SENstoryBears

I first fell in love with Teddy mountain branded bears when I met an amazing lady who happened to be a franchise owner.
I purchased a few build your own bears and clothing accessories for my autistic son and we've used the bears to model life skills, clothing choices, brushing teeth and hair, eating healthy foods and so on.

Following an OT assessment it was recommended to try weighted therapy for my son, I made him a weighted blanket but he wasn't keen on sitting still under it. But we saw some great benefits from weighted therapy such as a shorter bedtime routine, longer sleeping times, faster descalation from meltdowns and sensory overload and sometimes we could avoid the meltdown altogether!

The idea for a weighted bear came when he started school, a weighted blanket was too big and bulky for him to carry around and he was having a lot of struggles with trasitions and having to sit still and listen.

I knew weight therapy would help but didn't know how to help him active this in the school environment.
Then I remembered the bears.

I made a sealed pouch of the polymer beads I'd used to make his blanket and added it into one of his bears.
Gradually we started to see results, he was calmer, able to sit still and focus for longer periods of time, and when things were getting too much he'd go off to find his bear and self regulate.

He has now started to take these benefits into the school environment and with additional support from staff he's spending more time in the classroom and even starting to engage with the work and show his full potential.

I decided I'd like to help other families to acsess this transportable sensory input and of course it had to be Teddy mountain branded bears that I used, so I applied to be a franchise owner, discussed my idea with the powers that be and they gave me the green flag to go ahead and use their CE tested no sew bears as the foundation for SENstory weighted bears.

I'm hoping to be able to reach out and help families to learn about and experience the benefits of weighted therapy using my bears and I can't wait to hear stories hopefully with fantastic results from using my bears as part of strategies to help not only children but also adults and the elderly because weighted therapy can benefit a multitude of both physical and neurological conditions and of course children with sensory needs turn into adults with sensory needs!