The sensory weight of disability. It’s the way it feels like I had barely learned how to take care of myself without self invalidation. It’s the way that all of my feel-good strategies involve making myself feel worse first, and immediately after. So what’s the point? It’s asking someone if they could hand me a … Read more
My conference this week was absolutely amazing. I have a million thoughts rattling in my head and they need some time to condense into ways to explain myself, to share with you about what I learned, what I was able to share, what all this week meant to me. I’m going to share this, though … Read more
Everybody in the world has one (or more) sensory processing styles; we all process input from the world around us. One theory of thinking of these processing styles uses 4 quadrants to describe them: sensory seekers, sensory avoiders, sensory sensitive, and sensory “missers”. This post assumes you already know those 4 terms, and applies them … Read more
A strong advocate for true inclusion and neurodiversity in schools, Kelsie Olds shares their expertise on therapy methods and the importance of children developing key skills — sensory, core strength, and fine motor — before diving into academics. Welcome to Teacher Tom’s Podcast, which is all about taking play seriously. In each episode, Teacher Tom … Read more
While I was opening my car door, I accidentally scraped my middle fingernail against the dirty car surface for a split second. I could feel in vivid, explosive detail each grain of grit shoving up under my already quite short nail. I’m gagging as I type this. I wiped my hand on my trousers and … Read more
This is a Spanish language translation of this post, which is in English. Post traducido del original en Ingles. “Sensorial” es una de esas palabras de moda estos días en los grupos de padres, en Pinterest y en relación con diferentes diagnósticos. He visto gente usarlo para significar casi todo. Cuando hablo de procesamiento sensorial, … Read more
When some kids come to me, they don’t know how to break outside of the school model. They aren’t sure what to explore, with the freedom to explore whatever they want. They aren’t sure what to create, given access to loads of art materials and free time and space to do it. They aren’t accustomed … Read more
While I was writing some goals for a student’s IEP, I thought about what it would look like in a world where we had developed the system differently. Instead of writing goals to say how I think I’ll change a child over the course of the year, I could write goals about how we’ll change … Read more
My kids are 6 and 4. Both of them have gorgeous tight-coily-textured hair and both of them have (different) sensory processing sensitivities. For the first time in our family’s entire life I successfully washed and cared for everybody’s hair thoroughly in one weekend — even less than that, it only took a few hours! Using … Read more
The last thing that I wanted you to know this week, as I wrap up my talks about sensory mismatch (the other four posts are here: one, two, three, four), is that kids will typically become better at managing this mismatch themselves over time, so you don’t have to feel like this will take active … Read more