Thank you all for your prayers & well wishes. And specifically to Ang, please do not feel guilty about not mentioning this earlier. This has been staring me in the face for years & I've only just accepted it.
I'm dealing with some pretty serious guilt at the moment. Husband has been trying to convince me that BabyGirl does really "itch" for quite a while. I refused to believe it because she has such a penchant for drama. He's bought her new shoes after I said not to, he's changed her clothes half a dozen times after I said not to, he's coddled & tried to manipulate her into dressing when I've taken a, "You will do as I say, when I say it," stance. I've always seen this as a control issue & not an actual condition she may be suffering from. It always reeked of manipulation on her part to me....and I'm miserable about that.
Others have mentioned to me in the past that maybe she's just very sensitive to clothing textures. But since we've tried nearly everything to get her dressed and bought numerous different types of underpants, socks, shoes, & clothes, I never took it seriously.
Yesterday I read treatment needs to begin before the child turns 7 & the nervous system is still malleable. That horrified me. 7?! If I had waited a few more months...ended out the school year...it would have been too late? Are we pushing it now?
And I'm struggling with how much to tell people. Part of me wants to scream it from the roof tops, "She has a disorder!! We can treat this!!" The other part of me wants to keep quiet until we have an actual medical diagnosis (regardless that my heart & mind tell me this is it). There are certain people we know who are gloom & doom...I don't want them saying anything negative near BabyGirl. Unfortunately they don't seem to understand that kids are listening even when you think they aren't. But at the same time, these people need to know because of their relationship to us.
Earlier this week I told her I was getting a book that might help us figure out why she itches & is so hot all the time. I told her there are kids who's brains tell them their bodies feel things differently than most people. "You have these little things all over your body called nerves. They're what feel everything for you. Your nerves send messages to your brain & your brain tells you how things feel. We think, for some reason, your brain tells you clothes are itchy when they really aren't & that lotion is hot." She took it all very well. Her first response was, "Is it like a sickness, Mommy?" I said, "No Baby. You're not sick. Your brain just works differently than everyone else's. We're going to see Dr. about it & there are people who can help you learn to not be so itchy." She was a little worried about shots & medicine, but I told her I've never seen where medicine helps this problem (I've never seen anything about meds in regards to SPD, and I've looked).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
As far as I know with Max and Dylan their occupational therapists work with them on different sensory stations and they work with it, and they don't take a medication with it. They just work on how to cope with it.
I'm sending up prayers for tomorrow.
Hugs.
Don't let guilt get you down. When provided with information you quickly responded to it and began investigating it yourself. You would be surprised how many people would have laughed my input off as pyscho babble.
I think that talking with Baby Girl was a great idea! It can be so confusing and scary for a child in this big world, especially when you don't exactly know how to articulate how you feel. Explaining that she isn't sick was really important in making her feel "normal". I'm sure that in her own little way she must feel a great deal of comfort knowing that Mom and Dad are trying to make the "itching" stop.
I have never heard of medication being used either. The inversion therapy seems to be the one that works best, from what I have read and heard.
We will be thinking and praying for you all tomorrow.
Post a Comment