Sensory rooms

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Someone made mention of these months ago, and I've been thinking about it ever since then.

There is a walk-in closet sectioned off in my living room (about 5x10) that wasn't really used for anything but a place to shove stuff. I had never even painted it properly when I painted the rest of the house when I moved in here. We've got it cleaned out, and the three walls painted. Colors are extremely dark green for back wall, a brighter aqua type color for the two long walls, a pretty dark blueish grey for the floor, and not sure yet on ceiling. I'm trying to not spend more than $20 on phase 1, and that is set aside for Christmas lights and a small fan. All the paint and paint supplies come from me being a complete packrat and not throwing out any leftover paint in the last 8 years since moving in here. We'll have to hang a heavy curtain (made from an old blanket) to block the open fourth wall. I'm still working on painting, so I haven't put anything in there yet, but that's going to be our calming room.

The plan is to include things like a hula hoop tent (made using an old sheet and a hula hoop), a box to nest in (it seems wrong that he is so attached to the box the new toilet came in), a stretchy tunnel made from t-shirt material (a flat sheet, none of us use flat sheets) that runs from the door to the box, a vibrating mat (old Christmas present), a fan mounted on the wall and some quiet things to blow around, and a "waterfall wall" which is tulle (bought the tulle last spring) hanging from ceiling to floor with non-blinking Christmas lights behind it--it sort of mimics the visual appearance of a wall of fiber optic lights, make some tactile tiles for the wall, throw all his fidgets and sensory type toys (scent bottles, light up things, oil and water jars, etc) in there, and make him a DVD of his favorite Youtube musician for the portable DVD player with headphones. That's phase one. and should cost less than $20.

I have future plans involving exchanging the cardboard box for a wooden one, making a weighted blanket, buying rugs with different textures to cover the floor, getting a mini rocking chair (don't have to buy this one, it's just at my mom's house), blacklight and florescent toys (hoping to find deals after Halloween), remote control for the plug ins so he can turn it all on and off easily (actually not that expensive on Amazon), and maybe a few other specific things like a oil scent diffuser, desktop fountain, ocean lights projector, two small mirrors to put in the corner with a small (non-therapy style, have you seen the price tag on those?!) bubble tube--those if it looks like he isn't going to try to destroy everything.

For more active sensory stuff I've already got a ball pit made with cut up swim noodles put into a huge plastic tub, a tub of moon sand, and another one currently filled with orange rice and black beans with a satchet of cider spice and some interactive things in it. He's been very busy lately making potions by scooping the stuff into a popsicle mold that I threw in there. Anyway, I plan to put the Halloween stuff in storage at the end of the month and switch it out to something fall themed. I've got my husband keeping an ear out for anyone getting rid of a mini-trampoline, and I have plans to make a crashpad for the two younger ones to tackle. I also want to make a couple different kinds of wobble boards and obtain a scooter board. I really, really want to manage a swing of some sort, especially one that has different swing attachments like trapeze bar, belt swing, toddler swing (he still won't go near the belt swings at parks), and a hammock swing--but that package is something like $250 so it's in the highly unlikely category. I want something he can climb on, but I'm not sure what I could manage that would be both extremely cheap and take up very little room.

I also have a scheme for transforming our backyard that involves different sizes of logs/firewood/stumps and old tractor tires, but have to find sources first.

I'm actually pretty proud of myself, because mostly I scheme and nothing comes of it, but I know that I'll at least get through phase 1 of the calming room, since I am so nearly ready to start adding stuff to it and we need it pretty badly not just for the Sprout, but also for the middle child. Our plan for the moment until we can work through to better insurance is to pay for the OT eval and try to work with them something like monthly to set up a home sensory program. I'm pretty familiar with stuff from working with my oldest, but I want some kind of oversight at the very least.

Do any of you have one of these, or employee pieces that are typically included in one into your home?

Well, there was my bedroom as a kid, but my parents didn't set it up other than building me a loft bed.

