Here’s my third tool for dealing with sensory mismatch in your family, home, school, or work environment. If you’ve missed the first two posts (one, two), check those out first — it may help you understand what’s being discussed in this one. Adults should raise their awareness of their own sensory needs. This can be … Read more
In my last post, I shared the first tool for dealing with sensory mismatch. Today I’ll share another tool. Just like in the last post, some of the things I say in this post may be tricky to understand if you haven’t read any of my past posts about sensory processing or some of the … Read more
I have had lots of questions from people about “sensory mismatch” lately. Sensory mismatch is my phrase for it when two (or more) people in the same environment (like home, a classroom, etc) have different sensory processing styles, AND those different processing styles are causing a clash of some kind. I recently gave a whole … Read more
I mentioned this idea almost offhandedly in a training recently and it was profoundly exciting to the people in the training— so I’m making it into its own post! Here’s the idea in brief: ask kids to plan ahead, and write their idea down. And then reference your written note about it at a later … Read more
It was 45 minutes until bedtime and my kids (6 and 4) were super amped up and high energy. Some days I have the energy to start playing goofily with them in a way that I know will help them get the deep pressure body input they need in order to start settling and feeling … Read more
My son (6) wanted to listen to music. He loved the music, the way it felt in his body, so he danced. He loved the music, the way it sang in his mind, so he sang. He loved the music, the way it touched his emotions. So he found some paper and he wrote down … Read more
There’s an episode of Bluey called Space. In it, three little boys are playing together at their kindergarten. They’re playing pretend space explorers. As they navigate who is going to play what role in the game, one of the little boys keeps asking the other two to pretend that they leave him behind, all alone. … Read more
I think early childhood education has misunderstood what is behind the concept of “using the right pencil grasp”. For example, in my child’s reception class (the UK equivalent of preschool/kindergarten — it’s not exactly 1:1 with US standards), they had the four stages of pencil grasp posted on the wall, and they had little stickers … Read more
Sometimes when I tell parents that it’s okay to wear earplugs in order to cope with their own sensory sensitivity/avoidance, they worry that they’re going to hurt their children or implicitly be telling their children that they’re too loud, too much, etc. My children have been around me wearing earplugs since they were 2 and … Read more
Age 5 (and 6) is extremely concerned with perfection. It’s a normal developmental phase. (Yes, this might also mean that your 4 year old or 4.5 year old or 7 year old are like this. I am describing the peak age at which this phase is typically, generalised across a population, at its most intense.) … Read more