45 articles from our doctors on sensory processing disorder (spd), newest first.
A vacuum, a hand dryer, a crowded room. Sounds most people barely register can send your autistic child into a full meltdown. Here is what is actually happening in their nervous system, and why it is not about the ears.
Turning off a screen, leaving the house, moving from playtime to dinner. For some kids, these small everyday shifts set off tears or a full meltdown, and it is not about defiance.
It is not a food plan. A sensory diet is a scheduled set of movement and touch activities that help a busy nervous system stay calm and organized all day.
If mealtimes have become a fight over five safe foods, feeding therapy might help. Here is what it involves, who provides it, and when to start.
Chicken nuggets over broccoli is picky eating. A diet narrowed to a handful of safe foods, with tears and panic at every meal, may be something else entirely.
Clumsiness, trouble with buttons and zippers, bumping into furniture. Coordination that lags behind peers often traces back to how well the body and brain are communicating, not effort or practice.
Box breathing, cold washcloths, humming. You have tried the calming tools and some nights nothing sticks. Here is why a child's nervous system sometimes needs more than a technique.
One hour it's a full meltdown over a sock seam. The next, your child goes blank and stops responding. These look like opposite problems, but for a sensory-sensitive nervous system, they are the same one.
Refusing the slide, gripping the stair rail with both hands, going rigid on the swing. This isn't a child being difficult about ordinary movement. It's a real fear response worth understanding.
The breathing exercises, the calm-down corner, the reward chart. You've built the toolbox exactly as recommended, and your child still can't reach for any of it when it matters. Here is the missing layer underneath.
Jumping from the couch instead of climbing down, wanting hugs so tight they border on painful. In an autistic child, these patterns trace back to why the nervous system needs so much input in the first place.
Flinching at light touch, covering ears at ordinary sounds, tripping over their own feet. It can look confusing from the outside. Understanding the wiring underneath makes it click.
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