Have any of you ever read that book "If You Give A Mouse a Cookie"?  This is my life, multiplied by four (dh plus three dc).  The hard part is that my dh is part of the "mouse a cookie" problem.  The Lord has been trying to teach me to be less controlling and inflexible, I know, and he has used my "mouse a cookie" family as his primary teaching tool.  At the end of the day, I am just like this poor exhausted boy in the story, running around trying to keep the mouse under control, when it all started with a cookie.  It would be easier if dh realized this was a problem, and backed me up on setting some guidelines, but, since he doesn't, I've decided to allow chaos to rule, since I'm not going to battle with dh on this issue anymore.  It's been stressful for me, to say the least, because I am highly visual and can't stand clutter and half-done projects everywhere, but nonetheless, I will accept it as the Lord's will for my life right now. 

Recently we discovered that our oldest child, Eenie, has sensory integration dysfunction (SID).  This is a pretty generic term whose symptoms can look different in different people.  What is SID?  SID occurs when the central nervous system has problems in taking in sensory information (the five senses plus movement and spatial sense), processing the sensory information, or responding to the information taken in through the senses (which is basically all information).  In essence, the central nervous system short-circuits. 

In the case of Eenie, she is hyposensitive to touch.  She touches everything and everybody, and is constantly on the move.  Yet, she can't stand other people touching her.  She is very distracted visually and auditorally, yet her vision issues are serious enough to cause difficulty with reading.  Such a contradiction.  She can be overly sensitive to criticism.  She is hyperactive, distractible, but highly intelligent and has very advanced language skills. 

I have always known she was different, but I have chosen to believe that it was a personality issue.  She is like her father (who also has SID), and that reinforced my belief that everything would work out OK.  Yet, he has struggled through life.  He is a happy well-adjusted adult, who holds down a good job.  But, things have always been harder for him than they are for other people.  We've decided we would like to try and see what we can do for Eenie while her brain and nervous system are still young enough to be malleable.

Now that we know the problem, we are going to consult an occupation therapist (OT) and see what type of therapy we can do at home for Eenie.  Part of her vision therapy may help, but we also want to be senstive on the home front.  I am partway through the book The Out-of-Sync Child, and it has been enlightening.  I am learning things about my daughter (and my husband) that I've never understood (and probably never will, in some ways).  There are so many changes I feel that I need to make, but I know I can't do it all at once.  I pray that the Holy Spirit will give me direction and prioritize things for me, so that I am not overwhelmed.