once per half term but I wanted to keep her going in more regularly a bit longer.

@hopefulno2 I'm just wondering whether you did go with the therapies in the end and if it did help? Thanks

DD had SI OT on the NHS. I didn’t notice much difference really. I think age helped - by the age of 7, she could tolerate the sound volume at the cinema, which she couldn’t before. She can now tolerate her own loud noise; but things like hand driers, babies crying and high pitched laughter still have her in tears! Clothes labels don’t bother her now.

Interventions in the classroom at a specialist school helped the most - fidget toys, a wobble ball, eating very fizzy sweets or cream crackers or chewing gum…

OT on gross and fine motor skills did really help - with intensive practice, she could be average at whatever skill.

I don't want to hijack the thread but hoping the op would come along too @hopefulno2 which I've tagged again.

My issues with ds 4 is that he has a vestibular sensitivity apparently and he cannot regulate his emotions. If he is having a blast enjoying himself, he can still come crashing down very easily with tears. Since a young baby, everything was uphill with him and he was never content which I've been told he is high needs and highly strung and more of a character than anything else. Never had any issues with nursery in terms of meltdowns apart from confidence issues where he doesn't join first until all the kids do but still able to follow instructions and do all the things a structured play and learning setting offers. He is very whiny, can resort to tears very easily and is generally very draining. When we are out and about, I still don't trust him 100% enough to let him go as his safety judgement is clouded by the fact that he is free and he moves in a way where he is free but too focussed on his freedom rather than doing risk assessment to his surroundings as he is so consumed by that where he can't take a step back to observe. He doesn't run off however, if he is on his scooter I can't risk to let him go and test him to see if he will stop at the end of the pavement as he is enjoying himself too much.

He is being seen by a child therapist and no formal diagnoses yet but there is strong suspicions of vestibular sensitivity. No autism however a strong suspicion he may have adhd but he isn't 7 yet to be able to formally diagnose.

He is a very stressful, anxious boy.