A few things I have learned about true and unconditional love from my sensory child:

*LOVE IS SIMPLE

Love is in the simple things you do each day for the important people in your life.  Our sensory kids have a unique ability see through all the clutter of life to see what’s important to the people they love.

*LOVE IS AUTOMATIC

Our sensory kids have the most amazing ability to express genuine love without expectations of anything in return.  They are the master’s of paying it forward!

*LOVE IS REAL

For some sensory kids, feelings can be an overwhelming part of their day but one feeling they do understand and crave is love.

*LOVE IS SOMETHING EVERYONE DESERVES

Many of our sensory kids have a very clear definition of what makes up the Rules of Life.  My sensory child’s top life rule is that LOVE is Something that Everyone Deserves – no questions asked.

On this day we celebrate love, think of all the wonderful things that you have learned about true love from your sensory child.  These are the sensory gifts that keep on giving all year long!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

One of the core reasons we support our rigid, anxious, and distracted kids with visual aids is that many sensory kids have a hard time understanding and processing abstract ideas.  By giving them a concrete road map, we are painting a picture in their head that speaks to their way of processing and learning.

A common overwhelming and abstract idea for sensory kids to understand is feelings.  Emotions are difficult to access, express, and work through for even the most well-adjusted adults out there so you can imagine what these can do our sensory kids. Some consistent challenges for sensory kids include identifying and regulating their own emotions as well as recognizing and reading emotions in other people.  Here are a few tips to support our sensory kids with emotional processing:

• IDENTIFY: Start by creating a concrete way for your child to identify and label their emotions.  Maybe the Lego lover could get all different color legos and each color would identify a different feeling – Blue Lego – sad, Yellow Lego – happy, Red Lego – energetic, Black Lego – Angry.  Get creative and make it relevant to your sensory child.

• RATE: Make an emotional rating scale for your child.  It can be a 1-10 scale, freezing cold to hot lava, a picture of a child crying to a picture of a child laughing – any sort of benchmark that helps your child identify where they fall within the spectrum of emotions.

• DEMONSTRATE: Talk through the process of your feelings as you are going through them in front of your child.  Have them watch and hear you label your emotion (exaggerating facial expressions can be helpful), see how you rate your emotion on a scale, and walk yourself through calming down.  Seeing in action is a powerful tool!

Take feelings and make them real for your sensory child.  Embrace those small opportunities to help them understand the confusing and give them ways to appreciate and learn from their emotions.  Here’s to simple sensory solutions for raising calm, connected, and attentive kids!

The start of the new year can be a great time to create new routines at home for challenging times and difficult tasks especially as our sensory kids are moving into a time of core academic learning at school.  Most children do better with predictable schedules / routines and this is especially true for sensory kids – like those with anxiety disorder, sensory integration dysfunction, learning challenges, ADD/ADHD, obsessive/compulsive disorder, high-functioning autism, asperger’s syndrome, or other sensory challenges.  Creating some basic schedules and routines at home will support the structure they love and allow your time with your children to be as productive and relaxing as possible.

Start with solid morning and evening routines.  These two times of day tend to be consistently hard for sensory kids as they represent big transitions – one moving into school mode and one moving into rest/sleep mode.  Pay attention to what time of day is better for your child – if the morning is tougher, then most of the getting ready for school routine should be done the night before (clothes picked out, lunches made, backpack ready to go). Review the morning routine at bedtime to help your child know what to expect. If your child has great morning energy, save a few things to be done in the morning.  Creating a picture schedule or checklist to support all or some of these routines will make this process easier and be a great way to teach executive functioning skills.

Tap into school techniques. This can be a great time of year to review the homework / school work organizing plans you have had in place to see what needs to be tweaked.  Since teachers do a great job of creating structure and routines for our children at school, look at what sort of systems and visual aids are being used in your child’s classroom.  Ask your child’s teacher for their input on strategies and supports that work well for  your child and implement some of these techniques at home. By  bringing some of those same techniques home, you will be giving your child the consistency that can make the strategy successful in both places.

