Five Year Old Behavior

[KrisTrish]

Hi! I have a son who just turned 5 in August. He was diagnosed with SPD in May of this year. We completed the Sensory Integration Therapy (30 one hour sessions) in August. We saw HUGE results both at home and at the start of the recent school year.

Fast forward a couple of months and we are back to where we started at school. At home we have seen a few bumps in the road both nothing major.

At school we are seeing:

Hard time separating from me at drop off - no tears but he requests that I wait in the hallway for 10 minutes (I don't) and when he happens to see me walk by the classroom window he gets upset and takes a few minutes to calm down.
Hard time with self-control.
Very impulsive.
Hard time focusing one-on-one when talking.
Shouts out.
Yelling, hard time with indoor voice in the classroom.
Hard time with other students personal space (grabbing, pushing things in their faces).

Academically he is doing well but the lack of attention is beginning to affect his work. He rushes through the work in order to get to free time. The teacher has to have him do his papers 2 or 3 times until its done correctly. This behavior started three weeks ago as well until that point she was impressed with how well he was doing.

His behavior is also beginning to affect how the other kids feel about him. He has been knocking down their blocks, calling kids cry babies, and just being plain mean. He also refuses to help clean up after free time. The teacher has to show him exactly what to pick up and where to put it otherwise he just wanders around the room.

I will admit that we don't do a great job of following the Sensory Diet and will start to do so immediately. He does have a speech articulation problem which does make it hard for other children to always understand him. He has always been socially awkward.

Any ideas? I have also contacted our OT.

Thank You!!!

[littlebit667]

Has the speech need been addressed at the school.  It should be part of the IEP as well.  Children that cannot communicate at his age...will have behavior problems.  He can't communicate in a normal way, but wants to interact with the other children..even negative attention is better than being ignored.  The other kids probably won't interact with him because it is easier to NOT talk to him than to figure out what he is saying.  Very hard on him.
Has the OT therapy been addressed in the classroom??..again an IEP will help with that.  If they can't or won't address are you able to work with sensory needs out of the school...with private OT and speech sessions??
I hope you are able to work with the school to have these needs addressed!

[tiredbuthappy]

I agree. If he has been diagnosed, you should go through the school district to get him an IEP (or maybe 504).
I can't say I have ever heard of a child completing OT in a month. The fact that you saw tremendous improvements shows that he would benefit in the sensory therapy. And while it is crucial that you continue at home, I cannot fathom how they would think that a child with SID can just adapt to all of the sensory inputs of a busy kindergarten classroom after so little time in therapy. There may be simple modifications that the teacher can do to help your child function.  Many teachers are unaware of these interventions or may be unwilling unless there is an IEP or 504.

[Sandman2]

   There are two posters on this forum who have a lot of experience with SPD.  They are "specialmom" and "AHP84".  I suggest you contact them directly or at least take a look at their posts.  
    From what they have said, it really seems that you not only have to keep working at this at home, but the school also has to buy into the types  of things to help these kids.
  I also think that you should get a special ed evaluation so that you can get an IEP that will help the teachers work with your child.  At a minimum you should request and get a 504 based on what the OT says the teacher should be doing to help your child.
   Hopefully specialmom or ahp84 will see this post.  If not don't hesitate to contact them via message.   They can help.  Best wishes.