Hi, my name is Lynn. I'm a freelance editor and a mom to 2 boys, 9 years old and 6 years old. My older son was diagnosed with SPD when he was 6. Since then we've had a *lot* of help from his school and therapists. I've read Out-of-Sync and a few others. My older son is mostly a sensory avoider and has low muscle tone, as well as a few other things I can't remember or pronounce!

My older son has always been shy, inward, slow to warm up, etc. We just thought that was his personality. He was born a month early at 36 weeks, but didn't have to stay longer at the hospital. We were lucky that he had no medical issues, except jaundice. He hit all his milestones later and didn't say more than a handful of words until he was 3. Again, we just thought it was from being a preemie, being a boy, and part of his personality. I saw that my two nephews talked later as well, so I looked into sign language. We did sign language with him for about 2 years until he was talking a bit more. Skip ahead to Kindergarten. He did fine academically, but the teacher was concerned because he was still parallel playing and not really interacting with the other kids in the class. The school social worker was brought in and did modeling behavior with him. I talked with his doctor to figure out what was wrong. ADHD/ADD didn't fit exactly. We had him evaluated for autism. He had some of the symptoms but not enough to be on the spectrum. In the meantime, an IEP was set up for him and he started doing OT at school and having motor breaks. I had my aha moment about halfway through 1st grade. I had edited the revised edition of The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun. I realized that the activities suggested in the book were the same ones the OT was doing with my son at school. And it was working! So I looked up SID/SPD and found the checklist. Yes, yes, yes, yes! The list described my son! I found a pediatric OT center that did evaluations and got the confirmed SPD diagnosis.

Over the last year or two, I've been noticing a few SPD things with my younger son as well. He seems to be mostly a sensory seeker. I haven't brought him to be evaluated or done any therapy with him yet (though I did buy him his own weighted blanket because he loved his brother's weighted blanket so much). I'm torn since it doesn't seem to be affecting him enough to give him troubles in school. But I do worry that it might affect him more down the road. On the one hand, I say to myself he's fine, it's mild, leave well enough alone. On the other hand, what if I can avoid future problems by getting him diagnosed now? Sigh.

Then in the last 6 months, I've seen a lot of similarities between myself and my older son. And I'm just now wondering if I'm SPD. I'm trying to find someone in my area who can help adults with SPD.

Looking forward to getting to know you all!