He Threw Up for a Year!

It’s true, my son threw up for a year. OK, not really. He only threw up a few times over the course of 15/20 minutes. But, it was on New Year’s Eve. Being the big partiers that we are, we were fast asleep as the old year was preparing to roll over to the New Year. It was about 11:50 when we heard the first sounds coming from the bathroom – “Mama, come here, I don’t feel so…..” the next sound we heard, every parent has heard before – the sound of a child vomiting all over the floor and the walls. There he was, sitting on the toilet, so pathetic, so sad. Luckily, my Partner was the first responder. She had taken the sensory hit of seeing and smelling the results of too much movie popcorn, soda, candy and pepperoni pizza. As she threw a towel (which was later thrown out, not washed) over the puddle and gently turned our son around to face the toilet, I ran for cleaning supplies. Of course we let our shaking and confused son come into our bed and after a few more rounds of “hurry” and “run” we settled back into our sleeping positions around 12:10 am. He had thrown up from 2011 into 2012.

I wondered for a moment as I tried to go back to sleep if this first event of 2012 was a shade of things to come this year. When I woke, I started to think about how powerful sensory input can be that certain sounds, smells and sights can trigger violent reactions in another person’s body.

It’s easy to think that children with sensory processing challenges are making things up. Lights are too bright and tags must be cut out of every article of clothing. My daughter does not like the texture of various foods in her mouth and my son can’t tolerate the sound of driving on the expressway and actually wears sound proof head phonesin the car. His older brother cannot seem to get enough movement and the more proprioceptive input the better! There is no fighting it - it’s real! So, we dim the lights, cut the tags and provide more choices at meal times than other families might. It may be true that children have to learn to cope with these sensory demands as they grow up. But, at at what cost?