Nobody meant either of them to be sensory rooms-- nobody had ever heard of them-- but I DID have pretty much complete (within reason) jurisdiction over my bedroom, and I did have a lot of features like that. I had a lot of pillows and a beanbag chair (which I mostly spent my time UNDER, not ON). I had a fan that was always, and I do mean always, on when I was in there. I had room-darkening blinds that could make the room almost midnight-black in the middle of the day (a fortuitious accident-- they were the blinds that came with the place, and we were broke-- but I loved them). I had a cleared-out space under my bed, and I spent a lot of time there. I made a swing out of a piece of rope and a pillow and hung it from the (very old, very thick oak) closet bar (and got in a shedload of trouble for it when Grandma saw a noose and didn't stop to think that it was a hard knot, not a slipknot, or that a 10-year-old would have a hard time hanging herself 18 inches from the floor). I always wanted a waterfall fountain, but by the time we had that kind of money (and I quit blowing my allowance on chips, gum, Pepsi, Good'n'Fruity, and Hostess ChocoBliss), I'd moved in with Saint Alan, and there was a lovely little stream about 12 feet from my bedroom window.

I also had a revolving assortment of large boxes. Toilet boxes, refrigerator boxes, a cardboard playhouse, the box from a 36-inch cathrode-ray tube TV (man, those suckers were BIG). These were uniformly stuck in a corner of the basement, filled with pillows and blankets and a stash of junk food and bottles of Pepsi Cola (back when you could buy Pepsi in a 10-ounce bottle for something like 50 cents), and screened off with some kind of blanket or sheet or discarded curtain.

My kid has pretty much complete jurisdiction over his bedroom-- not as complete as I had; food and drinks aren't allowed in there (though I do overlook the stash of candy under the left-hand corner of his headboard, and the other one at the back of his sock drawer) and I have to be able to walk across it, in the dark, without stepping on anything wet, painful, or breakable. It is painted and decorated to suit his obsession with outer space. The window is always covered with an extremely thick, extremely dark blanket. He got to dictate, again within reason, where the furniture went; he got to choose the pieces he wanted (after the adults and his older sister) from my motley collection of discarded, donated, and hand-me-down home furnishings. There is a cubby specially arranged in the closet between the dresser and the wall-- guess what that's for (hint: it's about the size of my son, curled up in a tight little ball, and it's full of pillows and a blanket). There are an awful lot of pillows for a little boy's room (even a little boy who sleeps with his mom most of the time and his little sister pretty much every night). His books are there. His favorite toys are there. The cubbies in his headboard are stuffed with things he likes to finger, the "nightlight" (Moon-In-My-Room; best $20 Christmas present EVER) has a remote control, he has his own itty-bitty high-velocity fan, he got to pick out the bedding.

Yeah-- both his room and mine were "sensory rooms," with designed-in "frightened animal holes" within them.

I'd like to add that every room in my house is a pale, muted color. Every room has a fan (or two). There is a foot locker full of nice, soft blankets and an inordinate number of pillows for six people. One of the reasons I chose this house is that every room (except DS's room and the toilet) has at least one huge window with a view of something that flows or flutters in the breeze (and our bedroom has room-darkening curtains). There are twinkly glass things hung up in all the windows. I am going to hand Christmas lights some day, and never take them down. And there's a man-sized cubby in the back of my closet, stocked with SweeTarts and Good'n'Fruity. It's for the kids to hide in in the event of a home invasion. I swear.

Sounds like you've got some wonderful ideas! But maybe a few too many things in there all at once? Maybe you could plan to rotate things in and out as you see what is getting used and what the kids get bored with? My DS would totally go for a large beanbag chair.

Do you have room in your backyard for a swing and trampoline, rather than putting them in the sensory room? We bought a 6 foot (diameter) trampoline and it was the best purchase we ever made. 2nd best was the Kettler swing set with monkey bars.

