Everyday sensations overwhelm some children

In the ears of Abby Shevach, who's not quite 4, the whoosh of a public rest room's hand dryer can roar like a jet taking off at close range.

That, and other routine sensations of childhood, can be torment for Abby, her mother said.

"It's more than not liking the hand dryer," Jennifer Shevach said, while watching Abby's session at a North Raleigh occupational therapy clinic outfitted with brilliantly colored ramps, swings and trampolines.

"When we're at the mall and it's time to go to the potty, she falls down to the floor kicking and screaming because she's afraid to go in the rest room."

Abby, along with hundreds of other Triangle children, receives occupational therapy every week to help relieve problems related to her senses. Affecting everything from taste, smell and movement to the children's physical sense of where they are, problems like Abby's are widely referred to as sensory processing problems -- or, by some professionals, sensory processing disorder.

The scope, origins and treatment of such problems are the subject of a 10-year, $3 million UNC-Chapel Hill study that recently won renewed National Institutes of Health funding for its second five-year term.

Parents say children are often overwhelmed by everyday sensations, including flushing toilets, crunchy foods, rapid-fire TV images and scratchy clothes.

"These kids struggle more -- people think they are weird when they are just having trouble understanding what's going on," said Shevach, a computer scientist turned fitness trainer. "It has to do with their senses and how they think and how they understand the world."

In the realms of academe, medicine and occupational therapy, there's controversy over problems such as over- or under-sensitivity to various sensations.

"Clearly these issues exist -- they exist in autism; they sometimes exist in typical kids," said researcher Grace Baranek, a UNC professor of occupational science. "There are ways that these things have impact on really important life skills," such as eating, dressing and playing with other children, she said.

But the experts question whether these problems add up to a separate disease, symptoms of another condition, or typical development of the senses. As academics and professional organizations debate the issue, parents and therapists see effects of sensory problems daily.

"When a child comes home from school and strips her clothes off and goes and hides in the closet, this is not, 'I don't like the flowers on my pants,' " said Dawn Rohlik, an occupational therapist and owner of Pediatric Possibilities, the North Raleigh clinic. "This is not about noncompliance."

Rohlik and her staff at the Creedmoor Road clinic, equipped with more than $100,000 in therapeutic equipment, treat about 60 children each week. At a fee of $125 an hour, children go through one-on-one, often vigorous therapy in the form of play and movement.

Widespread problem

Nationally, 25,000 children are diagnosed with autism each year, and about 70 percent of those, according to UNC researchers, have problems with sensory processing.

The number gets much larger if you add in the children with developmental delay -- UNC researchers say about 40 percent of these kids have sensory problems -- and as many as one in 20 children overall, according to Colorado psychologist Lucy Jane Miller.

There's no central source for numbers of children locally with these problems, but Triangle schools, doctors and therapists are trying to help more of them defuse sensitivities.

"Helping kids get used to movements, you introduce them to little movements that don't bother them," said Dr. Kristi Milowic, a Raleigh pediatric psychiatrist. "You can expose children to softer noises, then louder and louder noises."