Now that Natalie is in fourth grade and no longer seeks out oral stimulation as she once did, we changed that to say that chewing gum will help her to focus. For a long time the accommodation said that the purpose was to help Natalie keep her fingers and other things out of her mouth. We’ve had this as an accommodation in Natalie’s IEP since preschool. Summer suggested choosing flavors that will provide stimulation - very sour or hot flavors, for example. One option for dealing with oral-stim seekers in a school environment is to allow the child to chew gum or suck on hard candy. We tackled the problem with the help of Summer Barber, Nat’s wonderful occupational therapist. She put toys and everything else in her mouth long past her neurotypical peers who gave up the habit around age 3. My daughter Natalie, who has ADHD and sensory processing disorder, was once one of those kids.

Several other parents wrote about their ADHD children putting objects in their mouths that aren’t especially safe or sanitary, ruining clothing, ruining other objects in the environment by chewing on them or staining them, and even swallowing objects like pencil stubs. Next time, I’ll tackle the other emerging theme: teachers’ possible misunderstanding of fidgeting behavior. The first is the fact that some of our kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have a need for oral stimulation. I’ve been reading the responses to my recent post, “Tell Us How Fidgeting Has Helped Your ADHD Child and Win a Set of Classroom-Friendly Fidgets,” and I see a couple of themes emerging that deserve their own conversations.

Adhd stands for shirt