Sensory Processing Issues

I’m having fun with Girly who is a sensory kid. She loses her mind in the bathtub. (Hysterical screaming and will injure herself to get out of the water) Brushing her hair was a scream fest as well. I just shaved her hair down to 1/4″ of cute curls that we still can’t brush without the learned pattern of screaming, howling and hiding under furniture. So we don’t brush anymore. It’s no longer necessary. The funny thing was that she let me shave her hair with the electric shaver. I would have thought that the sound and vibration would have been too disturbing for her to endure, but she surprises me everyday all day.

Now this is where things get strange. I can’t bathe her in a warm calm tub, but she likes to have her head in the strong icy spray of the hose while I water my plants. She would even dunk her head in the water table so that she could watch the water fall from her hair.

Ask me if I hose my child off buck naked in the driveway. Go ahead. I know you want to know. Of course not, I do have some common sense.

A barefoot child, she loves to stand on gravel wiggling her toes on the small stones. She also won’t sit still for me to cut her toe nails. I was a mud kid and I enjoyed soft slimy cold mud. I still do. Hmm, wonder who Girlie got the sensory issues from? Yeah, of course it’s from me. Yet another problematic trait I have passed along to my children.

The Help Me Grow team has been very helpful with sensory toys and games for the dear girl. We also have a trampoline, ball pit and crawling tube to help provide this impetuous toddler with the stimulation she craves while we work on her verbal development.

Jump, up, down, dump, ball, blue, green, yeyow (yellow), water, go are new words in her vocabulary. Of course, the best delivery of words are when coupled with an action like jumping while counting or throwing two hundred balls into the storage bin while naming colors. Oh the fun never ends here.

I wish the information about sensory issues existed in the 1970’s when I was freaking out silently in playgrounds or the early 2000’s when Eldest Surly Reverie was running into doors and giggling or when we noticed The Silent Sentinel had the pain tolerance of a gladiator.

I am amazed at how much rougher this child is now that she is off her Keppra. She has become a bowling ball with legs. Imagine thirty pounds flying at you while laughing as she tries to tickle you under your chin. I love the girl.

Advertisement