When you + your family have opposite sensory needs
My kid wants to swing. I want to vomit. A glimpse at life in a neurodiverse family.
Last week we celebrated our daughter Abby’s sixth birthday. It was a really exciting weekend (idk why, but it’s so much more fun when your birthday falls on a Saturday). She had her party at this cool space called Snapology and was showered in gifts and sugar and attention. Her 3 favorite things.
But I think her favorite part of her birthday this year was the new sensory swing we installed in the basement/playroom for her.
It’s similar to a swing she uses at OT (Occupational Therapy) and helps with her vestibular and proprioceptive sensory needs…words I had never heard of before becoming a parent of a neurodivergent kid. But she really loves being rocked and pushed and swung around.
We surprised her with the swing and she just about lost her mind; she was thrilled. She spent three hours on her swing the first day….a few hours of which required me to “push her” in very specific sequences. We made up a bunch of moves like:
Wrecking Ball - Going back and forth
Skip Around the Room - Swinging in a wide, fast clockwise circle
Flying - Exactly what it sounds like
I was happy she was happy. But also, pushing her on the swing was making me soooo fucking nauseous.
I’ve been taking Abby to OT every week for a few months now, after a bumpy beginning to kindergarten. Her teacher reached out to me a month into the school year and expressed concerns over Abby’s “Big Feelings.” She described them as “disproportionate,” noticing how Abby would scream in other kids’ faces when they got too close to her at circle time or when they accidentally bumped into her in line.
After hearing about these moments, and witnessing her “Big Feelings” first-hand, we decided it was time to explore OT as a treatment and educational tool both for her and for us. I started reading a lot more about neurodivergent kiddos (while we don’t have a formal diagnosis, I am 99.99% certain that she has ADHD, which runs in both sides of our families).
But first, what does “neurodivergent” mean? Maybe you’ve seen or heard the term before but aren’t quite sure what it means. I love the way this pediatric OT explains the difference between neurodivergent and neurodiversity. *the more you know*
Abby isn’t the only neurodivergent person in our home. Brad also has ADHD. I have anxiety. Pippa is doomed, I’m sure.
Oftentimes our invisible preferences and tough-to-articulate needs crash into each other, leaving us all dysregulated.
This is the hardest part about living in a family with so many different neurotypes. Not only do we all have different needs at any given moment, they are often on opposing sides of the sensory spectrum. For example:
Brad sometimes needs loud punk music.
I often need quiet - and also to be wrapped in a soft cocoon of linen.
Abby needs to be running around and jumping and talking and spinning at all times.
Pippa needs to watch Cocomelon and eat an apple whole (NOT slices).
Here’s a great anecdote shared by that same pediatric OT who made the above video, the OT Butterfly:
Stories like this one are extremely common in our house these days (and very validating). I often like to sit upon my non-ADHD throne and smugly judge Brad and Abby for allowing “minor” inconveniences to disrupt their plans and progress… meanwhile the SAME SHIT HAPPENS TO ME ALL THE TIME. We just have different triggers (and weirdly my triggers are rational and their’s are ridiculous).
We *all* have different triggers. And the four of us take turns being dysregulated at any given moment, fighting for that singular snack, song, snuggle or moment of silence. Then all of one person’s crying and shouting rubs off on the others, leaving the 4 of us in crummy moods with frayed nervous systems (see last week’s post about co-dependency vs marriage).
The week after installing the swing, I purchased a visual timer. This way, I can tell her that she has ten minutes of me pushing her on the swing, after which she can play with it by herself or choose to do something else. This means she gets plenty of big pushes, and I get to stay (relatively) non-motion sick. Everybody wins. Or everybody only semi-loses. But hey, that’s compromise (and family), kid.