Clovene Campbell’s mornings with her daughter Kathryn used to be full of tears. Getting the 6-year-old dressed for kindergarten had become nearly impossible.
“My daughter started complaining that she didn’t like some of her clothes because the seams were bothering her,” said Campbell, 39, of Lexington. “Really, every single morning it was like a huge fight to get to school. She would be screaming, she would tug at her clothes. It was horrible, it was a nightmare.”
Her daughter had developed a tactile sensitivity, an increased sensitivity to touch. Campbell, a pediatrician in Salem, had seen it before among her patients. “It’s a very common thing,” she said. “If people don’t have kids that have these sensitivities, they don’t appreciate how horrible it is.”
Tactile sensitivity is a type of sensory processing disorder. According to a study cited by the Sensory Processing Disorder Foundation, at least 1 in 20 children are affected by some sort of sensory processing disorder, including tactile sensitivity. It can be common among kids on the autism spectrum, but many with tactile sensitivity are not autistic.
Campbell hopped online to research clothes without seams. What she found was Teres Kids, a clothing company dedicated to making kids? clothes without tags, seams, zippers, and buttons. She ordered some items, saw her daughter’s delight upon putting them on, and then ordered some more.
The clothes are made in the USA from 100 percent organic cotton and range in price from $25 to $60.
“She dresses in like 2 minutes, no problem,” Campbell said of her now 7-year-old daughter.
Teres Kids founders Alexandra Merlino and Marianne Broughton say it’s those kinds of stories that make their work so rewarding.
When the women met four years ago at a toddler music class in a Santa Fe church with their 2-year-old daughters, they had no idea their friendly banter would give birth to a company that’s helping children—and parents—around the country.
They launched Teres Kids in the fall of 2010. Prior to that, Broughton was designing furniture and Merlino created a line of leather goods. Both were looking to start something new. The idea to focus on clothes for kids with sensitivities came from a conversation Merlino had with a friend who is an occupational therapist.
“She explained how many of these kids there are and how few the resources are,” said Merlino, 44, the company CEO and a former Rhode Island resident who now lives in New Mexico. “We became very passionate about not only creating comfortable clothes, but creating a solution for families and kids.”…