Build in Downtime. We know many sensory kids need time to decompress and regroup after the school day and this is especially true during an intense period of the school year.  Make sure after-school activities give your sensory child a bang for their buck.  It should be an activity that will be a good physical release for them, something that allows them to tap into one of their fascinations in a creative, stimulating way, and/or something that makes them feel all around great.

Most importantly, by creating daily routines, tapping into school strategies, and being mindful of activities, you are also showing your sensory child that their way of learning and processing is important and valued – something that will make them feel protected and supported.  Start the New Year off by embracing simple sensory systems for more peaceful days.

• Preparing for Changes in Routines:  Preparing our sensory child for what is coming is a one way to support them in their day-to-day experiences all year round.  This is especially true this time of year when there are frequent changes in their regular schedule. Create a visual support whenever possible before the change is coming.  Explain in pictures and/or words the new schedule making sure to highlight what they have done before successfully or people that will see that they enjoy.  Make sure to include a few options of what can be done when your child is overwhelmed or needs an break.

• Visits and Interactions with New People:  Spontaneous visits can happen very frequently this time of year.  Try to set the expectation of more visits and social interactions. For younger sensory kids, try making a story about “People we see during the Holidays”.  You can also talk about the social expectations of these visits in the book – saying “hi” and introducing yourself to the visitor. For older sensory kids, make a laminated sheet that explains what you expect them to do socially with visitors, how long they need to stay and “visit” and when they can go do their own thing.

• Make HolidayTravel Easier:  Again, preparation ahead of time is key to making holiday travel easy on yourself, your family and your sensory child.  Give your sensory child a visual of where you are going via online sites, pictures of the family home you will be staying at and the people you will be seeing.   For younger sensory kids, make a trip book that explains what will happen during your travels. During your visit, set-up a space for your child that is their “escape and regulate” spot that holds the toys or things that are calming and relaxing for them.

• Create a Relevant Sensory Tradition:  Since this time of year can have so many experiences that are uncomfortable or overwhelming for sensory kids, create a holiday tradition that is relevant to something they really love to do or incorporates a fascination.  This can be as simple as having their own special ornaments for the tree.  You could also sit down with your sensory child and have them list their favorite things of the season. Try to build-in one of these activities every week highlighting it on the visual calendar.  Having something to look forward to can help our sensory kids get through some of the more difficult holiday experiences.

This time of year can be a stressful time for all of us and this is especially true for our rigid, anxious, or distracted kids.  Moving into this season with some tools on hand can help you support yourself, your family, and your sensory child.

Here’s to simple sensory solutions for more peaceful days!  HO!HO!HO!

Many parents I work with talk describe a seasonal shift in their “sensory” kids that happens right around Halloween and Daylight Savings Time.  The common descriptions of changes include: more on edge, inflexible and/or explosive, more easily frustrated, and harder time managing the demands of the day and homework.  There could be many reasons why this is happening – impact of less daylight, the novelty of a new school year has worn off, the core academic work and tougher homework expectations begin to kick in, and/or social challenges begin to show up as social groups are formed. Of course, recognizing the trigger to these change is an important part of supporting our “sensory” kids.  However, there are a few things you can do during this shift that support your child regardless of the trigger:

• Adjust the “homework as soon as you get home” rule to allow for playing outside during the little daylight that’s available.

• Do not over-schedule your child – downtime to chill-out is imperative especially as they move into phases where they are navigating more overwhelming situations.

• To the above point, if you are going to sign your child up for an activity, make sure it taps into something they love – a real interest or fascination.  They are working very hard everyday and should have one thing a week they REALLY look forward to!

• Homework – Map it out and build-in frequent breaks.  Because they are going to be more prone to frustration and inflexibility, have a visual plan in place for homework and be ready to make adjustments to the plan as needed.  Giving your “sensory” child some choices and control over the homework/break process will ease their anxiety and frustration.

• Build-in some simple social training info your days using books and conversation cards.  Here is a great book by Michelle Garcia Winner and Pamela Crooke that teaches kids some basic social concepts – http://www.socialthinking.com/books-products/books-by-age-group/k-5th-grade?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=317&category_id=60

This time of year can be a stressful time for all of us and this is especially true for our rigid, anxious, or distracted kids.  Moving into this phase with some tools on hand can help you support yourself, your family, and your “sensory” child.

