Day 23- Kindergarten Part 3

When we got Tanner home he knew we were upset. He cried for what seemed like hours. It wasn't that he knew he was going to get into trouble, he was crying because to him it wasn't fair.

His story was simple. There was a little girl in his PE class who had a headband on. They were sitting in line and she had taken that headband off and was tapping him on the shoulders with it.

"Mom, it was bothering me."

We had been working with him on letting the teachers know when something was bothering him so he could be removed from that situation, so using his words, he got up out of line and went to tell the teacher that he was being bothered by this girl. The teacher simply told him to stop tattling and get back into line. At that point, left with no choice to get out of the situation he walked back to his spot on the floor.

I have often imagined what he looked like on that walk back to his spot. His shoulders slumped over, head hung down, sad look in his eyes, a feeling of failure because in his smart little mind he knew what was coming next. He knew that his little body had taken as much over stimulation as it could and that he had no other outlets to let out his frustration.

To this day, every time I think about the next words that came out of his mouth, I weep.

"I got back in my spot and she started poking me again." Sobbing uncontrollably, he goes on, "I just couldn't take it anymore, I had to get her to stop. Dad I know you tell me not to hit girls, but she wouldn't leave me alone. What was I suppose to do?"

He had no control over how that small little headband hitting his body felt. For a neuro-typical person it's not a good feeling. But for someone whose body feels so different, he had taken all he could stand of that plastic headband tapping into his senses. And the only way he knew how to get her to quit was to punch her in the stomach until someone stopped him.

I wept for days not knowing what to do. The first thing I did was talk to a dear friend of ours whose son has Sensory Integration Disorder (SI). It seemed like Tanner was getting over stimulated and that was causing his anger, rage and uncontrollable crying. They had taken their son to a couple of places in town and had even gone to Denver the SI mecca. She gave me three books to read and also told me to call a therapy place here in town to get him evaluated and to call a local child psychiatrist. I called both that day to get him in as soon as possible.

This was in the beginning of May and the fastest appointment the therapy place had was on May 29th. The last day of school... I told them we would be there. This was too important to miss.

And with that our new journey began.

No Matter What...