Thank you to Fun and Function for providing me with product in exchange for review purposes. All opinions belong to me. 

My son has always had extreme emotions from the time he started communicating. His emotions ranged from very upset and embarrassed about slips and falls at age 1 to enraged about blocks tipping over for a few years. My son also had a speech delay where he knew, understood, and used sign language but felt to much pressure to step out and attempt word pronunciation. My husband and I had him evaluated around age 3 to find there was no big obvious diagnosis, and that he would talk on his own time. Our son often did what was called “crashing” where he threw his body around on our floor or couches anytime he was upset. Initially my husband and I discouraged this action for safety. Later on, once we had talked to his teacher an occupational therapist, and did some online research we found that he was seeking proprioceptive input to calm his system, through both crashing and chewing.

When he started Pre-school this year at age 4 1/2 I had a lot of anxiety about teachers being clam and understanding with his emotions. Luckily I was gifted an absolutely amazing preschool teacher who was very educated about everything we were dealing with and opened so many doors between my son and I.

Our first home procedure we set in place was a calm down area. School already had a calm down area that was self led, when the child felt the need to go, they could. There were bean bags, stuffed animals and family pictures. My husband and I set out to develop our own calm down area to help my son have more self awareness of his emotions and how to care for them. Fun and Function is a company that is full of so many different sensory toys to help develop each sense and calm each system!

We went with the Gel Tile from Fun and Function for our son because we knew that it was durable enough for a car to drive over, so surely it could withstand our sons frustrated actions! Blue happens to be his favorite color so we were glad that blue was a choice from Fun and Functional. The tile offers a lot of visual stimulation from tipping from one side to another as well as tactile to push move and squish the gel in different areas. With our son seeking hard work body input, getting to jump and stomp on the Gel Tile really helps calm his system and get a fresh start on all too difficult lego projects. The Gel Tile is one of many tools within our son’s “calm down tool box” and has made an amazing difference within our home as a whole.

Lakota

I am a stay at home mother of two, who loves to create in every form, from cooking, to henna, to painting or sculpting, creating with my hands is my passion! I love to dance and let loose when the music flows right. Being outside is a special kind of therapy I think humans need more of as well as mindfulness! I love all things new and adventurous and am always looking to experience more of life 🙂