Please forgive my dual thumb typing errors. I love my ipad mini - but it makes correcting a reply very challenging :)

Hi, I took at look at the chat site to see what others have said and - I agree. Hating swings is a big indicator for SPD. during my daughter's first SPD OT eval when she was 4 she started crying when she looked at the swing that they planned to assess her on :). Dealing with her sensory issues helped her challenges with transition and automatic "no" quite a bit because she wasn't overstimulated all the time. Others mentioned food and I will echo that. We are now gluten and casein free and follow the Feingold program. When I removed artificial ingredients from food I saw no change, until I also removed them from toothpaste and so, etc, and removed Hugh salicylate foods. I've learned that a teaspoon of tomato will leave my daughter argumentative and misbehaving for days. It's really quite remarkable - albeit miserable. Processing challenges can create a cranky child, too (and cranky kids argue a lot). So that's another thing to have on your list of possibilities. From where I sit, after my journey, I would look at food first - at minimum all artificials and probably full Feingold, then move to casein and gluten if needed. I would do OT also if you can afford it. I don't regret it for ,y daughter, but so many of her challenges disappeared with food. I wish we had done that first.

When we started Feingold we were already nearly additive free. We still went out to eat occasionally and I hadn't changed any personal care products. With my daughter I've learned that the tiniest of exposures can have her reeling for days (and that can look like anything from irritable to hitting and screaming). She is also very sensitive to salicylates - which I never would have figured out without Feingold. Unknowingly i was feeding her healthy organic food every day that her body just could not handle. We are also gluten free and dairy (casein) free. We had removed those years before and made huge progress with her SPD. From the forums I'm on it appears that a minority families do need to go beyond Feingold like we have, but even those families see improvement from just FG. It sounds like so much work - and it is at first- but now we can get homework done in minutes, not hours, . She does things such as cleaning her room just because it needs it, we can run errands with no melt downs, her grades have improved dramatically, and mostly? She's just fun to be with now. She's who she is meant to be.

I have found the Feingold diet, which removes food dyes, preservatives, high salicylates from food and personal care products (toothpaste, soap etc) to be a miracle for my daughter. She had a lot of trouble regulating her emotions and once she was in the middle of a tantrum she couldn't be reasoned with or distracted. I had several professionals recommend various levels of consequences, but the success of punishment is predicated on one's ability to access memory and choose to avoid previous experiences in real time. That wasn't happening; nor did it fit with how I choose to parent. I wanted to access my daughter's desire to do well and I knew this wasn't a learned behavior. Removing chemicals made sense to me, but what was most surprising is learning that some of my daughter's biggest sensitivities are to tomatoes and berries. Unknowingly, I was exposing her everyday to food that made her crazy. We have been eating this way for 6 months and her actions and reactions are consistently neurotypical now and, best of all, she is HAPPY . I'm still pinching myself.

Rondi, it's honestly the best $90 I've ever spent. The value of the membership is that the association has researched all the food items they list so you know if "natural flavors" on the label (as an example) is something you can eat or not. The same is true with non- food items. I still pinch myself that we have seen so much improvement. It had gotten where every night had some kind of meltdown and they were getting more intense. In the past month she has had two tough times and they were limited to no more than 30 minutes. She is dyslexic so school work is a pain, but it all gets finished now and she sometimes even enjoys it :) We saw the most luck with constipation by removing gluten, but I still would start with Feingold if we hadn't already been GFCF. It's a big commitment - because you really have to do it 100% to see what sensitivities exist - but it has been worth all the extra effort to see my shiny happy girl emerge. If you are in Facebook there is a FG group that's open to non members and you could read other's experiences and get a sense of what's worked for them. Good luck!

I'm going to chime in on the food possibility also. My daughter sounds like yours...only much more extreme :( We went dairy free and then gluten free several years ago and saw good results with my daughter's sensory issues, and then we started the Feingold diet 3 months ago (no food dye, preservatives and some foods that contain salicylates) and have had amazing results. Her anger and frustration have virtually disappeared. We need to be free of all, but if I was doing it again I would try Feingold first. I feel like something of an evangelist, but it has truly made that big of a difference for us.

Jamie, wow!! thank you for all your thoughts. I talked with the principal and we'll see if they have the staff resources to support - at the same time I'm calling local tutors and seeing how able/willing they are to travel to my daughter's school. The one thing I know right now is the school will definitely let a tutor come there if they don't have a resource and they will work with us to make it part of the school day as opposed to extra work on top of what she is already doing. Your coaching earlier this week helped me have the right conversation about that :) Either way I'm optomistic. I talked with a tutor today who sounds like she knows how to manage the balance between enough challenge - and not so much that the child burns out. My daughter's summer program was very helpful but she (literally) ended up under a table one day - she had just reached a point of exhaustion. I consider this a marathon, so I am very okay with having fun and taking it at a pace we can stick with for the duration. The tutor I spoke with today seemed to understand that. She also said things that sounded very much like your # 7 - that makes her a lot more credible with me now :) thank you!!

