Sensory Diet...what is it?...does it work?

www.celebratingjulia.com

"The last few months have been very educational for me. Teresa has taught me so much about sensory integration dysfunction, and developed a sensory diet that has worked wonders for Julia.

Julia's sensory issues have gotten progressively worse as time has gone on. She regularly bangs her head on the floor, the wall, the highchair, or against people. She also pulls her hair, rubs her head on the floor or furniture and bites both herself and others. Her eye contact has always been lacking, and her avoidance of eye contact has escalated recently. Hand flapping and sucking continue to be an issue. As always,Julia is extremely oral and seeks out a great deal of oral input...I came into the living room recently and found her face down on the carpet trying to bite it...nothing is sacred...if she can get her mouth on it she will!

Julia began to demonstrate some defensive posturing a few months ago. This includes 'hiding'...like an ostrich...she will bury her head in our laps, under our arms or in a blanket or pillow and stay there as long as she feels overwhelmed. She also assumes a fetal position and becomes very rigid. She does this whenever there is too much stimulation...usually visual or auditory, but occasionally she will 'posture' if she is being touched a lot.

So...what to do? As you can imagine all of these developments were very distressing. Teresa immediately performed a formal sensory assessment to determine Julia's most critical areas of need. Then she outlined a sensory diet, taught us how to implement it, and put us to work. The results are no less than amazing.

Teresa asked us to provide Julia with significant vestibular and/or proprioceptive input and have her wear her pressure vest for 20 minutes every other hour. On the odd hours we do the Wilbarger skin brushing program and joint compressions.

In addition to these hourly activities we continue with massage, although we now only do this in the evenings after her bath. We also build obstacle courses for her to crawl over/through/under/around at least once a day to help with proprioceptive input, and once a day she visits "Dad's Gym" where David spends 15 minutes or so spinning her, "flying" her through the air and doing lots of other vestibular activities, many of which are just made up as he goes along.

We also found that Julia loves "sandwiching", a technique that Teresa first demonstrated for us in the clinic. Teresa will cover Julia with a beanbag and press her firmly into a cushion. The input is extremely organizing and Julia responds very positively to this activity. We do this at home when she begins to "posture".

Teresa gave me two amazing books to read. One is called "The Out of Sync Child" and the other "Smart Moves". These books offer a comprehensive overview of sensory integration dysfunction but are written to the layperson and are very "readable". This only whetted my appetite and I began to devour everything I could find on the subject. One book I checked out of the library is called "The Boy Who Loved Windows". I recommend these books to anyone interested in SID.

Teresa also began seeing Julia in the Easter Seals clinic one hour a week to work on her sensory issues, using the equipment there. This has had awesome results including a reduction of many of the autistic-type behaviors. The more frequent eye contact alone is worth the work we do to maintain Julia's sensory diet and I am thankful to each of her therapists for contributing their ideas and observations.

Once we began to regularly provide Julia with lots of positive sensory input we saw amazing improvement in all areas. Her gross motor improved, her fine motor ( which has always been her most challenging area of development) seemed to blossom overnight, and we saw her communication, both receptive and expressive take an impressive leap.