Sensory solution

Ran on Thursday, July 5, 2007

Sensory solution

By Keighla Schmidt
Leader-Telegram staff

AUGUSTA - Thousands of multi-colored plastic balls, swings, a tunnel to crawl through and a climbing wall.
What sounds like an impressive play area actually is a center for therapy for two Augusta girls.
Mariah and Mollie Teeter, 11 and 8, have sensory processing disorder, a neurological condition affecting their sensitivity to stimulation.
Parents Bev and Cliff Teeter have customized the girls' routines to accommodate Mariah's and Mollie's needs. Bev, a former public school teacher, now home-schools both girls in a school house in their yard. In March, they finished converting a workshop into a gym in their garage.
The school and gym required the Teeters to relocate from their home in Two Rivers to their home on Lake Eau Claire.
"For kids without sensory processing disorder, it looks like a good place to play," Bev Teeter said.
It's much more than that to her children.
"It helps me feel better," Mariah said. "It helps me sit still."
The gym fosters the girls' need to work on stimulation, sensory acceptance and occupational therapy activities. The construction began after an assessment of their therapeutic needs as well as popular play places.
Sensory processing disorder affects each person differently.
Some avoid public places because they aren't comfortable in noisy, crowded environments, according to the sensory processing disorder Web site www.spdnetwork.org.
Other people seek sensation and have an "unawareness of touch or pain, or touching others too often or too hard," according to the site. They have difficulty feeling a sensation and can be destructive, even when they are not trying to be.
"Kids with sensory processing disorder don't know where to focus," Bev Teeter said. "There's too much (information) coming in."
In addition to the disorder, Mariah was born with profound hearing loss and had a cochlear implant when she was an infant. When she was 5, she was diagnosed with vision loss and has limited peripheral vision.
After their daughters had completed kindergarten and fifth grade in 2005, the Teeters decided to home-school the girls.
"Sometimes there's just people who don't understand," Bev Teeter said. "They don't know how to deal with the invisible."
Many teachers, administrators or peers can't physically see the issues the Teeter girls face, so they can't empathize and help them, Bev Teeter said.
"There was a lot of social interaction at school that wasn't always positive," she said. "Socially for kids with sensory processing disorder issues, it's hard."
When thinking back to school in the public system, Mollie remembers a big difference.
"It was too noisy sometimes," she said.
Her mother remembers when Mollie came home from school with her usual headache. She said, " 'All the noises go in my ears and get stuck in my head. I can't get them out and get a headache,' " Bev Teeter said.
Now, the three-room school house, one room for each girl and one for their mother, the teacher, is quiet and the headaches are gone.
Mariah recalls days as a third-grader when she would get overstimulated and emotional.
"I feel like I wanna yell," she said. "Sometimes I cry ... I feel much better at home-school."
Her own classroom and curriculum make it easier for her to focus on what she needs to learn and less on the things going on around her.
Cliff Teeter said the adaptations and hard work pay off for the girls, and he wouldn't change a thing about the current setup.
Schmidt can be reached at 833-9203, (800) 236-7077 or keighla.schmidt@ecpc.com.