Earlier this week Chance was sick so I kept him home Wednesday from beloved preschool. He wasn’t really sick sick, just one of those runny nosed, slightly hot, cranky/lethargic type of things. (And I knew how he felt because I’d felt pretty crappy the night before but felt fine by morning.) However, since figuring out his sensory issues I’ve learned that sometimes those little things can be the final straw – one too many things to process. He has a hard enough time at school (or anyplace with a lot going on) without feeling yucky on top of it.

(I caught him totally milking the “sick” thing today, though. After getting in trouble, no less. And my straw wears size eight shoes.)

His school is actually going well. He had some rough spots the first few days, but now he seems to be settling in. I’ve been copiously rewarding bribing him with goodies of the candy variety. (And before you all condemn me for pushing the Great Evil Sugar on my child, well… let’s just say… being the child of hippies who didn’t allow us kids to have sugar (or grapes or food coloring) because of both “hyperactivity” issues and purist food notions and/or supporting strikes, AND then watching all of us same kids grow up addicted to sugar to varying degrees (because what do you do when you’re a teenager with hippie parents? You either eat a lot of junk food or you join the ROTC)… let’s just say I have a different perspective than most. Moderation is key.

Besides, he didn’t have any sugar today and he was bouncing off the walls! So there you go. (Some days are still rougher than others.))

Anyway, one of the other things that has happened with his SPD issues is I’ve started bonding with the other parents at OT. You know, where we all sit in the waiting room pretending to read Parents Magazine but really dying to talk to one another? Luckily a bunch of us are chatty. We’ve started passing around names and contact info and we’re talking about putting a playgroup together. Yay! It just happens that everyone who is going in that morning time slot has a kid 3-4 years of age. It also seems that we’ve all – go figure – been going through the same experiences with other playgroups/parents/preschools; i.e. stares, comments about our parenting, freak outs by other adults, blah blah blah. You get to where you start avoiding a lot. It’s not only isolating for us parents, but I think we all worry (endlessly) about isolating our kids. We want our children to have fun, to not feel restricted all the time, to not only socialize but to make true friends. And there is nothing better than finding other children who are “rough players” with cool parents who know the score.

After talking with some of the other parents it also sounds like I may have made the most progress on Internet research into possible playgroups in the area. I had, of course, been looking at our local Parents support group, but I also found a Meetup listing for an SPD/Asperger’s playgroup (I had to dig deep to find that one). Those two were all I found, and I need to follow up with emails on both but I feel energized by the idea of organizing and passing the info along. Maybe start a new Meetup group or web page. There are a lot of “resources” on the web to learn about SPD, but not much in the way of just finding people to talk to. I feel like if I can help the next group of parents dealing with SPD to find playgroups in the area… that would be a cool thing.

Makes weathering the rough days just a little easier.

             – the weirdgirl