Here is a great recipe that get kids literally “in touch” with their food.  And, as a bonus, it is perfect for the holidays.

Gingerbread Cookie Sculpture

5 ½ c. flour

3 t. baking soda

1 ¾ c. dark brown sugar

¼ c. dark molasses

4 ½ t. ground cinnamon

3 t. ground ginger

½ t. cloves

¼ t. salt

1 c. melted butter

½ c. boiling water

1 egg, beaten

1. Combine flour and soda.  Set aside.
2. In large bowl mix sugar, molasses, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, salt.
3. Add butter, egg and water.
4. Beat until sugar dissolves.  Gradually stir in flour mixture.
5. Mix to form stiff dough.  Cover immediately.
6. You may refrigerate for up to two days or freeze.
7. Bring dough to room temperature before shaping.
8. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-20 minutes depending on thickness of cookies.

Note:  You can substitute 5 tsp. pumpkin pie spice for the combination of cinnamon, ginger and cloves

Invite your children into the kitchen to do the following activities – all of which are fantastic ways to stimulate their sensory system:

• Whisking eggs
• Pouring ingredients into the bowl
• Feeling the warmth of the melted butter through the bowl
• Stirring
• Rolling out dough with bare hands and shaping it into anything their hearts desire

Michelle Stern owns What’s Cooking, a certified green cooking school for children in the San Francisco Bay Area.  When she’s not teaching or in the kitchen, she is the full time taxi-driver to her two children, one adopted from Guatemala and one home-baked.

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On February 28, 2005 my husband and I first saw our daughter just outside the doorway of a hotel ballroom in Nanchang’s Gloria Plaza Hotel. We’d traveled halfway across the world to adopt this little girl: a tiny, nearly one-year-old who peered at me with curious eyes. She came to me easily, with no tears, just a wide-eyed stare. Within seconds she showed me why: she wanted to play with my glasses. And she smiled when I pointed to my husband and myself, explaining, “Ba-ba. Ma-ma. Wo ai ni.”

Our journey to become parents was long, but somehow I knew that this round-cheeked baby girl had traveled much further. She’d been through too much already, more than I could imagine, and I felt shocked that she smiled and giggled during our first few minutes together. The four other girls in the room from the Tonggu SWI also stared at their new parents, but tears streamed down their faces and their bodies arched away from their new mothers’ arms. Yet our daughter touched my face with curious hands and tracked my every movement with her eyes. That first day, our travel group dubbed our daughter “the happy baby” while I secretly fretted. It couldn’t be this easy, could it?

My premonition proved true. I now believe God gave us those precious days together in China so that my husband and I could fall in love with our daughter. Our China adoption trip proved almost embarrassingly easy, while our travel-mates struggled with tough transitions. Yet once we all arrived home, our travel-mates’ daughters slowly adjusted to their forever families, but our family felt as if we’d slammed into a brick wall.

Our daughter stormed into her new life with the sheer force of her personality. She loved to bounce to music, mimic faces, and giggle. She also loved to slam her head into things (or people!), hang upside down, squeeze others a little too hard, and spin round and round. Sudden changes in noise or visuals sent her into hour-long melt-downs. “Severe sensory delays,” the experts diagnosed. Strangers around town sometimes asked me if she was autistic. Our daughter worked very hard to catch up to others her age: overcoming her oral aversions by 16 months, walking at 18 months, gradually adjusting to new sights, smells and sounds during our first year together.

Our daughter also showed her strong-willed, forceful personality soon after arriving at her forever home … during our fourth week together, she quietly announced her disapproval of subtle dietary changes with a three day hunger strike. The terrible two’s began at 20 months and lasted until well after her third birthday. Anxious attachment also appeared during the year she was two; I didn’t go anywhere by myself for seven long months.

As time went on, her sensory issues slowly lessened. Her anxious attachment also eased. Yet her “I’m here – the party can start” personality continued no matter the circumstance. Most times she whirls into a room with the full force of a tornado. She loves meeting new people and instructing others to follow her lead, no matter their ages.

We call our daughter by many nicknames, but the one which seems most apt is the one we use the least. She is our Terminator from Tonggu County … she is our Tongginator.