Definitely wouldn't want to turn on all the different lights at the same time if I do put all of them in there. It'll be months before I collected all of that stuff, so I could replace things when new things come in if I need to. I would love to get a big trampoline outside, but my husband won't go for it. He's kind of an extreme worrier and kids can get hurt on those--maybe a neighbor kid and then we'd be liable. He also won't allow piggy back rides, riding bikes without helmets, walking outdoors without shoes on, etc. He was a very accident prone child and pretty much got hurt doing everything you can think of that is fun (but has an element of danger to it) that kids do, so he's overprotective of the kids.

I do have on my list to get good rain gear for at least the Sprout so he can at least spend more time outside. Winter here is more about having cold mud and rain than having snow (if it does snow, it is a wet soggy snow), so the biggest problem with being outside is that after just a few minutes of playing they are soaked to the skin and cold (and I really, really hate dealing with tons of muddy clothes).

ETA: Not at all sure it'll work like this, because my grand plots rarely work like I imagine them in my mind, but I want it to work out so that the different lights and "stations" make it like several rooms in one. Like the black light and glow in the dark stuff would be one use, the Christmas lights and fidgets/sensory bottles/tactile boards on the wall or the fan and watching the flutters while laying on the rugs another, the bubble tube and desktop fountain and rocking chair used together would be a third really different experience, the nest in a box with just the nightlight inside of the box on would be entirely different to the others, and chilling in the tent/bean bag combo with the weighted blanket and DVD of music videos would be like another different room. If that makes any sense? It'd range from totally blocking out everything in the box nest through the chill out of the dvd to calming input in the rocker to more stimulating input in the blacklight and tactile stuff.

--BUT-- I have no idea if he'll be agreeable to using it like that, or if he'll insist on trying to turn everything on at the same time and ending up with sensory overload, in which case I'd have to strip it down to only the stuff for one use at a time in there. The other big worry is that the middle child is highly jealous and can insight a riot in the Sprout almost instantly, so taking turns and enforcing one child at a time in there will be a big deal. I am confident that the two of them in there together could destroy the whole room in about 30 seconds. I tried adding some stuff to their room when they were sharing a room, and that's exactly what happened, which is why it's going into a more easily monitored neutral territory of the house.

Look into one (or two, or three) of those little teeny exercise trampolines. They sit about six or eight inches off the ground, are just about three feet in diameter, and don't look like they'd be good for anything other than step aerobics.

Kids-- AS kids, NT kids, every kid I've ever seen with the possible exception of paraplegic, quadriplegic, and severly uncontrolled asthmatic kids-- LOVE them. I had, at one point in time, two of them. The only person who had a problem with them was my nasty, bitter, mean, stroke-afflicted father-in-law (who finally bullied me into throwing them away)-- but he flatly hated everything the kids enjoyed, sometimes I think just because the kids enjoyed it.

I suppose it's possible for kids to get hurt with them-- they do have springs and it seems like kids can find ways to hurt themselves and each other with pillows, for cryin' out loud-- but they're much safer than what one traditionally thinks of as a trampoline.

You can find them at thrift stores for about $10 (they're a hot ticket, though, so be vigilant and patient or enlist the help of friends or possibly staff if you're a regular somewhere; either way, pounce on the first one you find in usable condition and consider a spare), or pay $30-$50 for a new one (sometimes one with a grab bar).

I'm kind of ashamed to admit that we had one of those mini ones when the big boys were little. It was a total lifesaver. The middle kid could bounce on that thing for hours, but at some point after they outgrew using it and the Sprout either wasn't born or still too little for that sort of thing, I let them drag it outside to play with and it got left in the sun and rain and rotted the bouncy part. Warcabbage (husband) is supposed to be keeping an eye out for someone getting rid of one for cheap. You'd think that someone that still has cans of paint from 8 years ago, would take better care of something more expensive like that.

Eh-- the older kids had fun with it, and you had enough to do.

There's a thrift-store tricycle with the seat half off (needs a new bolt-- I'll get around to it) and two $10 Goodwill bikes currently rusting up in my front yard. We're not Martha Stewart (or Mr. Goodwrench, either). We're MOMS. If it's not screaming, bleeding, or drawing flies, it's not at the top of the priority list.