Jamie, these are great, succinct points. My proposal is going to be that I will buy the program and they will then be able to keep it and use it. It would mean that someone who was just learning to tutor would be working with my daughter, but she would likely be the only one as they pilot it, and because of the success that lots of parents have had with it, I have thought that a new tutor could have success (please correct me if this is naïve!) My daughter went through LiPS this summer (she, too, really needed it) and she passed the student test (yay!). My dilemma as a single working mom is finding a way to get high quality instruction, and to have it come to her - ideally at a cost I can afford :). I love your points about the language arts curriculum; I didn't know that, but fortunately that's something I am sure the school would do. I know the principal would love to have the ability to support dyslexic children, and ensure that they are identifying and helping kids in the best way. Now the question is, if they don't have any out of pocket costs, can they manage the staffing equation to have a teacher prepare and deliver the material? If this doesn't work, the next solution will be to find a tutor who will come to the school. They have already told me they would support that and would like to build that into my daughter's school day as opposed to adding it on top of a full day of school or having her work on it all summer again. Unfortunately it would be more expensive for me and wouldn't build any new capabilities for the school. I really appreciate your wisdom and discussing potential obstacles. My first priority is to my daughter and getting her good help, and then I would really like to support the school in developing a new in-house ability. I have never seen a school so focused on building kids up so they have the emotional strength to learn. Partnering that with a great curriculum for struggling readers would be amazing. My daughter's teachers have hated feeling that they are failing her. Her current teacher stays late 3 nights a week just to support my daughter as she does her homework during study hall. So, we shall see. I believe that if she can figure out a way to make it work, she will. If she can't with her staffing levels, then we'll go to the next best choice. But, I'm hopeful and have on my best influencing cap!

That's exactly what I meant Julie. Thanks!

I'm going to be talking with my daughter's principal about bringing Barton to her school. It's a small, wonderful private school that really focuses on helping children be successful. They don't have reading specialists and I think Barton may be a way to meet the needs of quite a few children - including my daughter :) I've done lots of reading about Barton and feel prepared to talk about why It would be a good fit for the school, but I don't have any idea how much time the tutor would need to prep for each lesson. I'm sure it varies per lesson, but what might we expect? Other ideas for me? Thanks!

Thanks, PandaMom, I''m on the border of Kansas and Missouri. I think a database would be amazing.

I'm a long time lurker and I've learned so much from you all. My dd is newly 8 and in 2nd grade. She is in VT but has made great progress. The first OD we saw wasn't educated enough to be helpful - she actually recommended that I punish my daughter until she completed her VT homework. What she saw as misbehavior and defiance, I saw as having an overwhelmed vestibular system. Sure enough, we started with a COVD fellow and she's going slow, working on reflexes and dd is improving and having a great time at VT. Fast forward to a recent educational psych eval. It was very disappointing (but paid for by insurance; so I was willing to give it a try). My dd received a dyslexia diagnosis (I agree), I was told that APD doesn't exist, VT doesn't work, meds were recommended (for a provisional inattentive add diagnosis "it could be just the dyslexia; you should try the meds to see.") and the psychologist got visibly frustrated with my dd when dd was gesturing to indicate words instead of saying them out loud. One of my concerns is dd's "losing" words and misunderstanding language - it's very inconsistent and in sharp contrast to some other excellent verbal skills. The PhD saw it as opposition. So, I have IQ test scores in the 70 %tiles with sub scores all over the place - that I'm sure aren't accurate (dd "just wanted out of there Mommy. I was so scared" and because I did some samples questions with her after to see for myself how she was responding. An example of her thinking was getting the "wrong" answer by putting a bird and a mouse together "because they are Stuart Little and Margolo so they go together" and a processing speed at the 96th%tile (it's the only test I was there for so she performed her best). The doctor's take on her high processing speed? "she probably rushes through everything and makes lots of mistakes." What?? So I have a kiddo with SPD, multiple food sensitivities - we are GFCF and additive free, with vision challenges and dyslexia. She also has amazing spatial skills, excellent navigational skills. A terrific memory, an advanced vocabulary, and what her teacher refers to as "a mathematical mind." Which is a long road to get me to my questions :). How do I find a neuropsych? From what I'm seeing, everyone in my medium sized city are doing just educational testing with a few rating scales thrown in. I'm also in awe of the wisdom of this group and would love to hear any suggestions. The Eide's Mislabeled Child is my constant companion. I also have their Dyslexic Advantage and Shaywitz's Overcoming Dylexia. Thanks if you took the time to read this very long post. I really appreciate it.