Free Sensory Integration Teleseminar

I did an interview with Debi from Healing with the Experts on Sensory Integration. You can sign up and listen for free the day of the seminar here. Seminar day is Thursday June 3rd, my spot is at 2:00pm EST. After June 3rd, you can purchase downloads. I'm interested in listening to Kath Smith at 6:00pm EST since I have never heard her speak before.

Warmline Last Night

Last night I had the pleasure of speaking to Warmline. It was a small group of mostly parents. My buddy Bev drove me up (she's my secret twin, separated by 30 years). It was great to speak somewhat close to home! I left in the afternoon and was back late that same night. I met a woman named Nandini who looked so familiar. We both graduated from UC Davis I was 1990, she graduated in 1999! 1999?! I was married with two kids by 1999... I'm thinking about age here and there as I will turn 40 in September. I can't believe I'll turn 40, I still don't feel like a grown up!

It's all in the family...

Often I post about kids, but the truth is I also have sensory challenges. Shoes don't get me started on shoes... Anyhow, the other day the kids and I were driving behind a garbage truck. We started to smell it and we all started to get sick. I literally had to pull over as fast as I could because I thought I was going to throw up. We all jumped out of the car and left the doors open. I watched other cars continue behind the truck with no adverse reaction and thought, "wow, we must be a tad more hypersensitive then the other drivers." (Duh!) Anyhow, after a couple of minutes I did a smell test and decided it was safe to begin driving again. LOL my husband is the only normal one of us all...

SID, DSI and now SPD or Sensory Processing Disorder

While everyone agrees on the term "Sensory Integration Therapy" there are several terms floating around regarding the name of the actual disorder that causes the need for SIT. So here is a little background on the name "Sensory Processing Disorder" that I hope will clear up some confusion. Jean Ayers originally recognized that some children have a neurological disorder that resulted in an impaired ability to process sensory information. She came up with the term “sensory integration dysfunction.” I talked with some researchers about the name morphing phenomenon and it started because the initials for “Sensory Integration Dysfunction” are the same as SIDS “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome” and they didn’t want to cause confusion… (OK I’m so tempted to comment, but I won’t because I like these people…) So then some researchers started referring to the condition as DSI and the name has been morphing since.

Recently, they all got together and decided they will uniformly refer to this condition as “Sensory Processing Disorder” or SPD. The hope is that the condition will be formally recognized in the DSM as many children have only SPD while others have co-conditions like Autism and SPD. For a thorough discussion of the name morph you can visit: www.spdnetwork.org/aboutspd/defining.html.

So SID, DSI, SDI and now SPD it’s all the same condition. I hope this helps, I'm going to go take a nap.