Musings of An AfterThought

First Book Review of 2019

Posted on January 15, 2019 Updated on January 12, 2019

So i am please to say I am working on doing more reading as I begin the year 2019. As I stated, I haven’t been readying as much since I had Austin and its something I’m beginning to miss.

So, to break the curiousity of my mind (and some of my son’s issues), I decided to take some recommendations from a facebook parent group i’m a part of and look into this book: The out of Sync Child by Carol Stock Kranowitz.

This book is about what is says on the cover: recognizing and dealing with Sensory process disorder in children. And yes — I will admit that I think Austin has some of this as I will explain in a minute.  The author is a former school teacher with a Masters in Education and “Human Development” (I’m taking from the inside cover of my copy of the book) who I can say its pretty much the most experiental expert for this topic. She also has worked with an occupational therapist for children to confirm her reseach who wrote the other recommended book for this disorder: Sensational Kids by Lucy Jane Miller, Ph.D., OTR. (yep, got that book too.)

For those of you who don’t know — sensory processing disorder is where a child has issues processing sensory items in their environment so much that it inhibits their daily routine. This is not limited to the 5 senses we all know (like touch/taste/sight/hearing/smell) but also the others related to your sense of self and your relationship to gravity and space. For some, sensory processing issues can be loud noises or scratchy clothing. For my son–it means a lot of things taste funny or weird and he never wants to wear a hat. I mean will throw tantrums if you put anything on his head for a second. And I mean rarely eats toddler appropriate food. Some related issues he has is that we are now seeing a speech therapist for his delays there and seeing an occupational therapist so he can learn age appropriate functions like dressing himself, how to experience new things and yet self-sooth.

Now–there are many reasons why I personally am reading this book. But the information I am learning surrounding sensory processing and its related issues are reasons I want to recommend this book to everyone. First– it has given me a new awareness of things I do to compensate my sensory processing. I know–i’m an adult– but there were things I did as a child I now understand why and as an adult I can learn and help myself function better. Second–it has opened up my eyes and my heart to seeing children (and adults) more neurodiversally. Meaning that some times, people take in information and release out other information differently. And that’s not a bad thing.

What’s been interesting is that sensory processing is tpyically linked with Autism spectrum issues. Many times autistics have sensory processing issues and vice versa. I’m not sure if Austin has it himself (i’ve been told no but he’s still under 3 so you never know where things go at this age,) but I am interacting on social media with parents who have sensory/autstic families and adults to help/support/understand what it means to look at the world differently. That’s a huge reason in itself to read this book.

So if you need some non fiction ready for something very insightful and severely misunderstood, read this book.