Someone asked me what to do when one of their children was distressed by the other child crying. Their kids were 6 and 4, and so are mine. The 4 year old especially would cry quite often, and the parent wants to give the child space to cry and feel like all their feelings are … 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
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
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
Setting up the environment to help mitigate some of the sensory mismatch is the fourth tool you can use in parenting, teaching or whatever situation you might encounter. Some of these other things I’ve named over the course of this week are just specific versions of doing this. (Here are links to the first post, … Read more
Most people — not all, but most — find rhythmic vestibular sensory input to be soothing. Rhythmic: regular, repeated, predictable. Vestibular: having to do with your inner ear, your sense of balance and movement. It is based on the motion, or lack of motion, of fluid inside of your inner ears. You can imagine human … 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
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