Reply to 7 year old with sensory sensitivity and deep feeler

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[quote=Anonymous]You are describing my kid exactly. She's a year older but exact same personality and issues.

People have already recommended a lot of the resources we've used -- Dan Shapiro and Child-Parent Journey was helpful (though the session I attended felt it was a bit more geared toward kids with existing diagnoses or more obvious difficulties, rather than kids like ours who don't really have specific challenges but clearly need to be parented in a different way), Dr. Becky, the Highly Sensitive Child.

I also recommend The Explosive Child, especially if you are dealing with these tantrums at home. I think it's perfect for kids whose meltdowns are linked to sensory issues because his recommended approach is premised on empowering kids to find solutions to issues through logic and negotiation, and this is an essential skill for a sensitive kid who is highly reactive to things that don't bother most people.

We have not done a neuropsych exam because we've just treated the symptoms as they've arisen, which carry their own diagnoses. For our kid it's ARFID (extreme food aversions, driven by the sensitivity to smells, textures, etc.) and anxiety (also driven by the heightened sensitivity to stimuli). We also changed elementary schools in the hopes that a calmer school environment will allow her to cultivate true self-regulation skills instead of what she was doing before, which was white-knuckling her way through the day with a lot of effort ("masking") and then totally losing it at home and on weekends (this is called restraint collapse syndrome and is common in PK and K kids experiencing school for the first time, but for my kid lasted into middle elementary).

We may still get an eval, I do always wonder if an autism or OCD diagnosis would help or not. I do wish there was a clearer playbook for handling the sensory issues in kids who don't have accompanying academic or school behavioral issues (and people don't view a kid who falls apart at home as a problem, for some reason). But we're in a wait and see mode because we continue to see improvement with what we're doing so far.[/quote]

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