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AJ has always LOVED deep pressure and before we had his Southpaw blanket and pressure vest he used to ask us to wrap him up in his favorite frog blanket so he could get that needed pressure. He used to call it a taco because he could not say the word burrito.

This is one of my all time favorite pictures of him.It is also one of my husband’s favorite pictures and he keeps it on his blackberry to show off to all his friends and co-workers.

He was almost three, his glasses didn’t fit right, and we were in the process of getting rid of the molluscum on his face so he looks so goofy.

But to me he just looks so darn cute.

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We were staying at my mother-in-law’s apartment in Kiev, Ukraine and three weeks prior to that night our visits were limited to two daytime hour intervals at her baby orphanage located outside the city.  Now we were finally at the point in our independent, international adoption to have her in our custody.

That night, upon entering the bedroom, my daughter dove for the large pull out couch pushed up against the wall.  Once in bed she observed my station next to her and sized up a blanket rolled up along the part of the edge my body didn’t cover.  She quickly looked around and realized this was not the plain, low wooden crib she had grown accustom to over the two-and-a-half years of her life in the orphanage, nor were there any other children from her group near her settling in for the night.  Knowing my three bio kids back home and the types of tantrums they can throw, my immediate expectation was for my little one to scream and howl with fear and eventually make her way over to me, the only other person in her proximity, for comfort.

That, of course, didn’t happen.

Firstly, she was not pleased at all that I was there.  I invaded her space.  And she dealt with my presence the only way she knew how; to ignore me completely.  As I lay on the edge of the bed, one foot resting on the floor, the sun was slowly setting on the twenty-seventh day of my stay in Ukraine, I tried to imagine the trauma of leaving the only home a child has ever known, riding in a car for the first time, eating unknown foods, being dunked in a bath for what seemed the first time (she screamed through that) and swallowing a mouthful of blood after someone forced a purple stick with bristles into her mouth, vigorously moving it up and down, up and down.

I could not.

And I decided that first evening to sit near her quietly,  a decision for better or worse, to watch the little girl I did not actually know but already loved, how she puts herself to sleep.

After slowly panning her head from left to right and back again a few times, she planted her pudgy little arms unto her legs while sitting and started the first of many night time rituals I was about to view.  She rocked.  Back and forth, back and forth, all the while grinding her teeth incessantly, and hard.  She closed her eyes here and there and chewed her tongue.  This behavior went on for a while.

My daughter spent a lot of time in her crib at the orphanage.  And having been abandoned at birth due to her diagnosis of Down syndrome, she has never experienced someone lovingly rocking her to sleep.  But it was still painful to watch.

But not as painful as seeing her next trick.

After rocking for almost forty-five minutes, she rolled over to the concrete wall, covered with meagerly thin wall paper probably dating back to the 1950s.  Upon making contact she leaned back and proceeded to smack her forehead up against the wall.  Back in the States, throughout our adoption process we received a few photographs of our daughter.  Every time, she had some type of cut or bruise on her forehead, it was blaring on the photos as Ukrainians like to put thin, green liquid on cuts and scrapes and bruises on their kids.

This was the only time I broke my role as observer that night.  I placed my hands on her shoulders and quietly whispered in Russian, “nelza, tak ne nada.”  “No, no, you don’t need to do that,” I repeated a few times quietly.  My husband and children and I lived in Kiev for almost four years, until the birth of our third daughter.  I never realized I’d be using my Russian for something like this, though.

She shrugged me off and I moved her away from the wall.  I pulled the blanket from my feet and wedged it between her and the cold, hard wall.  She did not contest.  Probably she was not aware that she could.  After her silent concession she made due with rubbing her head against part of the wall and part of the blanket.

I sat back on the bed and wondered if there would be a day she would let me, no want me to, rock her to sleep.

The room was now dark.  Well into our second hour of habitual head banging and rocking, and after throwing a quick glance my way, she switched her position to laying completely flat and started a new trend; to shake her whole body all around and after about five or six times, she then fall flat and still for several minutes.  Repeat.  This particular behavior actually had a point.  Each time she stayed flat a few minutes longer.  Her eyes got heavy and her breathing evened out.

