What grinds my gears

I love family guy. Peter and Stewie crack me up and I have my college roommate to thank for falling in love with them. One of my favorite episodes is when Peter get's a gig on a local news station with a segment about what "Grinds his Gears." Nayt and I have adopted this phrase for anything that bugs us. (the other phrase we use is giggity after anything that sounds remotely dirty, ie, "Heather, can you please come in here and help me find my pants, giggity." you get the picture.) So, stealing a line from my on screen friend, I want to tell you want has been grinding my gears all day, and it is not the pile of cracker crumbs I am sitting on, the fact that there is toothpaste all over Drew's ride on fire truck, or that my house that I cleaned 4 hours ago looks like a natural disaster hit it at full force (though that one kind of does grind my gears). 

What really grinds my gears is that the is a lack of support for SPD. I won't even venture to get into it all because I am not that smart and I'll leave that to the experts, but what I do feel a bit upset by the AAP's lack of support of it being a true disorder. I know that it's a mixed bag, it's hard to diagnose because the signs are so varied and different and that there isn't a whole ton of research yet. However, telling doctors that it shouldn't be a diagnoses sucks, for lack of a better word, at least that is my understanding of what they are saying. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I talked to our OT today about it and she is upset but not totally surprised because unlike some things you can't just fit SPD in a box and present it with a pretty little bow. It is to broad with to many variable to become a stand alone disorder. I understand that. Yet it is a blow that they could misdiagnose him with say ADD and put him on medication but we can't get the help we need for occupational therapy.

And for us, we don't have anything else yet. We know he is delayed in speech and he is taking huge strides to improve and I am sure starting school will be a huge help. I am so proud of how far we have come. But his sensory issues are just as important. We only have 2 weeks left with our OT and without a solid diagnoses of autism we lose all therapy for him since at this point it doesn't look like he will get it from the school and there is no way we can pay for it privately. Our insurance will not recognize it as a disorder and will not cover anything for it. Not therapy, not weight vests, not compression clothing, not toys, nothing. Now we have kick ass insurance, if we get a PDD-POS diagnoses everything is covered 100%. But lets face it, that doesn't help us now. It sucks big time.

I read on a parenting forum today that parent's with SPD kids only look at the sensory issues. That kind of grinds my gears too. I have never ever wanted to be someone searching for trouble or a diagnoses. I never wanted to do that when we were TTC, and I do not want to do that now. SPD fits Drew but that does not mean I am not going to continue our testing, we are just in a stale mate. Our pedi wont test until he is 3, we are on the waiting list for our Behavioral specialist, and the school felt it was to soon to test. So until then I am clinging to our solid SPD diagnoses like it's my mother effing life jacket. Do I have a nagging suspicion he is on the spectrum, yes, but for the mean time this is all I have, and feeling like I am holding on to a trendy diagnoses sucks but it is what it is. To hear that I am ignore other issues grinds my gears and it wasn't even directly to me, though it kind of felt like it since it is something I am SO insecure about right now. I see a difference in him since working with the OT, and that alone makes me feel like we were on the right track, "real" or not.

And that ladies and gentleman is what is grinding my gears tonight.

What grinds yours?