Sensory Issues...

What a morning!

Grace has been having more than usual sensory, behavioral, attitude, impulsivity, lack of concentration/focus, not retaining information, everything else issues lately.  The mornings are always difficult as her meds are not on board right away, but they have been worse lately(and evenings).  Yesterday was a very bad day, so my husband and talked last night about how we can approach the issues differently.  This morning we got a great opportunity right away;)

Grace was as oppositional as ever this morning.  It was one of those days when I think if we would have told her to breathe she would have held her breath just to oppose us.  Her groaning, screaming, yelling in frustration "MOM!!!!," growling, and crying can really start the morning off bad.  Nothing can be simply be "yes Mom, I will sit down at the table and not crawl around on the floor during breakfast or take things away from my siblings or stop telling everyone else what to do or" well, you get the picture.

When she gets like this, we don't talk to her as she could argue a crook out of a pile of money.  She has loophole for EVERYTHING.  She isn't above being downright irrational at times too.  The child is so contrary that if we are in a room with exactly one chair and we tell her to stop arguing and sit in the chair for time out she will look around in exasperation and yell, "what chair?!?!  I don't see any chair?!?!!"

So, we have opted to put up our hand like a stop signal.  She can't argue with a handle signal with no words lol!  Every time she then responds in an argumentative way (verbally or, most frequently, non-verbally) she gets 1 discipline added.  We just matter-of-factly say a number every time that she responds in an inappropriate manner until she chooses to stop arguing.  Usually she stops by the time we get to 10 or so.  Today she got up to 36.  She was really worked up.  Every "discipline" is writing a sentence (that we have prewrittten).  Sometimes it is a job card (a card that has a chore on it that she has to complete prior to being allowed any privileges).  But since her handwriting is so poor this serves double purpose.

Last week she got 35 of them and after calming down she did write them all very calmly.  I just wish she could stop before she gets that many.

Anyway, this morning as soon as she self calmed I took her through the interventions that the occupational therapist taught us.  We did proprioceptive, vestibular, and tactile interventions.  She did calm down.  She then did well for a little awhile until my husband and I couldn't be in the the room to keep an eye on her (as we were dealing with other kids) and she started bullying the kids in the room again.  At least we did actually get some academic work out of her today.  That doesn't always happen as we can't get her calmed enough to obey and do her work...or focus.

Almost as soon as I got her calmed after the techniques, JJ started in.  He has a lot of sensory issues just like Grace.  He wanted a cookie, I told him he had to wait until he ate something healthy, he screamed, it was great fun...  So, I hauled him into the warm bathtub for sensory calming (until he quit fighting me).  Then I did the Wilbarger Brushing Technique on him like I had just finished with Grace.  I then rubbed him down with Shea Butter.  I need to mix up some Shea Butter with essential oils.  He and Grace sleep noticeably better since I have started putting EO's on them at bedtime.  I haven't found one that works well to calm them during the day yet though - so far what has been recommended has not been helpful.

Anyway, he was very calm by then, willingly ate a bowl of cereal and then was able to get his cookie:)

Somewhere in the mix of that I got a text that I did not have Buddy at a meeting I was supposed to have him at 15 minutes before.  Yep...not surprised...

This all took a good hour of my morning.  I then sat down to correct Faith's story she was writing.  Thankfully Superman (and Faith) are able to get on the computer and do their school independently as this chaos is a typical morning!

JJ's sensory issues are odd and varied.  Not like Grace and our other child with sensory issues.  For example, in the morning he has never been able to eat right way.  If he would have a bottle while we were traveling first thing in the morning, for example, it always was vomited back up. He continues to not do well with food 1st thing upon waking (or within 2 - 3 hours of waking).  I had to laugh 2 weeks ago when we had a Potato Bar at church at lunch.  It was 6 p.m. and Superman asked when we would eat supper.  JJ replied, "we ate at the church!"  JJ's idea is that eating once a day is sufficient lol!  Anyway, we have to really finagle him to eat.  He is eating more now and is growing so we aren't worried anymore, but it is still a forced issue.

And forcing JJ to do something is about as successful as trying to force Grace to do something.

Anyway, JJ also has tactile issues.  For example, he does not like blankets to be on him.  We have keep him in footed pj's almost year around so he can't kick them off (although he loves to take his clothes off and walk around in his underwear or pants and yell "don't look at me!  I'm naked!!!")  Getting cold at night is one reason he wakes a lot so it has been frustrating to get him to sleep through the night when he won't (even when rocking with me) keep a blanket on him.  Despite that, he craves physical touch.  Cuddling and hanging on to my bra strap are very calming for him.  Again, he is an odd child sensory speaking.

Another issue he has is that when he moves one hand, the other hand tends to mimic the movement.  We know a man who has that problem and he cannot stop one hand from doing exactly what the other hand is doing (imagine how debilitating that is?!?!)  If JJ has one hand occupied (like holding something) then it doesn't automatically do what the other hand does.  However, we are working on fine motor skills right now and using a scissors is so far impossible.  He cannot navigate it one handed at all.  Writing is also an issue.  So, as he is now 4 and needs to be learning how to do these things, I am not sure exactly how to proceed (next week he has his 1st IEP at the school and they will tell us about the OT and Speech Language options available to us).  At least he is finally showing an interest in cutting and coloring.  However, today he got frustrated and quit cutting the paper, choosing instead to just rip pieces off and then glue them onto the other sheet.  I guess that was resourceful and it was good he didn't just give up...

Anyway, then Beautiful yelled that something was very wrong.  I ran to check that out and she had just seen that her speech grade was a D!  The professor had written that she hadn't submitted something.  Beautiful wrote back and reminded her that she had and they had emailed about it last week.  Thankfully the professor emailed back right away and had remembered so removed the "0."  Boy, that got both of our hearts racing!

In the middle of that Superman and JJ got into a physical...thing.  We are working so hard with JJ to use his words.  But since he can't speak clearly it is hard to understand him.  Superman had not listened to JJ's words so JJ made sure that Superman knew that he was not happy about that.  So I had to run and deal with that situation.

Leaving the room is a guarantee of some fight breaking out.  But, there is only one of me...(my husband is sure thankful that there is only one of me lol!)

I set the kids up with their "stations" and proceeded to help Beautiful with some work for an hour.  My husband is trying to get a bunch of picture framing done before taxidermy season hits with a vengeance but had to give that up after a little bit to keep everyone moving along so Beautiful and I could finish her work.  And he fed the kids:)

So now I have 2 kids off at school for their interventions and the house is relatively quiet.  It is 1:30 and I am thankful that JJ actually slept through the night last night so I got almost 7 hours of sleep and feel like I can keep being productive.  We have family pictures for the church directory in 2 hours.  I was so keyed up from this morning though that I had to unload...in this post;)  Sigh...now I can jump back into the fray (and finally eat)!