January 2024 Parenta magazine_website

Joanna Grace
I think they have
sensory needs
what can I do?
Part 2 - provide and adopt
I’m Jo Grace: a Sensory Engagement and Inclusion Specialist and Founder of The Sensory Projects. In this series of 10 articles, I am going
to share some of my passion for understanding the sensory world with you.
If you, as the professional supporting
them, have noticed it, have reflected on
what they are doing and why they are
doing it (as well as when and where
they are doing it) and you’ve started
to have those open conversations with
their families, those families are going
to feel much safer holding the possibility
of this difference in their minds, and not
sweeping it under the carpet or hoping it
will go away, if you also show them that
you are confident in supporting their child.
This isn’t a case of needing to have all
the answers or being confident of what
to do, it is you showing that there will
be professionals like you who see their
children for who they are and want to
understand them and support them.
You are showing them that the world is
changing, not everyone looks at difference
and declares it bad anymore. Some
people notice the difference and are
curious about it. You are those people!
Here are three things to think about:
Developmental or neurological
Some people have sensory processing
differences because they have not yet fully
learned how to process the information
they receive from their senses. We
all learn at different speeds and the
possibility of our learning is affected by
the environments we inhabit (to give an
extreme example, a child brought up in
darkness is not going to have learned how
to use their sight).
People tend to think of sensing as purely
physiological – either you have sense
organs that work, or work partially, or you
do not. But it is more complex than this.
To sense, you need to have the relevant
sense organs working AND your brain
needs to understand how to make sense
of the information those organs bring
to it. Making sense of the information is
something we learn to do over time. It is
why you might offer a baby a black and
white picture book over a more colourful
one, you are recognising that when people
are very young, they have not yet figured
out how to understand all the colour
information, but the information that tells
them that this is light, this is dark, is much
easier to understand, so we start with that.
Children who, for one reason or another,
have not developed their sensory
processing capacities at the same rate as
their peers, may appear to have sensory
processing differences. If offered the
developmentally relevant experiences to
their current level of sensory capabilities,
they may in time be able to master all the
skills and become people who process
sensory information in line with their peers.
Many successful treatments work on this
basis.
However, not all children who have
sensory processing differences can
develop “normal” processing. For some
children, the processing differences are
not due to a delay in that aspect of their
development but instead are a result of
a neurological disability. Here it helps to
think about what we do when we sense.
Yes, we look, we listen, we feel, but it is
more complex than that. Have you ever
asked someone to “shhh” in the car as
you came up to a roundabout you were
unfamiliar with? You asked them to stop
giving you auditory input because you
needed to concentrate on the visual
input. You needed to stop listening to
see better. Our senses interact with each
other in all sorts of ways like this. I often
imagine the sensory control centres in
our brain to be like the mixing decks you
see used in recording studios, with all the
different knobs and sliders available for
turning various aspects of the sound up
and down. Children with developmental
sensory differences are still learning to
control these knobs and sliders.
The children with neurological sensory
processing differences are working with a
control deck that has some broken bits. It
does not matter how much they practice, it
will be very unlikely that they will be able to
achieve ‘normal’ processing.
Keeping this distinction in mind will be
helpful as you maintain your curiosity and
continue your open conversations with the
child’s family.
Find out more in the next part of
Joanna’s article next month in the
February edition of the Parenta
magazine!
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In this pair of articles, we are considering
how to react to a child in your setting who
appears to have sensory needs. In the first
article, I spoke about the importance of
being curious and seeking to understand
what sensation the child’s behaviour
serves to provide or avoid. I talked about
extending this curiosity into considering the
‘when’ and the ‘where’ of their behaviour
as well as the ‘what’. Are there particular
times or places where they engage with
the behaviour? What do you notice about
these circumstances?
I also wrote about how valuable it
is to have open, non-judgemental
conversations about your understanding of
this child’s differences with their family. It is
not your role to diagnose children or even
to suggest that they should be diagnosed,
but by sharing what you have noticed and
commenting openly on your curiosities,
you create a safe space for families to chat
with you.
Often noticing that your child is a little
different to how you expected them to be,
can be very disorientating, bewildering
and even frightening for families. Families
may even try and stop the behaviour
without seeking to understand it first.
From the outside, this can seem uncaring,
but it is a reaction of fear, and their fear
stems from very deep caring. They know
the world can be cruel to people who are
different so they do not want their child
to be different, and figure if they can stop
the behaviour then they can protect them
from the prejudices they might otherwise
encounter.
It is very normal to want to shy away from
such things, and to try to believe that it is
something they will grow out of or just a
phase, and who knows…. maybe it is. But
if it is not, if this is a child who is processing
the world in a sensorial different way, then
having the people in their life understand
that sooner rather than later, is going to
result in the best outcomes for that child.
more resources
from Joanna:
12 January 2024 | parenta.com
parenta.com | January 2024 13