Here’s to simple “sensory” solutions for more peaceful days at home!

There are many wonderful tools out there to help support our “sensory” kids but, as in all other parts of life, duck tape comes to the rescue again.

After a presentation, I had a woman come up ask for some ideas in supporting her young “sensory” son.  One of his favorite activities was picking up bins of legos, blocks, small cars (anything really) and dumping them on the ground.  Not surprising, as he was getting great sensory input with this little activity – auditory and visual rewards as things hit the ground and danced all around him – fun stuff for sure.  Poor Mom was going crazy picking up things all day all over her house (remember, it’s the little things that that start to drive us crazy!)

So I suggested creating a little structure around this favorite activity using visual supports (i.e. duck tape) and the power of choice.  I told her to take pictures of the 3 choices of dumping materials (legos, blocks, and cars), label, and laminate.  Next, get a roll of duck tape in his favorite color (yes, duck tape comes in every color imaginable!) and tape out a section of a room that would be the “DUMP ZONE”.  I suggested she take a picture of the newly created “DUMP ZONE” and hang on the wall of the “DUMP ZONE” to help her son identify where the dumping will be taking place.  Lastly, I suggested a picture schedule of the 3 step process of picking up the toys, putting them back into the bin, and dumping out all over again.  This would also be great to hang in the “DUMP ZONE” area for easy support at clean-up time.

The new process would look like this:

1. Son picked his dumping material of choice using the laminated choice cards
2. Mom brought him over to dump zone and to let the dumping begin! Mom gently guided him to stay within the duct tape boundaries.
3. Mom would get the clean-up picture schedule to help show her son how to pick-up the pieces so he could do it again (reward for the pick-up time!)

Needless to say, Mom was excited to have a little more structure and control over this one activity that was driving her crazy.  This is a nice example of how we can meet in the middle when supporting our “sensory” kids.

Simple changes for more peaceful days!

Many of our “sensory” kids can have sticky brains that makes small, seemingly unimportant things get stuck.  When they are in that moment, nothing can push them through – no logic, no bribes, no rewards (unless an extreme reward of one of their fascinations!) These can seem like small, tiny things that shouldn’t make a difference and should be easy to move past.  Not so for “sensory” kids.  These small, unimportant things are extremely important to them.  For in that moment, they have just experienced that 100th change to their internal plan for the day and their flexibility button has jammed and they need to feel, for one moment, that they have some control over this big, crazy world they are trying to make sense of every single day.

Don’t always fall into the trap of what your “sensory” child “should do”.  If their “must have” is something small and unimportant (and doesn’t involve hitting a sibling, screaming at a parent, or jumping out of an airplane), let them have their moment of “yes” and give them the small gift of something making sense for a small part of the day.     It’s OK to occasionally let yourself avoid the urge to get stuck in your own view of what has to happen.

Maybe this is  one of the gifts our “sensory” kids give to us – the excuse to let go of some of our own rigid expectations in order to help them have a more peaceful, predictable day.  Here’s to being “unstuck” so we can let them enjoy a moment of “stuckness”.  A simple change for a more peaceful day!

Wherever I go and whatever I do, I am drawn to “sensory” kids and I frequently watch and observe hoping to learn another small piece of what makes them tick on the inside thus moving me to the place of creating simple strategies to tap into their innate strengths and support the challenges.

Here I will write and share my own ideas, observations, questions, and realizations as a parent and as a professional hoping that we will all finish each day stronger and better equipped to support and embrace our “sensory” kids and our entire families.   I would love to hear your ideas, experiences, questions, realizations  – carolyn@systemsforsensorykids.com.

Here’s to simple changes for more peaceful times with our “sensory” kids!

Carolyn

In the meantime, please visit our web site at www.systemsforsensorykids.com for tips, services, and contact information.

Have a happy, healthy day!

Carolyn Dalgliesh, Founder
Systems for Sensory Kids