Washington Post Article
The above link is for a Washington Post article published in May of this year about the debate over Sensory Processing Disorder. I chose this article because I am interested in how sensory processing affects children both from a practice viewpoint and from personal experience. I grew up living with my cousin who is 8 years younger than me. He was born very premature (around 23 weeks). He has had significant challenges in life including ADHD, learning disabilities, and sensory processing issues. When he was younger and I knew less than I know now, I thought that sensory processing disorder was something made up to make parents feel better. I did not understand how someone could sense something so far from reality. But, as our readings and lectures this week have taught us, sometimes our sensory system can be fooled. In the case of people with Sensory Processing Disorder, they are being fooled by their brains' interpretation of the input. For example, my cousin will leave food sit on his plate until most people would say it was cold. His brain tells him that things are much hotter than they are. This has caused him to be very afraid of getting burned despite our reassurances that it is not as hot as he thinks it is. I did not realize until reading this article that Sensory Processing Disorder is still not widely accepted by major organizations. This causes there to be difficulties securing research funding and families being able to access services. I realized as I was reading that we also do not have a way for children with Sensory Processing Disorder alone to be served with Occupational Therapy in the school because there is not a category that SPD would fit into in special education. This all relates to learning because of the quote I posted in my last post from James. He discussed how some people cannot block out extraneous stimuli as well as others. People with SPD will have difficulty learning because they are constantly battling maintaining attention on what is important.
Until I read the Washington Post article and your response, I had not considered that occupational therapy services would not be offered to students who only have sensory processing issues. However, I wonder how many students have sensory processing problems that require OT and have no other disability. Have you heard or read about any such cases?
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Elizabeth. I think SPD is so interesting. Providing services for children with such issues can seem difficult and even somewhat abstract, because we all process sensory input in unique ways. Even as we try to understand the disorder, it is impossible to put ourselves in the students' "shoes," and perceive things in the same way they do.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth, your post reminded me about the activity that I completed this week with my students, it is called the rubber hand illusion. The idea is that the brain is tricked to believe that the sensation from the real hand is applied to the rubber hand. I can only imagine if someone had to live with that issue everyday. I hope that more research is done to support people with SPD.
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