Family Forum: Parenting Children with Autism & Sensory Processing Disorder

Parenting Children with Autism and/or Sensory Processing Disorder

Last week’s forum was about changing our approach when our children can’t — a perfect segue into this week’s Lunch & Learn on parenting children who have autism or sensory processing issues. Any parent of a child on the autism spectrum will tell you that parenting takes on a whole new shape. The same goes for sensory processing disorder (SPD). Things that other parents may not ever have to think about (like tags in clothes) can send a child with SPD into a spiral. An activity that would likely be fun to a neurotypical child (like a friend’s birthday party) can be cause for significant distress for a child with autism.

If you have a foster or pre-adoptive placement with autism or sensory challenges, or if you’re even considering adopting a child with these diagnoses, you won’t want to miss this forum! Through our dialogue, we’ll take some of the mystery and fear of the unknown out of these diagnoses, and replace those with resources, knowledge, and confidence that you can parent a child whose brain processes the world differently.