We’ve been home with our daughter, Evangeline, for three weeks now.  She seems to be warming up to me but it’s very slow.  And it’s a lot of two steps forward and one step back.  We’ve had her Early Intervention evaluations and are starting therapy for a lot of her stimming behaviors.  Some mornings she still wakes up with a bruise on her forehead.  She lets me play with her and make her laugh and gets excited about bath time now but has not, as of yet, let me rock her to sleep.

As well as adjusting to jet lag, Gillian Marchenko also writes at Expecting Evangeline, Pocket Lint and Chicago Moms Blog.

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Parents,

Please help obtain diagnostic recognition of SPD for children with SPD, ADHD, Autism and other conditions. Below is a letter from the Sensory Processing Disorder Foundation with a letter that can be sent from you to your child’s pediatrician, psychiatrist, other physician (MD), or osteopathic doctor (DO).

Dear Parent,

We need your immediate help with an important effort to obtain diagnostic recognition of Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) in the upcoming revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).

The DSM committee has asked us to provide research showing that doctors would use an SPD diagnosis if it were added to the DSM-V. Showing use by international physicians is important, too, because diagnostic recognition in the DSM will lead to inclusion in comparable international manuals.

In response to the DSM committee’s request, we have developed a very short online physician survey (it literally takes a doctor three minutes to complete).

WE NEED TO GET THIS SURVEY INTO THE HANDS OF PHYSICIANS
WHO UNDERSTAND AND SUPPORT SPD AS A DIAGNOSIS.
You and everyone you know are crucial to this effort.

If you are a parent, please ask the pediatrician, psychiatrist, other physician (MD), or osteopathic doctor (DO) who treats your child to go online and take our survey. If you are a clinician, a teacher, or another professional, please ask any physicians you know – especially those familiar with SPD – to take survey. They will do this as a favor to you.

WE HAVE TO BEGIN ANALYZING DATA ON AUGUST 5 TO MEET OUR DEADLINE.
We will not get enough results in time unless you help us!

Think of the best way to approach doctors you know to gain their cooperation. A few ideas are:

• If you have the doctor’s e-mail, simply cut and paste the message below (which includes the URL link to the survey) into an email to your doctor. Use a “subject” line sure to grab attention such as, “I need your help quickly.”  Add a personal plea explaining the importance of this survey to you. Ask for help as a personal favor to you and your child or to you and your clients. Be sure to stress the deadline for completion.
• If you don’t have the doctor’s e-mail, call their office and ask for the appropriate person who handles patient/colleague requests. Explain why you are calling (emphasizing the importance of the doctor’s participation as a personal favor to you and your child or to you and your clients). Explain that it is an online survey and ask the intermediary to provide an e-mail address where you can forward the doctor the survey link and instructions. Be sure to mention that the survey takes less than 3 minutes. If that person will not provide an e-mail, ask to leave a message so that your may speak directly to the doctor about this effort and gain their cooperation.
• If needed, stop by the doctor’s office to personally deliver the request (you may have to call ahead and ask for a time when you can do this). Ask the doctor to complete the survey as a personal favor to you and your child or to you and your clients. If the doctor is not available, ask to speak to the doctor’s assistant or another staff member who will personally deliver your request to the doctor.
• As a last resort, fax or mail the request to the doctor. Be sure to include the information in the e-mail below including the URL. Emphasize the need for immediacy in your note and give the deadline to complete the survey. Explain that the URL must be entered EXACTLY as shown (direction of slashes, lower case vs. caps, etc.). Give them the option to call or e-mail you so that you can forward the survey link.

Every survey that a doctor takes will help!

Please support the DSM initiative by recruiting your child’s physicians or your physician colleagues to take our survey so we can show that doctors would use the SPD diagnosis if it were in the DSM-V.

One last thing: If you are involved in online support groups for sensational families or blog about your life or work with children who have SPD, forward this message or post a link to the survey and help us reach out to physicians who understand and support SPD as a diagnosis. We are shooting for 2,500 responses in three weeks. To have a chance at that number, we need to mobilize grassroots support worldwide. Give the DSM initiative a push: Hit the Forward button to others who support the DSM initiative.

Thank you. I’ll keep you posted on our progress.

Warmest personal regards,

Lucy Jane Miller, PhD, OTR
Founder and Executive Director

Sensory Processing Disorder Foundation

SUGGESTED COVER MESSAGE:

Dear (YOUR PHYSICIAN’S NAME),

The DSM-V committee is requesting data from physicians about Sensory Processing Disorder. Below is a link to a three-minute online survey. The survey will provide data about whether the new diagnosis would be used in the medical community. By taking this very short survey, you will help answer the usefulness question.

