Everett’s Story

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how we knew something wasn’t quite right with Everett and how we came to get him diagnosed with SPD, so I figured I would kind of give a little more backstory to what led us to this point!Everett started out being the world’s chillest baby. The kid barely cried and wasn’t super vocal at all. Being my first, I just thought I got crazy lucky and had a calm baby. My mother mentioned that he should be way more vocal than he was, but being my first, I just brushed it off to him putting so much attention into learning his physical milestones first. He was always super advanced in that area. He was sitting by 3 months, crawling by 4.5 months, walking by 9, etc. He always seemed to hit physical milestones crazy fast, (a trait that still holds true), but he was rapidly falling behind in other ways.
I remember watching a video of a friend who also had a 15 month old at the time identifying the alphabet and when I looked up, Everett (Who barely had 5 words at the time), was playing with poop. Yes ???. Way to hammer that point home little buddy! ?
As the months went by after that, his aggression towards his peers was steadily getting worse. It got so bad that one of his little friends would run away from him scared, crying every time he saw Everett. We chalked this up to him not being able to voice his thoughts well, and finally managed to get him into early intervention for speech therapy.
His speech therapist wasn’t that amazing, but with a lot of work from us, he started slowly catching up. His aggression still wasn’t going away though.
Everything sent him over the edge: his hair cut, his nails clipped, his teeth brushed, his shoes on, I even had to make sure foods were presented in the right shape or he wouldn’t eat it.
By this point we had an idea he might have sensory processing disorder, but we weren’t sure.
While I was pregnant with Finn, we decided to enroll him into the Waldorf School for the summer to give me a little break and to help socialize him better with his peers. His teachers were so patient with him, but by the end of summer they basically told us that he couldn’t come back until he had a diagnosis and a plan, due to the fact he was so rough on his peers and disruptive.
Yep. That’s right, Everett basically got kicked out of his first school. ?‍♀️
His teacher there gave us the contact info for several local therapists, and after calling around it seemed like it would take us months to even get seen.
I remember crying and feeling so defeated, (mind you I was also 8 months pregnant at this time), that it would take so long to even get him diagnosed. Then, by some crazy miracle, we managed to get an opening with one of the top therapists in the area within days. We got his diagnosis, and FINALLY some answers! This lead to another referral with the OT we currently see, with our first appointment starting when little Finn was only a week old!
We still struggle, A LOT, but it’s nice to finally have answers. Every day it’s a battle. I have a constant fear of how he will act with his peers when we go out (he loves smacking peoples butts ?‍♀️) and will hit any kid in his “territory” or if they are crying. And being 3, he’s also constantly testing boundaries. However, he also provides me with endless smiles and sweet cuddles. I love being his mom, even if I don’t love all of his behaviors!