Fit to be Glued

Gecko is a sensory-driven kid and always has been. As an infant he would reach up and hold my hair while he nursed. Later on he learned to collect hair from my brush and ball it up into what his older sister TK affectionately referred to as his muskrats. I still find muskrats in his bed. He holds them in his hand as he drops off to sleep.

I would not go so far as to label him with a sensory processing disorder but that may well be the case. He struggled from pre-k to 2nd grade with controlling his impulses, body movements, and temper in such a way that more than once I was called to school to get him out from under a table. One time the gym teacher had him on the floor of an office in a full body hold with the nurse and a teacher’s aide standing by to monitor the situation. He was scarlet-faced, shaking and writhing, and screaming. I was angry. I yelled for him to let my son go, and as soon as he did, Gecko darted under a table and began sobbing. The nurse assured me that he was not being hurt in anyway, and I remember thinking that she was frigging crazy. Whether or not the force used on him was physically painful is debatable but the fact that his fear and stress levels were off the charts causing emotional pain was obvious.

After working with the school occupational therapist, we came up with a plan to put a sensory corner in his classroom. Whenever he felt like he was getting out of control, he would go there and use the items provided to calm himself down. One of those things was a material swatch ring. I had purchased several types of fabric with different textures and put them on a metal ring. There was corduroy, satin, velvet, suede, and a number of others. He would rub the material in his hands and over his bare skin, and he loved it. At home I tried to replace his muskrats with velvet to no avail. Apparently there is nothing quite so nice as a hairball.

By 4th grade I began to notice red marks on his arms and legs. It looked like he had been bitten up by mosquitoes and had scratched the spots until they bled, but the truth was that he was digging little holes in his skin. When I asked him about it he explained that he gets bored and picks at himself, and that it feels good. The thing is, he couldn’t stop it. It was a compulsion that he could not control. That is when I got the idea to cover him in glue and let him pick away.

I bought a bottle of Elmer’s white gooey glue, told him to sit on the kitchen table in just his undies, and slathered it up and down his arms and legs. He was so excited he could barely wait for it to dry. Once it did, he spent an hour meticulously peeling the sheets of dried glue off his skin. Then he asked me if we could do it again. “Tell me how it feels.” I said. And he replied, “It is the most relaxing thing I have ever felt, except for my hairballs.”

Now whenever he is feeling antsy or stressed, we pour on the glue and let the picking work its magic.