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Sensational Kids, Sensational Families: Hope for Sensory Processing Differences
There is nothing easy about raising a child, especially a sensational one. If you're seeking a handbook on how to support a child with special needs -- especially a child impacted by sensory processing disorder (SPD) or other nervous-system dysfunctions -- look no further. This memoir is a one-stop-shop of insights, and a survival guide for parents and caregivers. Filled with tried-and-true prevention and treatment strategies for SPD, Sensational Kids, Sensational Families is a valuable resource for all special-needs families, including those who cope with or suspect SPD, autism spectrum disorder, Asperger syndrome and ADD/ADHD.
Are you:
-- A parent desperately wanting to understand why your child is distracted or struggling?
-- An educator yearning to nurture ALL your students academically, behaviorally or socially?
-- A medical professional seeking to build upon your current knowledge to help families who are looking for guidance?
Meet the Scott family. Open Rebecca Duvall Scott's brilliantly crafted book to discover a unique opportunity -- an invitation to join her family on their SPD journey. Meet neurotypical Annabelle and her younger brother, Jacob, whose SPD diagnosis prompted Rebecca and her husband, Eric, to quickly assemble a team of professionals and support members to help them navigate the unknown of Jacob's sensory differences. As Rebecca rallied others to fight for her son, she became an expert on several interventions that worked for them, including an allergy-free diet, the Wilbarger Protocol, biomedical interventions, interactive listening therapies and Astronaut Training. She credits her son's triumphs to a collaborative treatment approach and positive mindset shifts that saved her son's self-esteem ... and relationships throughout the family.
Insights from Occupational Therapist Hannah Ragan
As if a mother's perspective isn't enough, this one-of-a-kind book includes perspectives from Hannah Ragan MS, OTR/L, the occupational therapist who supported Jacob through his SPD journey. Mrs. Hannah (as Jacob calls her) helped the Scott family reframe how they saw Jacob's diagnosis through occupational therapy and empowered them with hope.
"It's like putting together a puzzle. It looks neat in the box, but to see the cohesive picture you have to dump out all the pieces, sort and organize them, and then put them together. When you first dump them out, it's overwhelming chaos. But, as it comes back together, you can see the picture emerge and when it's finished, it is marvelous."
Proven Interventions
The Scott family's success story will inspire and empower parents, educators, therapists and doctors to leave no stone unturned in the quest to maximize the strengths and minimize the challenges faced by those with special needs. Rebecca shares candid details about the intervention strategies that helped her son learn how to self-regulate, become more mindful and manage his sensory needs appropriately. From food adjustments to visual aids ... environmental adaptations to medications ... this book provides both preventative and reactive considerations to help improve the quality of life for a person diagnosed with SPD.
A must read for:
-- Parents, relatives, spouses, caretakers and friends of a sensational someone
-- Therapists, teachers, psychologists and professionals with sensational clients and students
-- Doctors, nurses and medical professionals with sensational patients
-- Those who personally have been diagnosed with SPD
The most important message in this remarkable book? You are not alone. And hope is never lost.
Are you:
-- A parent desperately wanting to understand why your child is distracted or struggling?
-- An educator yearning to nurture ALL your students academically, behaviorally or socially?
-- A medical professional seeking to build upon your current knowledge to help families who are looking for guidance?
Meet the Scott family. Open Rebecca Duvall Scott's brilliantly crafted book to discover a unique opportunity -- an invitation to join her family on their SPD journey. Meet neurotypical Annabelle and her younger brother, Jacob, whose SPD diagnosis prompted Rebecca and her husband, Eric, to quickly assemble a team of professionals and support members to help them navigate the unknown of Jacob's sensory differences. As Rebecca rallied others to fight for her son, she became an expert on several interventions that worked for them, including an allergy-free diet, the Wilbarger Protocol, biomedical interventions, interactive listening therapies and Astronaut Training. She credits her son's triumphs to a collaborative treatment approach and positive mindset shifts that saved her son's self-esteem ... and relationships throughout the family.
Insights from Occupational Therapist Hannah Ragan
As if a mother's perspective isn't enough, this one-of-a-kind book includes perspectives from Hannah Ragan MS, OTR/L, the occupational therapist who supported Jacob through his SPD journey. Mrs. Hannah (as Jacob calls her) helped the Scott family reframe how they saw Jacob's diagnosis through occupational therapy and empowered them with hope.
"It's like putting together a puzzle. It looks neat in the box, but to see the cohesive picture you have to dump out all the pieces, sort and organize them, and then put them together. When you first dump them out, it's overwhelming chaos. But, as it comes back together, you can see the picture emerge and when it's finished, it is marvelous."
Proven Interventions
The Scott family's success story will inspire and empower parents, educators, therapists and doctors to leave no stone unturned in the quest to maximize the strengths and minimize the challenges faced by those with special needs. Rebecca shares candid details about the intervention strategies that helped her son learn how to self-regulate, become more mindful and manage his sensory needs appropriately. From food adjustments to visual aids ... environmental adaptations to medications ... this book provides both preventative and reactive considerations to help improve the quality of life for a person diagnosed with SPD.