The millions of children, adults, and families living with SPD need the diagnostic status and standards of assessment and treatment that come with diagnostic recognition in the DSM. Diagnostic recognition will also make it easier for families to get reimbursed for the services their children need and for scientists to receive the funding they need to continue researching the disorder.

Thank you for taking a few minutes to answer the basic questions in the survey.

If you have any questions about this survey, please contact Kim Leserman at 310.937.9992.

To take the survey, click on this link or copy the link into your browser to begin: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Z_2fq3hEB9sY77Dej5CDCRqQ_3d_3d

Sincerely,
(YOUR NAME)

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“God has a special purpose in mind for every person created in His image and that includes each one who is learning different!”

This book offers a solid introduction to the world of learning differences.  It provides concise descriptions of eight learning differences, ranging from perceptual dysfunction to emotional problems.  It describes all six types of attention-deficit disorder.  It briefly, but directly mentions adoptive children when referencing sensory deprivation and cultural deprivation or disadvantage.

Author Maren Angelotti also describes commonly occurring forms of parental denial and addresses the fears surrounding many learning differences, even listing some of their advantages.  The book later goes on to suggest discipline and time-management techniques and to provide suggestions for navigating the worlds of public, private and home schooling with a child who learns differently.

Of Different Minds is an excellent resource for Christian parents who have a child who learns differently.  While still an excellent resource for non-Christians, parents should be aware that Of Different Minds contains several Scriptural references, two Bible studies and an overall Biblical perspective.

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As parents, we all worry about the emotional, developmental, and physical well-being of our children. Sometimes parents have a deeper sense of concern, based on what they see and don’t understand or what they don’t see, but feel. Most concerns are not unfounded.

Let me share my own experience as an adoptive mother of a child who turned out to have special needs. My daughter was placed in my arms at the age of thirteen months. She couldn’t sit up unassisted. Although I had been warned that this could be the case, it was alarming. But she was sitting up within days, so my alarm dissipated.

Over time other signs appeared: how she became part of me every time I held her, how wrapping myself around her or swaddling her in a blanket were the only actions that could calm the crying fits that happened more than a dozen times each day, or how she felt like she would topple over when I would place her on the floor to stand – as though her balance wasn’t locked in. Her gait was unusual, so we had her hips x-rayed to make sure she was developing normally. She was fine.

State developmental specialists came and looked at her – twice. They felt she was slightly delayed, but would catch up. But, as her mom, I knew something was wrong and that it was progressing.

It all came to a head one day as I held my soundly sleeping daughter after another crying spree. We had had a rough day. She had thrown herself on the pavement several times and wouldn’t (I thought) do what I asked. I felt she was being stubborn and we were both exhausted. For months I had been trying to convince myself that she was fine, but my inner voice was screaming. I could no longer ignore it and, as I held her, I grabbed a pen and paper and began to write it all down.

I couldn’t stop my tears. I was scared.

The writing helped me to distance myself from the situation with her and clarify that I needed to again seek help – and quickly. I swaddled her and put her down for the rest of her slumber while I made phone calls, asking for references of a therapy group that could provide a thorough evaluation.

She was evaluated within the week. The therapists spent hours with her and me. They made copies of my notes and listened to me. And then they explained that I had indeed picked up on what was going on with my daughter and that my notes helped them to figure it all out. We designed a course of therapy treatment for her and within twelve months I was became acquainted with the beautiful soul imprisoned within the walls of her sensory integration spectrum disorder – and she had so many aspects of it.

This sense that kept niggling at me is known as intuition – the “inner voice”, an additional gift of sense, the parent’s subconscious making it known that it has picked up clues (subtle and not so subtle) that something is awry. No one knows a child better than their own parent. Listen to your intuition; it’s bugging you for a good reason.

Judy writes about parenting a diverse family at The International Mom’s Blog

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Basically, the brain must organize all of the information it takes in, categorize and process the sensations and attempt to move and learn “normally”. If the brain can not do that then the output is dysfunctional.

Sensory integration includes not only the five senses but also balance and movement.

