We have all heard about the dangers of using a cell phone while driving a car. Some metropolitan areas have made it illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving because of the many related accidents. Last week I wrote a blog on the dangers of brain tumors associated with cell phone use. Researchers are concerned about the long-term effects on developing children’s brains if adults are showing tumors within 10 years of cell phone use. Now we have another warning for our children regarding cell phone usage. Researchers have found that children may not be able to cross the... more

The last time that LuLu went to speech therapy provided by the public school she was in kindergarten. (When I said that to this speech therapist today, she was truly blown away, and just kept asking “why did they stop?”) Now here we are six years later, and today we went for her first speech therapy session through the virtual academy. Even though she’s been enrolled since November, it has taken the school awhile locate and contract with private providers.

Now a gun-shy mom like myself, who has been extremely burned by public schools could have gotten a bit nervous... more

“The dog is driving me crazy!” LuLu exclaimed during her grammar test last week. I was puzzled what she meant, since the dog was all the way across the room, chewing on her bone. But the sound of the dog’s teeth scraping across the bone was distracting to LuLu.

I’ve noticed, since being so attuned to LuLu’s sensitivity to noise, and the way she’s unable to stop her emotional escalation when noise is a trigger, that I, too, am irritated by noise.

As life goes on here, and Mom lives with many more stressors than I had a decade ago, I realize that noisy... more

Does your adopted child have difficulty in school, with relationships, and processing information? Have you ever wondered if your child may have been exposed to alcohol while in utero, but thought there was no way to ever know for sure? Some children have facial features that indicate fetal alcohol exposure. Some of these indicating features are small eyes, low-set ears, or lack of a groove between the upper lip and nose to name a few. For children without these features we could only guess about fetal alcohol effect if we did not have contact with birth family. Now Researchers... more

I’m convinced that adoptive parents have to be some of the most dedicated folks in the world. Reading about how some have converted rooms in their homes to “sensory rooms” is further evidence. Adopted children coming from a background of neglect, often have sensory integration problems. While sensory integration problems can occur for many reasons, the probability increases for children who were not properly stimulated as infants.

As the professionals learn more, they are discovering fascinating things about the role of our vestibular system in brain development... more

As I listened to Cindy Perkins, the insightful school counselor from Maine who presented on P.L.A.C.E. at the ATTACh conference last week, it occurred to me – many Occupational Therapists are clueless.

Ok, perhaps they are not clueless…but as Cindy detailed the interventions and tools that she uses and encourages the classroom teachers to use for children exhibiting behavior problems (often a result of their trauma and anxiety), most were sensory-related.

Cindy’s school actually... more

Psychologists who treat children with trauma and some of the “combo” disorders we see in adopted children frequently tell parents that their child might benefit from a sensory integration evaluation and some sensory integration therapy.

Concerned parents start down the path of looking into this and inevitably find out that school systems provide Occupational Therapy (OT) services to children who qualify. But these parents often find that what they thought they were getting through the school-provided OT services and what their child actually needs aren’t necessarily the... more

There is much developmentally that LuLu has never done. One of those things has been putting together puzzles. Early therapeutic and intervention suggestions were to introduce puzzles into her environment. I remember one of her shower gifts after arriving home was a set of wooden puzzles just right for toddlers with animals, alphabet and common objects. LuLu never used them. Despite any attempt to engage her in the activity, she wasn’t interested.

Once, while cleaning out the attic, I found a life-size Barney puzzle that Kay had used. I excitedly presented... more

LuLu has started a daily neurodevelopmental/sensory integration program called Learning Breakthrough. Billed as a powerful at-home learning aid, we chose this particular program at this juncture for a not very scientific reason: a school we’re interested in for LuLu was offering it this summer at a very reasonable price. So we thought it was a good way to get to know the school personnel better.

Learning Breakthrough is based on solid sensory integration theory and uses balance... more

Society seems to expect all teenagers to experience a period of rebellion before eventually becoming mature, tax-paying adults. This rebellious transition period is being attributed to a physical change in brain operation that the scientific community has documented through brain scans. The teens' brain scans displayed more activity at the back of the brain in the superior temporal sulcus, while the adults' brain scans displayed more activity in the front of the brain in the medial prefrontal cortex. These brain scan results indicate that during... more