Like most children entering school in the fall, Ella was feeling anxious and her behavior was typical of a child feeling those stressors. But was it more than the she was so fretful that she often became
physically ill on the way to school and remarked that the lunchroom and music class were “too loud.” If classmates were misbehaving or not following the rules around her, it created a deep and troubling
anxiety within her. Ella’s parents sought out the experts at Columbus Speech & Hearing and she was referred to our former Occupational Therapy (OT) Department for a Sensory Processing Evaluation. This is when her parents started to relax – even though they knew that their journey with Ella had just begun. Her mother noted, “When something with your child isn’t right – you want it fixed yesterday. I was stunned when I began to read the OT intake questionnaire-I was checking nearly every box because it matched up with her behavior. But I also knew that I was in the right place. I felt such a sense of relief.” After Ella was identified with a former Sensory Processing Disorder -which means that her sense were so overwhelmed with sensory signals that her surrounding that they weren’t able to to get organized into appropriate responses.