Lee had followed me on a path, hanging onto my sweatshirt from behind, eyes closed to avoid any sight of a web. I thought of a recent trip to a botanical garden with spider-laden paths around a lake. I wondered if they, like us, had spent hours in therapy learning to go with the flow during sensory panic attacks. I watched the boy’s parents, who were staying calm and reassuring him the bee was going away. It seemed as if he had Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) like Lee did, and couldn’t control his fear. The boy wasn’t a behavior problem at all. I felt the hairs bristle at the back of my neck. The boy screamed again, and the couples stood up. What were the chances that I, of all people, the mother of a child with sensory processing challenges, would overhear this in the middle of the Arizona desert? “That’s because those kids need more discipline it’s all the parents’ fault,” said private school teacher, giving a nod toward the boy’s parents. “I teach at a school for kids with behavior problems, and I don’t love it,” the other woman said, giving a disgusted look to the screaming boy. “I teach at a private school, and I love it,” one of the women said. She passed two couples perched nearby, and their conversation drifted over to me. Lee gave the boy a sympathetic look and moved away. How many times had we been in that situation with Lee? Although in her case, it was spiders. As we walked the face of a sloping rock, we heard a boy screaming, “Mommy!”Īt the top, we saw the boy, who looked about 12 years old, in terrible distress trying to avoid a bee. A few weeks ago, Lee, my husband, and I were on a hike in Arizona during spring break.
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