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
I’ve written before about “sensory mismatch”. It’s one of the hardest things for people with vastly different sensory profiles to be able to get along with each other in stressful circumstances. Let me tell you another story from my own family. The cast of characters here is myself, my son Apollo (5), and my daughter … Read more
Somebody asked, “How can I tell if my child’s reaction to some sensory input is ‘just toddler behavior’ or a sign of some sensory processing difference?” That’s a very good question. And to some extent, if it feels like so strong of a reaction or so big of an upset that it’s dysfunctional, or it’s … Read more
I had the opportunity to speak to a group at one of the schools where I work on the topic of discerning whether kids’ “behavior” could be motivated by sensory processing, or whether it’s just “acting out”. (If you’ve been following this page for any amount of time, you might guess the spoiler alert that … Read more
Interoception may not even be a word you’ve ever heard before, let alone know what it means. At its most basic, interoception is “inner body sense”. On top of the five senses that we all know and learned about, there are other senses as well. Interoception is the one that, for example, can tell you … Read more
After my post about the very basics of the 4-quadrant sensory processing model, a lot of people asked me more questions about “sensory missers” (in specific) and just the “passive” side of the axis in general. I ended up writing a lot about it in the comments section and thought it was a helpful post … Read more
“Sensory” can be a real buzzword these days, and can be a little bit tough to understand! There are a few different ways of understanding sensory processing, but Winnie Dunn’s “four-quadrant” model is a very helpful one. It describes how everybody in the world (not just kids, and not just people who have difficulties with … Read more