Sight
Sound (auditory- with no diagnosed hearing problems)
Touch (tactile- input from the skin receptors about touch, pressure, temperature, pain, and movement of the hairs on the skin.)
Vestibular (input from the inner ear about equilibrium, gravitational changes, movement experiences, and position in space)
Proprioceptive (input from the muscles and joints about body position, weight, pressure, stretch, movement, and changes in position in space)
Oral
Smell
Auditory Language
Social, Emotional, Play, and Self Regulation: Sensory Integration is typically detected and diagnosed in children because SI can be obvious during early childhood activities such as tactile play, tumbling, and gross and fine motor skills. If Sensory Integration is not detected learning, development, and behavior problems can surface later and become more serious.

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A Sensory Diet is a carefully designed activity schedule that provides your child with sensory and nervous system input to help him/her stay focused, alert, and organized throughout the day. It is VERY important to recognize that EVERY child’s sensory diet will be different because there is no child who is the same and who needs the same sensory input and output. For example, one child may need to use more heavy work activities to utilize her proprioceptive sense and another may need more tactile input.

According to the Sensory Smarts website (a byproduct of the book, Raising a Sensory Smart Child: The Definitive Handbook for Helping Your Child with Sensory Integration Issues) “to construct an effective sensory diet, you need the sensory smarts to truly understand your child’s sensory difficulties and how they interfere with his life.” You will need an occupational therapist to evaluate your child and help you create the sensory diet that will best suit your child.

What is also important to take into account is your child’s threshold for stimulation. If your child is easily stimulated and is often overstimulated it will be very important (early on) to keep a log of what triggers the overstimulation.

Even three years into AJ’s diagnosis we are still learning what triggers his overstimulation but we believe we are getting a handle on it and are finally able to keep him at a more regulated state during the day.

Here is a sample Sensory Diet from Sensory Smarts. We do MANY of these things as well as use natural light as much as possible and try to avoid using lights in the house. We avoid noise (no TV, stores, and play areas) as much as possible because his auditory sense sends him into fight or flight very quickly. We have limited clutter in the house to get rid of visual stimulation.

The hardest part is finding his threshold everyday because everyday it seems to change based upon his sleep or the weather. But, we try to do the best we can, minimize as much as we can, and provide him with as many sensory tools as we can.

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An email from one of her teachers was a significant clue. When I look back at the past few weeks, there were other clues, but I failed to see them. I was too busy, running behind my kids in a vain attempt to keep up with life. Frustrated with her lack of following through with routine tasks, I grounded her.

Once I had the chance to step back, BREATHE, and look at the situation with a fresh perspective I realized I had messed up – big time. Her inability to focus and perform simple routine tasks indicated her inattentiveness was most likely resulting from her sensory integration disorder. I knew this from years of dealing with SID; I just hadn’t seen this aspect of it before.

Sensory integration disorder is a spectrum disorder. And it’s a whopper.  SID affects the whole child because the child’s neurological system cannot process the information it receives through the senses. This can include the far senses of touch, smell, taste, sight, and hearing. But, as in my daughters’ case, it also can include the near senses, the “hidden senses” those three body-centered systems – tactile, vestibular, and proprioceptive (I will go into more detail in the coming weeks). SID affects the child development, behavior, and ability to learn.

Here are a few examples of SID: a child routinely smells non-food objects, a child eats her fingers and then starts on her toes, a child spins and spins and then immediately walks straight line because she isn’t dizzy.

SID is seen more often in adopted children. It is more likely in children who have been institutionalized (in orphanages), where the necessary stimuli needed infancy was not provided. SID is something that the adoptive parent needs to be aware of and look out for. It cannot be cured with medicine. Therapy, a sensory diet, and coping skills are needed. Early intervention is best.

Parenting a child with sensory integration disorder (SID) can wear a parent out. The African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child,” comes to mind. A parent who has a child with SID needs a team; a group of other adults (teachers and therapists) who can help the child integrate and succeed. If the child needs one, an IEP (Individualized Education plan) may be necessary.

I called my daughter’s OT (occupational therapist) and we agreed on what I could do with my daughter at home to help her re-integrate. I realized it was I who needed the grounding and not my daughter.

Judy writes about parenting and her multiracial family at http://theinternationalmom.wordpress.com/

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