Hi Teresa! Welcome!

I had my older son evaluated and diagnosed at a pediatric OT center. My son's school had recommended them. I had filled out the checklist on this site: http://www.sensory-processing-disorder.com/ and brought that with me. Then based on my observations and their testing, they did a 12+ page evaluation. I gave that to his Ped and to his school. Now that he's older, we don't do OT anymore but he goes to a social skills group every week.

I'm sure you can google SPD groups in Philly to see if there are any. I'm in CT and haven't found any support groups, only online places like this and on Facebook.

As a quick explanation, I often say: For my older son who is sensory defensive, his volume control is set too high. Everything feels too loud, too bright, too hot, too much for him. For my younger son who is a sensory seeker, his volume control is set too low. He needs lots of everything to feel it. He talks louder. He wants it faster, louder, harder, more of everything. There are some other examples: http://www.sensory-processing-disorder.c...rders.html

Helping with meltdowns is very individualized. The best thing you can do is to avoid the meltdowns in the first place. Learn his triggers and avoid those things. When my older son was younger, loud sudden noises caused meltdowns, so I found that if I warned him and prepared him, he was better able to tolerate it. "I'm going to turn the vacuum cleaner on now. It's going to be very loud. Do you want to cover your ears or go in another room?" He wouldn't eat any food that was hot. So I learned to cook his food, put it on a plate, then put the plate in the freezer for 5 minutes. Then he would eat it no problem. Both my boys were deathly afraid of people in costumes (like Chuck E. Cheese mouse, Blues Clues, Mickey, etc), so we stopped going to any place that had people in costumes. If one was somewhere we didn't know it was going to be, we allowed them to be as far away as they felt they needed to be.

You could also encourage gross motor activities. Now that it's summer, I encourage my boys to jump on our trampoline, ride their scooters (and bike now that my older son knows how), swing. We go to a park with a spinning thing (flat circle with bars to hold on to, not sure what to call it) and I let them spin as much as they want (so they don't need to spin in our swivel chairs as much). I try to remember to have them do wheelbarrows up and down our hallway. Also try to have them help carry heavy things for me, bring the groceries in the house for me, bring the clothes hamper down to the laundry room for me.

And sometimes you can't win. Sometimes the meltdowns happen no matter what you do.

Good luck! Hope you can get him evaluated soon!