Anonymous wrote:My DC was evaluated by a psychiatrist and diagnosed with SPD. This psychiatrist recommended OT, and we have been doing that. On my own initiative, I made an appointment with Dr. Conlon. I'm just wondering what else Dr. Conlon would have to offer, in addition to what we're already doing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DC has a sensory processing disorder and we are doing OT. We have an appointment scheduled with Dr. Conlon, but in light of the cost, I wonder if we should keep it. What in addition to OT does he offer for a child with SPD?

I'm a little confused by your post. Dr. Conlon is a neurodevelopmental pediatrician. He doesn't provide OT. Do you or your OT have other developmental concerns about your DC? As you know, SPD encompasses a wide range of challenges and intensities. It's also comorbid with many other conditions. You haven't provided enough information for anyone to really comment on whether it might be beneficial for your DC to see any specialist, not just Dr. Conlon.

Anonymous wrote:My DC has a sensory processing disorder and we are doing OT. We have an appointment scheduled with Dr. Conlon, but in light of the cost, I wonder if we should keep it. What in addition to OT does he offer for a child with SPD?

Anonymous wrote:


I am just starting to look into getting an evaluation for my daughter (2.5 yr). She is displaying some "unusual" traits such as constantly stacking, sorting, arranging, etc. She very much plays alone and only makes close connections with me. In additon, her speech has not progressed in the past three or more months. Does anyone have advice of sites I could look at to learn more about possible disorders???? Also, I am attempting to get an appointment w/Dr. Conlon, but any suggestions of others who would be good for an initial eval???

I was reading this site to get feedback on Dr. COnlon whom we are about to see - but wanted to respond to the entry above. We have an almost 11 year old who has a range of developmental issues, one of which was almost non-existent speech development at 2-3. He had 30 words in his vocabulary when I took him for a speech eval at age 3 1/4. Soon after that, we got some advice to take him off dairy as he had had chronic very bad ear infections from the time of 7 months (when we started feeding him something other than breast milk) until he had tubes put in at the age of 14 months. Four weeks after having taken him off dairy, he started speaking in 3-4 word sentences - quite remarkable and everyone (teachers, therapists and we) noticed it. We were seeing Dr. Compart at the time (who is very good, by the way - very open to alternatives) and she told us about the leaky gut syndrome. It turned out that our son wasn't fully digesting the proteins in wheat (gluten) and dairy (casein); these undigested proteins were escaping the gut (through irritation in the wall of the intestine caused by constant antibiotics to treat the ear infections which in turn led to candida overgrowth, which caused the leaky gut); once they were in the blood stream, those that escaped the body's clean-up mechanisms wound up crossing the blood-brain barrier where they mimicked neurotransmitters in the speech center of the brain. They were sufficiently similar peptides (short chain proteins) to those that form the correct neurotransmitters to be accepted by the receptors, but they didn't actually allow the information to continue along the neural pathways - communication was hence blocked. These neurotransmitters are changed renewed every three weeks. When we removed the source of the undigested proteins (in this case, casein) the correct neurotransmitters were able to hook onto the receptors, and our son's brain began to process speech. It was quite remarkable. The ear infections, as it turned out, were caused largely by dairy - our son was eating yogurt every morning on his cereal. Check Annals of Allergy, 1994 for a study at Georgetown that shows a strong connection between dairy and chronic ear infections.

I hope this information is helpful to someone out there. It may have no connection to your particular situation, but it is my understanding that this is not uncommon.