(03-15-2011, 10:17 AM)LynnNBoys Wrote: How much have you said to your SPD child about his/her issues? How old were they when they were diagnosed and when you talked to them about SPD?

I had to address it when my son started to notice that things were "different" for him - that came more from having assessments done. Going to OT was fun, he got to play there but we had a pretty intense run of assessments when he was 6-8 years of age as we tried to work out why things had come to a standstill therapy-wise and he had an awful teacher in his second year of school. (I always thought it was her that had the problem BTW and it was confirmed recently when I met another mother at the shops whose son was in her class last year and had a terrible terrible year. He is a delightful child but this teacher told his parents he was the "worst child she had ever taught"... she seems to have forgotten my son and what she said about him!)

Anyway.... I explained it to him pretty much in terms of what the problem was: your brain has some problems processing the information that comes in and the assessments are to try and work out exactly what the problem is so we can sort it out and make things easier. He's a "glass half empty" kind of kid so that led to some tears about "things being wrong with me" and "I'm hopeless" and to be honest we're still working on that (he's 12 now). We actually changed schools to a Steiner/Waldorf school and stopped all therapy in the end, when he was 9. He does some therapy type things at school but lots of kids do, for all kinds of reasons and there is no big deal made out of it.

I always make a point of telling him when I'm having a bad day with too much stress and too much input and that we all have a thresh hold for anything, I suppose trying to normalise individual differences in tolerance and capacity. I'm taking much the same approach to adolescence - that's been my avenue to get some vitamins etc into him "to stop you getting zits and keep your bones strong while you're growing so fast"... so some partial subterfuge still occurs!