Why I Do This

I am the mom of a child who is a seeker. He seeks and craves sensations, especially the crashing ones! Sensory Processing Disorder is a part of our journey and lives. It is a daily struggle and joy. I am blessed to be at home with this wild messy loving super smart child. Sensory processing is a journey I am happy to share. Our experiences may make you laugh or cry. The only certainty is that there will be experiences and they will be plentiful! My son is going to weather many days and drag me along with him! Together we will discover what our journey is meant to be.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Time

Image result for clockTime.  It means everything.  It is not something however that I can put in your hand and you can see, touch or smell.  To my child time has no meaning.  Imagine the very difficult concept of time itself.   Number sequences of seconds & minutes constituting hours and days.  Understanding and explaining repeatedly what constitutes an hour, a day, a week or even shorter or longer periods is very hard.  Understanding the phrases "slow down, we have time" or "it is not time" is virtually impossible. 

It is suggested by Dr. Eide that if one system is off  - it throws the whole network 'out-of-sync', explaining why so many different kids (sensory processing, ADHD, speech problems, dyslexia, etc.) struggle with their awareness of time.  And we know that Espen's system is OFF. 
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Imagine not having a biological clock that actually works to tell you when to sleep or when to be awake.  An internal mechanism that alerts you to slowing down at the end of a period of wakefulness.  Not having a good internal system means Espen is in a constant battle with TIME.  Without a clear understanding of actual time, it is extremely hard to understand "being on time" or knowing when things start.

I can give him warning, countdowns and reminders but he lacks that basic understanding.  I can draw pictures, show him on a clock and spend unaccountable dollars of "fancy kid friendly clocks that light up, make sounds and show pictures" and we have every timer known to man (and a few only manufactured on mars) but he still has no awareness of TIME.  

It is not just small fractions of time that we have a hard time with.  We generally do not to tell Espen large events that are coming up for our family.  We don't talk about vacations, holidays or activities until it is nearly time for them.  It is not uncommon for him to wake up on the morning of a trip and just be told at that moment that we are going someplace.  Thankfully on this one thing, he is able to just roll.  We know when we tell him in advance that we spend a considerable amount of time with melt downs and concerns, anxiety and questions about WHEN.  We practice.  A lot!  Imagine how hard Christmas or birthdays are for us when he just has no idea about the passage of time or days and it just seems like an eternity.

Because of this lack of time awareness, our house has become fairly routine.  It took me a long time to get here because it is not in my nature to be rigid with structure.  We do the same daily sequence of things at roughly the same time.  We do it so there is consistency and he knows what to expect next.  It helps with meltdowns.  It helps us arrive to places on time and not stressed out.  We don't focus on the time it is when we do these things ~ we just do them in the same way each day.  We use cues he can see ~ my stop watch, the timer on the show he is watching, an hourglass.  For activities in the future, we use a dry erase calendar by his door and a family calendar on the fridge.  Since he can not yet read, I draw pictures for him for upcoming activities or events.  We don't make big deals about it, hoping to avoid the stress and questions.  He can see it.  The passage of the time is not the problem, it is the ability to see time passing.  It is the focus on the things RIGHT NOW.  IN THIS EXACT MOMENT. 
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I am not the fastest ADHD mom around (although I can run and snatch a child out of harms way REALLY fast, try me).  As I lay with my beautiful, wide awake son at 3:00am answering riddles I thought about this thing called TIME.  It was on my mind because of a concept that I came across recently while reading What to Expect When You're Not Expecting ADHD by Penny Williams.  In this enlightening and empowering book she mentions 'time blindness'.  It made sense ~ being unaware of the passage of time.  Getting lost in the task or activity, not being aware of the environmental changes, not having a functioning biological clock.  At this moment, he wanted to GET UP and I was explaining for the millionth time that it was the middle of the night.  A time when mommy (and most NORMAL people) need to be sleeping.  For the millionth time, he could not grasp it.  He was wide awake and felt rested so we should just get up, eat some pancakes and play.  And he had some riddles on his brain ~ especially interesting to note that the best riddle he had was "what has a face but no eyes".  As I lay awake answering those challenging riddles, I realized that for him it makes no sense to say we need to sleep for 3 more hours or 30 more minutes. This notion is intangible ~ he can not see it, smell it, touch it so he can not yet understand it.  He understands this moment.  RIGHT NOW.  And he was awake ~ wide awake.  And if one is awake, one must discover all the world has for them. There is no TIME to wait, we must do it NOW ~ time blindness. 

I could not discover a reasonable answer to my dilemma with helping my child understand time.  Nor have I been able to figure it out some days later.  I can not grasp how I will teach him natural sleep rhythms (pray he never works irregular shifts).  I can say with out a doubt that I appreciate the knowledge I have gained this week about this concept of time blindness and how we will face it as he gets older.  It will happen when he is ready for it.  As with most things... time is what is needed. 

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