Newly navigating Sensory Processing Disorder with my 5-year-old. He needs more input than his teacher can focus on in our church preschool program. I’m considering pulling him out to homeschool. Is it more important for him to practice regulatory skills in a social setting or to be where someone can support his needs?

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Oh, this is hard, right?

He needs more input than his teacher can focus on in our church preschool program. I'm considering pulling out to home-school. Is it more important for him to practice regulatory skills in a social setting or be some where someone can support his needs?

It's actually both.

I know you're trying to make a decision. What about this or that? As much as possible you want to practice in both settings. You want him in social settings made with maybe with peers. It may not be a preschool. It may be overwhelming and he may not get the attention needs. So you might, if possible, find a place that actually can give a little bit more attention, maybe a smaller class size or more specific trained attention. Then, you might need to initially home school to get to that point but those are decisions you'll need to make. The only thing I would say is because it's sensory processing, the body is you have to be very careful in a social setting you can get a lot of rejection. If there's a lot of bumping or joking or things like that for somebody who has too much sensory. So, the smaller the environment, probably the better off for your child, just initially, that's my initial response.

Anything you want to add to that Jenna?

Yeah, that's fantastic. And I would just say accuracy of diagnosis is going to be really important because there are so many subtypes of this disorder and they really each have a very distinct clinical intervention that is needed because we've got neural processing issues and that the end goal is going to be the group engagement, but definitely getting the specificity of diagnostics as well as working with an occupational therapist that this is their specialty. Because a parent alone who is not an occupational therapist with this subspecialty just isolating the child at home will not solve the problem. We actually need intervention from specialist to be able to help.

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Answered by:

Dr. Kevin Skinner

Dr. Kevin Skinner