Brynn Harvey
I am a stay-at-home wife and mother to three amazing kids, including one who is in constant battles with ADHD and tactile defensiveness. I think we're the perfectly imperfect family! I am an introvert, and I recently discovered that I am a highly sensitive person. I love to be at home, and my favorite hobbies are reading, cooking, watching movies, puzzles, and playing games with my family. You can also find me online: Facebook - Pinterest
Have You Ever Been Nervous About Starting Something New? I Am!
Have you ever been so nervous to start something new? I am utterly terrified to start blogging and sharing my experiences. I have always wanted to start this blog, but I’m utterly terrified, if I’m being honest! I have always had a running dialogue in my mind every day. I know I’m not the most graceful writer, so I kept having doubts about myself and wondering whether or not I should start this blog. I often wondered, what do I have to offer? Will I be embarrassed with what I put out there? Will I offend anyone? Is someone going to make a mean comment? What will my family think? For a long time, these questions ran through my mind repeatedly. I always kept delaying the start of this blog even though I had wanted to do it for over a year.
I started a blog because I wanted to find a community going through some of the same things I am. I would be a part of a community of parents who have a child with tactile defensiveness, ADHD, or anxiety. I would love to get new ideas and suggestions from other parents dealing with these situations. At the same time, I may have ideas that can help others.
Finally, I just told myself that I needed to go for it. I don’t know about you, but sometimes, getting out of my head is just so hard. I told myself that I needed the courage to put myself out there. Try starting a new blog and see what happens. If I don’t even try, I will never know whether or not I could have done it. I would want to try and fail than not try at all.
So, for all of you nervous about starting something new, I encourage you to go for it. You will never know if you can do it if you don’t go for it. Let me know in the comments! I would love to hear what makes you nervous to start something new.
A Mother’s Experience With Tactile Defensiveness
I am sure there are some of you reading this who are wondering what tactile defensiveness is. It is a term used to describe someone very sensitive to touch. As a result, someone who experiences tactile defensiveness is much more sensitive to touch than usual.
Our son has been diagnosed with tactile defensiveness. He received his diagnosis when he was 18 months old. As parents, we became concerned that he wasn’t walking or trying to walk. It also concerned us that he would pull his feet up to avoid standing when we would try and have him stand up on our laps. Also, when we would try and have him stand up on the ground, he would do the same thing. He would never let the bottom of his feet touch anything and do everything he could to avoid it!
My husband and I asked our family doctor about our concerns, and he referred us to a physical therapist. When we went to the physical therapist, our son was diagnosed five minutes into our appointment. It was extremely quick. It surprised me, but the therapist immediately knew our son’s diagnosis as he watched our son’s behavior! Our son avoided physical contact because of how things felt on his skin. The therapist explained it like this to me. He said that when you cut your fingernails too short, the skin under the nail gets exposed, and it feels weird. He said that is the feeling my son has all over his body.
After I learned what it was, we realized that there were signs of it from the day he was born. He would always cry whenever we would change his diaper. He would also cry and scream whenever we bathed him, and I would rub lotion on him. He hated that.
He also didn’t like to touch things with his hands. He didn’t want to touch anything slimy or gooey. We would have him play with shaving cream or pudding with his fingers. He hated this and didn’t do very well with this one.
He was never a great eater either. When he got a little older, maybe age two or two and a half, we realized that he had tactile defensiveness in his mouth. He hated baby food. He hated fruit or veggies. He liked more solid things, like chicken nuggets or quesadillas. His eating to this day, ten years later, is still our biggest challenge. His list of foods that he will eat is minimal. And when he does eat, he picks at things and puts a small amount of food in his mouth. Eating for him is a chore. I am always trying to find something that he will eat, and I get frustrated when he doesn’t like most things I make.
Tactile defensiveness is something our son will have to deal with his entire life. He has just learned to live with most of the things he doesn’t like to touch. Some things will always be a challenge for him, mainly his eating. Now that he is getting older, there are just simple things that you wouldn’t think about, like face wash. Just washing his face is a struggle. We quickly learned that he could not use the foaming face wash! There are just so many tiny things that pop up as he gets older that we work through. He is a great kid and works through everything so well.
So, where are all my people out there who have someone with tactile defensiveness in their lives? I would love to hear from you.
