Feathers Fun Facts

An occupational therapist, Dr. Jane Ayers is credited with being the first individual to come to the conclusion that there were many individuals whose nervous systems were not properly coordinating with one another and were not providing accurate sensory information and the result of this presented in a very wide range of physical and behavioral symptoms. She also created the first official treatment for this problem, which was known as “sensory integration therapy”. Over the many decades, what Dr. Ayers had termed “Sensory Integration Disorder” has become “Sensory Processing Disorder” or going forward, what will be abbreviated as “SPD”. What was particularly remarkable was that at the time when Dr. Ayers was developing and fine tuning both her theory and her treatment, there was precious little information available about the tremendous complexities science has since learned a great deal about through technological advances such as various methods of brain imaging.

To make things more difficult to navigate is that when you are looking at various fields and specialties, you wind up with a lot of experts that do not necessarily “play nice in the sandbox” together. Now, don’t get overwhelmed, this is one of the areas where I come in: I can help you first put your child’s profile together, and that will determine which particular specialists your kiddo would benefit from. I am putting together a list of comprehensive specialists in the area, ones that I will have ideally had a chance to speak with, and ultimately do some of the research regarding who takes what insurance, what their experience/primary area of focus is, and ideally, be able to get a good read on “is this someone I would be confident working myself and with my own child?” Which, while I take the experience/areas of expertise/HMO’s that they accept very seriously, my personal perspective is that someone who is naturally skilled with working with kiddos with these particular needs for specific support often goes further than some of those other factors.