Therapy Summer for Sensory Integration Issues

What do string cheese, coffee stirrers, trampolines, scooters, camping, gum, rock climbing, bubbles and hiking have in common?

They are part of our therapy this summer for our sensory integration issues. We had a meeting with our pediatric physical therapist, who has put ME on what she calls a Sensory Diet. This is made of 4 components- heavy work, mouthwork, deep pressure and movement. She is supposed to get all four "parts" everyday.

So, we spent our Saturday buying a bike, trampoline, scooter, water shoes, and shorts. Next week we plan to buy a wagon and a pool. We opted out of the zipline due to safety issues. We have plans to camp at least one time per month, and plan to go next weekend.

Some examples of heavy work are pulling brother in a wagon, combat crawling, pushing a parent in a swing, and playing rough. Some of the mouthwork is sucking yogurt thru a straw, using a coffee stirer to suck milk, eating string cheese or jerky. The deep pressure consists of couch sandwiches and sitting under a heavy quilt. For movement, we will be swimming, jumping, bike riding, hop ball bouncing, etc.

All of these things will also couple with the work we are doing on her vestibular system. One of our first goals is teaching ME how to ride a bike. We are hoping she will learn so we can take her bike camping. The good news is that everyone gets to join in on the fun. Out PPT also recommended ME taking up archery, so we are looking into that. We do live on an acre, so that is probably reasonable.

Thank you so much for the prayers for our family during this time. God is good to lead us to help now. One of our other children has SID, too, so she gets the benefits of all this therapy. Last week I was able to do 16 hours of therapy and we saw large jumps in both the Neuronet and Visualizing and Verbalizing. That is good news, but I struggle with easy discouragement, because we are looking at a year of therapy. Hopefully in a few weeks, we will just average about 6 hours of direct therapy a week, and then all the running, jumping, crawling, etc.