My Son, a Sensory Processing Disrder, and ADHD

Two and a half years ago when our son was diagnosed with a Sensory Processing Disorder, I thought I understood what that meant. The way the doctors explained it was that his brain misinterpreted the information it was getting from the nerves in his mouth. He would eat or drink things and his brain wouldn’t register the feeling of what he had in his mouth. This left him looking for harder and harder things to chew in his quest to get neural feedback to his brain.

There was one heartbreaking day when he was 3 and swimming with floaties. As one of the floaties brushed his cheek, he turned and bit it. It began rapidly leaking air. As I splashed toward him, the other floatie touched his face and he turned to bite it too. The look on his face clearly showed that he had no idea why he would do such a thing, and that it was bound to end badly. I also saw that he couldn’t stop himself. It was a compulsion he couldn’t control.

He ate everything he got his hands on when he was small – Legos, rocks, sticks, ball bearings, my wedding ring. If it was hard enough to make his brain happy then he chewed on it. We watched him like a hawk, and he still managed to get things into his mouth. At eight-years-old he wound up in the hospital facing emergency abdominal surgery, and he still couldn’t stop himself.

It wasn’t until he was nine that a doctor finally gave a name to the chewing he had done all of his life. Sensory Processing Disorder. He explained it to us, and gave us some ideas for keeping him safe and making it livable – give him cups of ice, let him have gum, provide hard candy, have on hand anything edible that gave him the mental stimulation he needed and let him have full access to it.

The same doctor diagnosed him with ADHD, which was no surprise to us at all. He couldn’t sit still for longer than a minute or two. He fidgeted constantly and chewed holes in his clothes when he tried to be still. His body was in constant motion and we devoted a huge amount of time and resources to helping him calm down. We hoped all the while that calming down his body and his brain would stop the chewing. I was certain that they were connected even when the doctors weren’t.

He’s almost twelve now, and was still chewing on things. While he rarely swallows them any longer, we still had to remind him to get non-food items out of his mouth. Was…and had…past tense.

He got braces and a palate expander put in at the orthodontist two weeks ago. The change was nearly miraculous. With the constant pressure in his mouth he no longer had a need to chew. Because there was a steady stream of information being sent to his brain, his body slowed down. It wasn’t the ADHD that made him chew; it was the Sensory Processing Disorder that was fueling the ADHD. He was looking for mental stimulation anywhere he could get it. Because he got so little from his mouth, his brain made up for it with the wildness of his body. His brain needed input and was getting it anywhere it could. It was the reason the ADHD medications never worked well or for long. It wasn’t about his brain’s need for movement. It is about his brain’s need for input.

I’ve learned a lot about the way he ticks in the past two weeks. It’s stood my thinking about how to help him on its ear. It’s so much bigger than just him needing to chew stuff. I thought we had to find a way to create a calm place where he could gain self-control. I wanted him to be in a quiet space so that he wouldn’t feel the need to fidget and chew. In doing so I made the problems worse. His brain craves input from wherever he can get it. Right now he’s getting plenty thanks to the pressure in his mouth, but there will be a day when the braces come off. On that day I will have to be ready for him.