Sensory strategies your neurodivergent kid doesn't know they need, with Hanna Munro

When I was little, the situation that was most likely to cause me to melt down was having to wear shoes. I HATED wearing shoes. I spent a lot of my childhood in Jellies. (If you don't remember Jellies, they were my generation's version of Crocs.)  

One of the big challenges with the things that bother/upset/stress out our kids is that we can't always figure out what is happening. It could be smells. Or sounds. Or lights. Or vibrations. It's very difficult to prevent triggers that we aren't even aware of, and it can be just as difficult for our kids to understand what they are experiencing and how to avoid it.

This week's podcast/YouTube episode is all about sensory processing. It's a common term in the neurodivergent world, but it's often poorly understood. My guest is Hanna Munro, an occupational therapist who has both professional and personal experience supporting kids with sensory processing challenges.

Here's a clip from the episode:

It's often, like you say, it's not that you turn it on and it's immediately horrible and you have to turn it off, it's that cumulative effect. They maybe don't realize. So they can't go home and say to their parents, "All the lights in class, they're causing me sensory overload." They don't say that. They don't even know that. It's just all day long, adding to, you know... and then that's when you have one of these meltdowns when you get home. It's actually the background sound, the light, all these things build up. And then there's also people... we're often taught, aren't we, about five senses. And I don't know why because there isn't five senses, there's at least eight senses. And the ones that we're missed out being taught are the really, really important ones.

Listen to the podcast episode. 

Watch on YouTube.