Escalating Behaviors?

Kate had a couple more incidents with some classmates when that same girls continued to complain to the teacher when Katie did silly things.  There were a couple days of tension, but Ms Margot helped her work it out. 

Then things were quiet for quite a while.  I got a new job at a crisis residence in Coon Rapids for adults going through mental health crises.

At the beginning of this month I got an email from Mrs Phillips saying  she'd like to speak with me and asking for a good time to call, and also saying that she was seeing some different and escalating behaviors lately, so if I still wanted the SpEd eval they were ready to go ahead with it now.

When I talked with Mrs Phillips she wanted to know if I was aware of Katie's imaginary friend, Rose.  Now, Katie has always had a plethora of imaginary friends that come and go, most of whom are associated with her multitude of stuffed animals, but there has never been one significant stand out among them.  Seems like I've heard of Rose before (Rose is Katie's middle name), but she's never been anyone special.  Apparently she had become so at school, however.

Katie had begun to sign her papers "Katie and Rose", and when Mrs Phillips was assigning them each partners for a classroom assignment, Katie told her she didn't need a partner because she already had Rose.

(Update 2025: For some reason this post was never finalized/published. Thankfully Rose didn't last long. Now Katie talks to Snap Chat followers instead of her imaginary friends.  I guess she was ahead of her time!)

Misunderstanding SPD Kids

One thing I can say as a parent of a sensational kid is that it's easy to incur the judgement of other parents.  Looking at some of the behaviors of some of our kids, some people just see brats.  In Miller's example, LaTanya's teacher Miss Sorensen "doesn't say so, but she thinks the real problem with the girl is that her parents aren't strict enough and fail to make LaTanya do what she should".

I know for a fact that Katie's father and his wife have thought this of me many times over the years.  Much of the time when Katie is at their house for the weekend she controls a lot of her behavior out of intimidation.  She can hold it together for 48 hours if she isn't pressed too hard, but at home, where she feels safe, all that pent up "stuff" comes pouring out and we have some tough Sunday nights sometimes.  Her dad thinks I baby Katie and let her get away with too much.  I know it can look that way from the outside.  

The problem is that this holds a child with a disability (man, it's still not easy to say that about my own child) to the expectations of a typically developing child, and it's just not the same.  They aren't playing with the same equipment.  "Humans typically use reason to override reflexive behavior- thinking through situations in order to avoid getting to the 'fight/flight' mode unnecessarily.  The problem for (Katie) is that her 'fight/flight' response occurs so fast she doesn't have time to cancel it out with reason.  As a result, she (reacts) to situations that aren't really dangerous". (Miller, Sensational Kids)

When someone calls a typically developing kid a name, that kid can stop and think "Oh that's just Mikey- he's always causing trouble" and brush it off, but, when someone calls Katie a name, she immediately reacts in a way that is beyond what is expected in the situation, because she doesn't have time to apply reason the way we'd expect someone her age to.  So she looks like a brat.  Her behavior seems babyish.  She looks like a spaz, a freak, a weirdo.  She doesn't want to respond this way, it's just the way she's wired!

Reviewing Katie's Sensory Issues

So, as I read through the chapter on the day in the life of a sensory over-responsive kid (LaTanya) in Lucy Jane Miller's excellent book, Sensational Kids, I recalled/learned/summarized these facts/observations about Katie:

Specifically, the type of problem Kate most struggles with is Sensory Modulation Disorder (SMD), which "makes it hard for her to match the intensity of her responses to the intensity of the sensations she feel".  Her system "cannot filter sensations in a way that would allow her to come up with an appropriate response" so when she is "alerted" to a sensation, her brain goes immediately to fight/flight/freeze mode.

Miller writes, "Parents of children with sensory over-responsivity tell me that they feel they're constantly tiptoeing through a minefield- always braced for the next event that will trigger a crisis", and that is precisely my experience.  

Also, "A typically developing child gets a sensory message such as the big bang of a slamming door, figures out the cause, and lets it go.  In children with sensory problems, this ability to let go of past messages sometimes appears to be impaired, leading to a 'backlog' of sensation that accumulates until it overwhelms the  child's coping skills" and "It is believed that the cumulative effect of undisposed sensory messages is what causes children with SPD to eventually fall apart over triggering events that are minor".   What if the reason Kate loses it when another kid calls her a name is a whole morning's worth of sensory alerts she hasn't been able to let go of?  

Miller goes on to describe how "LaTanya" is alerted by the overwhelming fumes of the school bus, the typical noisiness of an elementary school bus, and the inadvertent touching and jostling by other kids that happens on the bus.  Not to mention the sensation of the motion of the bus and its frequent stops and starts, and unexpected, loud traffic noises outside, such as sirens and honking horns.  Little wonder if she prefers to sit in the front seat to minimize some of these, and have visual cues to warn her of upcoming sensations. But sadly, in the example, the other kids won't always let her sit where she's most comfortable, and she is often reduced to tears.  "If LaTanya needed a wheelchair or had another physical limitation that made it hard for her to function on the bus, accommodations like an assigned seat would have been made for her long ago. However, because her handicap is invisible, accommodations are made on a spot basis and only after she falls apart, which just confirms everyone's opinion that this is a kid with big problems."  (my emphasis)

What if Katie is experiencing these same things, and arriving at school already so overstimulated that her system can't calm down enough to focus on the tasks at hand?  How much of what looks like ADHD behavior is actually her inability to take anything more in or process the information in the right part of the brain because she is so consumed with sensory overload?