Meet Lauren

Lauren….man oh man. Let’s just say this about Lauren. Anything that I did as a child to my mom is getting paid back 10 fold. I’m teasing, Lauren is my more active one. She turned 4 in June and will be attending a 2 day preschool program starting in August.

Last October, Lauren was diagnosed with Sensory Integration Dysfunction. Basically, this can mimic some of the signs of autism. Lauren’s dysfunction lies within her textile system. Lauren has a hard time with food and can go from eating great one day to eating maybe one thing the next. We just went through a phase of not eating and it really can get scary. She started to loose some weight but I’m hoping that she’s on her way back up. At this end of this post, I’ll put a link to a website that breaks it out even clearer. The ONLY portion that we and her Occupational Therapist found NOT true with Lauren was about touch. She’s ok if we touch her, love her, etc but she is very unresponsive to strangers and it takes a few minutes to warm up to other family members. Children with this form can be unresponsive to ANY touch so we’re thankful that doesn’t seem to affect her. She can NOT stand for her hands to be dirty, sticky, and anything but clean. I’ve already written a letter to the preschool and explained this so that they don’t try to force her to finger paint. I think everyone that knows Lauren really well will pretty much agree that she’s come along way in the last 7 months. And another thing with her is that structure is SO important. I love the idea of Matt being home because she isn’t forced to change environments. You have to also tell her ahead of time what’s going to happen “we’re going to the store”. Before getting her diagnosis, we were so frustrated with her one night when we said we were heading to the grocery store and on the way had to make another stop. She was so upset. She kept kicking and screaming “you said we go to store”. I thought the kid had lost her mind. But, now we know, you can’t change your plans all of a sudden with her.

Her favorite thing right now is dancing. She loves to dance. She has this crazy flighty dance she does and it’s hysterical. She also loves to sing and read. We’re working on spelling her name right now and she’s got the L down but then the rest is all over the place. A couple of nights ago she asked me what AEUISH spelled. I told her nothing and she said “it spells dog”. Yeah, we have some work to do. J

Anyway, here is the link that explains what’s going on with her better: http://www.autism.org/si.html.

So, just remember when you meet Lauren and she seems really shy or scared it is absolutely nothing personal. She just needs to work through the whole idea of someone new being introduced (or re-introduced).

And that’s Ms. Lauren, my little bouncy, giggly, tough girl.