Learning to Walk With Tactile Defensiveness
After our son was diagnosed with tactile defensiveness, we had much to learn. As parents, we needed to understand what tactile defensiveness was. Neither my husband nor I had ever heard of it before. We also needed to know what we could do at home to help him. We also had to educate our families on it. No one in our families had heard of it either.
Our number one concern after his diagnosis was helping him learn to walk. It took us almost five months to achieve this goal, from the diagnosis to his being able to walk on his own. We took these steps as parents to help him learn to walk.
1. Physical Therapy
We would go to physical therapy regularly. We would never have known what to do if we hadn’t kept going. There were so many different activities at physical therapy that they would do with our son. I can’t remember everything that they did, but the one thing that they used was hanging beads. All they would do is have our son put his feet under these hanging beads, and they would make them swing across his feet. At first, he hated this, but eventually, he got used to it. They always gave us this to do at home when we went to therapy.
2. Brushing His Feet
One of the primary activities the therapist would have us do at home was brushing our son’s feet. It sounds a little weird, and you probably wonder what that is. Our therapist gave us this little sponge that was soft on one side, and on the other side, it had tiny bristles. All we would do would take his feet, and with the bristle side of the sponge, we would brush his feet. We would constantly brush up and down across the bottom of his feet. He did not like this feeling at all. It took a couple of weeks to get used to the sensation on the bottom of his feet.
3. Going Barefoot
We only took him outside in his bare feet for this one. We would have him touch his feet on different textures. We put his feet on the cement or in the sand. We would try anything we could think of that would feel foreign to him. The one he hated the most was the grass. It took him a long time to be comfortable touching the grass with his feet.
4. Using a Walker
The last thing that the therapist had us do was use a walker. He needed the walker to get strength in his legs. You have to realize that he had never stood up on his legs at this point. When moms take their babies, hold them up on their laps, and stand up, you look at the baby while helping them stand. My son never did that. You never realize how that tiny little thing was such a big deal. Since he had never stood on his legs, they were weak. We used the tiniest little gold walker you would have ever seen. It only took him about a week to learn how to use the walker, and then he was off. We couldn’t slow him down after that. He used the walker for a couple of months.
After months of doing these things, our son finally started walking independently. It was the best day of his life when he could finally walk without any help. Walking hasn’t been his only setback. He also had to learn how to touch things with his hands. To this day, eating has been and continues to be the biggest obstacle. Please read my other posts about the strange things we would do for him to get used to touching things and eating.
About Our Family
We are a perfectly imperfect family. This phrase describes our family perfectly. We have our ups and downs, our good times and bad, but we’re always together and working to be the best family we can be. Are we perfect? No, but at the same time, I think we’re close.
A Little About Each Of Us
My name is Brynn. I am a stay-at-home mom. I am an introvert and have recently discovered that I am highly sensitive. I love being at home. My favorite hobbies are reading, cooking, watching movies, puzzles, and playing games with my family.
My husband, Drew, works in tech; he’s a major geek and works from home. He has worked from home since our firstborn was about six months old. Having a husband who works from home has its ups and downs. Without his computer knowledge, I would never have been able to put this blog together.
Our oldest child, a son, was born in 2007. He is obsessed with playing video games. When we can pull him away from his video games, he likes to play his drums, play video games, and golf when his dad can get him to agree to go. He has had his fair share of challenges. When he was 18 months old, he was diagnosed with tactile defensiveness. He is susceptible to touch. When he was in second grade, he was also diagnosed with ADHD Inattentive Subtype.
Our middle child, a daughter, was born in 2011. She is our tomboy and our athlete. She loves soccer. Her passion, though, is art. She loves to draw and make crafts out of anything that she can find. She is a social butterfly. She loves being around people and has so many friends it is hard to keep up with them all. She is the opposite of me.
Our last child, a daughter, was born in 2014. She is our spitfire. She has so much energy and so much personality that she is the one that keeps us laughing. She is the complete opposite of her sister. She is very much a girly girl. She loves dresses and loves having her hair always done fancy. I am not very good at fancy hair, and she hates that. She loves to dance. She is dancing all the time, even in the grocery store!
Why Did We Create PerfectlyImperfectFamily.com?
As I get asked this question frequently, I created a post detailing why I decided to create and start writing on Perfectly Imperfect Family.com. You can read more about it on Why Did I Create Perfectly Imperfect Family.com?