A must read for:
-- Parents, relatives, spouses, caretakers and friends of a sensational someone
-- Therapists, teachers, psychologists and professionals with sensational clients and students
-- Doctors, nurses and medical professionals with sensational patients
-- Those who personally have been diagnosed with SPD
The most important message in this remarkable book? You are not alone. And hope is never lost.
215 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 4, 2020
8 people are currently reading
13 people want to read
About the author
Rebecca Duvall Scott
4 books28 followersRebecca Duvall Scott is an award-winning author with titles holding #1 bestseller within her publishing companies long after release. Her first work was self-help memoir, Sensational Kids, Sensational Families: Hope for Sensory Processing Differences, which she wrote in the years following her son’s sensory processing disorder diagnosis and their family’s successful treatment plan. While her special-needs advocacy helping parents, teachers, and professionals better understand individuals with SPD has a large part of her heart, her roots have always been in historical fiction. Her long-awaited Christian historical fiction novel, When Dignity Came to Harlan, was based on her great-grandmother’s childhood, and Teaching Dignity continues the tender and heroic story. She looks forward to writing more in both the Dignity and Sensational Kids series.
Rebecca lives with her husband, Eric, and their two children, Annabelle and Jacob, in Louisville, Kentucky. In addition to writing, Rebecca enjoys family, church, educating her children at home, painting, and directing a local homeschool cooperative organization where she works hard to accommodate all special needs.
Rebecca lives with her husband, Eric, and their two children, Annabelle and Jacob, in Louisville, Kentucky. In addition to writing, Rebecca enjoys family, church, educating her children at home, painting, and directing a local homeschool cooperative organization where she works hard to accommodate all special needs.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 9, 2022
I thought this book was excellent. As a parent with a Sensational Kid at home, the fact this book is written BY a parent, who has a unique background in child development that caused her to document the process in a way most parents wouldn’t, made it very helpful for me to understand as a layparent. It was also refreshing to hear a tone of positivity that continued from cover to cover. These topics can be heavy and discouraging so the optimistic tone is helpful to counterbalance the gravity of the topics being discussed which allows them to be processed and retained in a more useful way. I totally recommend this book to anyone seeking to better understand sensory processing differences.
December 23, 2021
The only other *specifically* SPD book I've read before is The Out-of-Sync Child, and I found it to be a little out of date and not as helpful as I had hoped. I had always viewed SPD therapy as one pronged- bring in lots of movement through a sensory diet. This is what we did with OT, and it honestly didn't help that much.
This book offered a wide array of interventions that I had never heard of or thought of. The first portion of the book shares the family's story. It was easy to read and I could relate to it a lot, even though the issues we're dealing with are different. Each therapy was talked about in-depth, so I immediately got on the phone and started making phone calls to get some of these going for us.
The author also went into detail about how to apply what they did to various ages and stages of SPD. It wasn't *solely* about their own experiences.
It was good to know that their OT had overseen the writing of the book, so that the information was reliable. I had a little bit of a hard time, though, trying to read her portions because some of it was so medical sounding and not in the terms a non-medical mom would understand.
One thing that I noticed and found that I had learned differently was the author's explanation of sensory seeking and sensory avoiding. In the past, I learned that it is not so straightforward as that. I have a tactile-sensitive child who is a proprioceptive-seeker, so even though his skin is sensitive, he still crashes into things and needs deep input in that way.
This book offered a wide array of interventions that I had never heard of or thought of. The first portion of the book shares the family's story. It was easy to read and I could relate to it a lot, even though the issues we're dealing with are different. Each therapy was talked about in-depth, so I immediately got on the phone and started making phone calls to get some of these going for us.
The author also went into detail about how to apply what they did to various ages and stages of SPD. It wasn't *solely* about their own experiences.
It was good to know that their OT had overseen the writing of the book, so that the information was reliable. I had a little bit of a hard time, though, trying to read her portions because some of it was so medical sounding and not in the terms a non-medical mom would understand.
One thing that I noticed and found that I had learned differently was the author's explanation of sensory seeking and sensory avoiding. In the past, I learned that it is not so straightforward as that. I have a tactile-sensitive child who is a proprioceptive-seeker, so even though his skin is sensitive, he still crashes into things and needs deep input in that way.
March 5, 2022
One woman's story is about her son's sensory processing differences and how they are working through them. I give her a lot of credit for having the courage to share her story. She has lots of great examples of what her son's sensory processing differences are and what their family did to get him help and cope.
February 19, 2023
Incredibly helpful. This book gave me so much hope. We had already tried so much but lost hope. This book's title is spot on. Hope and differences. I look at things differently now. Learning to manage and prepare your child is a struggle every day. This book gave me the hope and strength to keep trying. If you have a loved one diagnosed with SPD, I beg of you to read this.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews