Sensory Overwhelm: 3 Hidden Sensory Triggers Behind Children's Challenging Behaviour

Imagine that you discovered that everyday sensations like the feeling of clothing, background noises, smells, or social interactions were the cause of frequent meltdowns and anxiety because they're overwhelming for your child. This is a reality for many families, and we're about to find out about triggers for sensory overwhelm and how to help our kids. But as a parent, you know it's important to have clear boundaries, but you also want to be caring and compassionate, right? Well, I'm Camilla Camilla McGill, and as a seasoned parenting coach and mom of 4, I'm excited to give you the principles, tools, and inspiration you need to raise amazing kids. Welcome to Raising Kids with Love and Boundaries. Welcome to today's podcast. I'm absolutely thrilled to have Vicki Robinson with us, an exceptional occupational therapist who specializes in sensory processing Vicky's expertise offers a beacon of hope and understanding. In our conversation, we're going to uncover 3 hidden triggers behind children's emotional outbursts and explore practical, compassionate strategies to help them find calm in the chaos. Because if we don't learn this, we can often find that children become harder and harder to handle. But stay tuned as this episode is packed with insights that can transform your parenting approach and significantly improve your child's wellbeing. At the end, I'm going to answer the question of the week. How do we respond if a teacher, a friend, or a family member is skeptical or judgmental of our approach to children's tantrums, saying they're just doing it to get attention and they need a good telling off? So stay with us for the question of the week, and, um, over to Vikki. So again, huge welcome to you, Vicki, and I know that we're going to go through these 3 points. So first up, we're looking at helping children with sensory overwhelm, and our first point is on poor attention. So perhaps you can give us an overview of that and tell us how you would suggest we can help.

Yeah, so I think a lot of, you know, children that come my way what we see, you'll probably say similar Camilla, is that we kind of see that tip of the iceberg, don't we, of what's happening with behaviour. And one of the real common feedbacks that parents get from teachers at school is, oh, you know, your child's struggling with concentrating in class, or they're struggling with their attention in class. And how that presents itself in the classroom is through what we would call, you know, in inverted commas, poor behaviour. So, you know, this might look like getting up and down out of their chair all of the time, not listening to the teacher, not following instructions, fidgeting during carpet time, poking and prodding other children when they're meant to be listening on the carpet. All of these behaviors that as a teacher they're wanting to reduce because obviously they need all of their children to be attending and concentrating in class. And this is a really common sign of a child struggling with sensory processing because they're not able to fully engage in an activity. There's something going on in their body, in their brain that is impacting their attention and concentration. And with our little ones, that very often comes across as behavioral challenges.

Yeah. And yeah, also they don't— they become labeled as naughty, you know. That's right, the naughty one, because she or she won't concentrate, they're jumping up and down, they don't listen, they're disobeying instructions.

Exactly. Yeah. And then this kind of then has an impact on their self-esteem and their confidence, and it becomes, you know, their internal voice of what they're hearing from the adults around them. And when it comes to sensory, this is, you know, it's neurological. It's not that your child's doing this out of choice. They're not being manipulative. It is that they genuinely are struggling. So one of the biggest strategies that I would say to help with this is to, particularly the younger that your child is, Increase as many breaks and movement opportunities as possible in any situation, not just the classroom, any situation where you're needing your child to focus and concentrate. So this may be in the classroom, it could be homework after school, it could be during meal times at home. You know, often we don't just see these behaviours in the classroom, we see them in lots of different areas of the day, and it's often all due to the same underpinning challenge. So the first thing that I would say is, does your child need to move their body more? And that might seem really unrelated to listening and concentrating, but actually, when the younger a child is, the more movement they need. And when children move their body, it increases the blood flow to their brain, which then increases their attention and concentration. And when children are able to concentrate and attend better, they understand the instructions better, they will know what's expected of them better, and then they can then participate and engage more readily. So it's like we're turning this vicious cycle of poor attention equals poor behaviour into a more positive cycle. And what we're doing is we're actually just flipping it the other way around. Rather than focusing on your child has poor behaviour or your child has poor attention and concentration. What we're doing is saying, actually, what can we do to support my child's attention and concentration, which then leads to improved behavior in that scenario?

Yes, yes. Oh, it's so— I mean, that's just so helpful, and I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that's just a, you know, just such a great way of putting it that we need to flip it. In terms of, you know, giving them the, the rope, if you like, or that, you know, just helping them to, to be able to, you know, by moving, by factoring in that movement, it will improve their concentration. Because we tend to think that we've got to get them to sit more on the mat in order to make them realize that that's a really important thing to do.

Yeah, so one of the things that you often hear, you know, adults say is, "Sit still and listen," and it's such a contradiction of terms. Sit still and listen. And actually, the younger a child is, the harder it is to do that. Actually, if you want your child to listen, get them to move their body. You know, just that one tip in itself will massively improve your child's ability to be able to listen and concentrate. So slipping in as much movement into daily activities and learning activities as you can will significantly improve their attention and concentration.

Right, brilliant. And what I'd like to come back to, and keep listening on because we'll come back to this, is how do we kind of educate a teacher that doesn't know enough about it. So, um, that's brilliant. Thank you so much. So next up, we're talking about ways to help our children with sensory processing, sensory overwhelm, and, um, noise sensitivity is the second thing. So, Vicki, let's, let's hear about noise sensitivity and what's going on and how we can help.

Yeah, so this is a really common one, um, in our kids that have sensory processing difficulties. And, you know, particularly if if they are autistic as well. You know, we know a lot of autistic children struggle with sensitivities to noise, but that's not exclusive to autistic children. And what happens is when children have any sort of sensory sensitivity, that sends their brain into this fight, flight, or freeze response. So when there is any noise that your child deems as threatening. And the reason that I say that is because it doesn't just mean a loud noise. You know, we think of this typical, you know, a fire engine going past when you're walking along. Everyone's heart rate kind of goes, but everyone jumps a little bit. But it's how you recover from that. A lot of our children who have sensitivities to noise will have a reaction to a big loud noise, but they can't recover from it. And it leads on to an escalation of this fight or flight or freeze response, which then looks, you know, in the theme of the podcast, like behavioural issues. But it doesn't just have to be big loud noises. It can also be the pitch and the tone of noises as well. So I've worked with some children who respond really well to male voices because they're really low, whereas they struggle with female voices that are more higher pitched, for example, they find that very sensory sensitive for them. So they've responded better to male teachers, for example, as opposed to female teachers. But this can present itself in lots of different ways. So obviously, you know, the classic is, you know, putting hands over their ears and, you know, getting upset with loud noises, running away when there's a loud noise or burying their head into you when you're walking along and there's a noise. But it can also look like running away and hiding. It can look like assertive or aggressive behaviours, lashing out, hitting, kicking, biting, hair pulling, pinching themselves or pinching others. You know, sometimes they will do what we call self-injurious behaviours, so they're doing things to themselves, but Sometimes it's to other people as well. And sometimes children can go into this freeze mode where it's a bit like that, you know, rabbit in the headlights, where they just kind of stop and just completely zone out. And nothing that you say can kind of bring them out of that. They're just shutting down. And all of these three states are survival states. But again, similar to what we talked about with point number 1, is that as adults we often look at that end behaviour. So, you know, you may be seeing your child refusing to go to school parties, you know, birthday parties, or going into a birthday party and then having a meltdown and then running out of the hall and you're unable to bring them back in and you just can't figure out— they were so excited to get there and you can't figure out why they won't go in. Or maybe at school they're refusing to go into assemblies or into the lunch hall, or maybe when they're out on the yard they're displaying aggressive behaviours with their friends. Those are the things that you may be seeing as parents or as teachers, but actually it's tracking that back. And is it that your child is sensitive to noise and that is triggering those behaviours. So it's really about tracking that back, as always. So what can we do about it? Well, you know, the obvious things would be, you know, wearing headphones or wearing earplugs. So if you know you're going somewhere, whether that be a school assembly, a lunch hall, a party, or a supermarket, you know, popping some headphones or earplugs on to support your child through that. But I think what's also really important is to know that we can actually help your child to regulate themselves through other sensory input as well. So noise sensitivities is one of the hardest things to help with actually, because it comes from the environment and the environment is so unpredictable. We don't know when a fire engine's going to go past or someone's going to drop something in the supermarket and make a big loud crash noise. So we can preempt that with wearing headphones or earplugs, for example. But what we can also do is use regulating activities so that we're kind of emptying your child's cup, if you like, so that they've got more capacity to deal with any noise. As and when it comes up because it's so unpredictable. And obviously those regulating strategies will be different for each child depending on what their sensory profile is, you know, but it could be doing some movement before you go into the supermarket or wearing sunglasses because they get overwhelmed by lots of visual input as well. You know, it's looking at that bigger picture and understanding how we can help to regulate a child and give them that capacity in their cup to deal with that challenging situation easier.

Yes, brilliant. Okay, that, that's just, that's so helpful. And I think the point about, um, rather than looking at what's presented to us, the behavior that's presented to us, um, and, you know, labeling the child as overreactive or making a fuss about nothing, um, it's just all, you know, you described it instead of that tip of the iceberg, it's like, well, let's look what's pushing this iceberg forward and what we can do to help regulate the child so that even if they are exposed to those behaviors, we've kind of helped them with self-soothing and some ways to perhaps curtail the reaction so that it's not as strong as it might have been. You know, that there's kind of, you know, that cortisol surge, maybe we can look at ways of that, you know, how they can soothe. So it's a little surge but not a massive one, cortisol being the hormone, this kind of stress hormone. Great. Okay, Vicki, this is all so helpful. So finally, the third way that as parents that we can help our children with sensory overwhelm and sensory issues And it's, I think you were going to talk about clothing sensitivity.

Yeah, this is a really, really common query that I get from parents, that their child is sensitive to clothing. They will only wear certain items of clothing. Maybe they're completely refusing to wear underwear or socks and they live in their Crocs. Or maybe they have just one outfit that they feel comfortable in. And this again, you know, can have such a huge impact on children, anywhere from, you know, really struggling to get changed for PE in school to complete school refusal because they have to wear clothes to leave the house. And, you know, the number of school refusal children that I've worked with, and when we've tracked back through their sensory profile, they have massive sensory sensitivities and that's impacting them from the minute that they wake up in the morning. If you think about that morning routine and how sensory loaded it is, we have to put clothes on, we have to brush our teeth, wash our face, eat breakfast. You know, all of those things can be really challenging for children with sensory needs and we're packing it all into an hour before we need to then transition out of the home which transitions can be really challenging for sensory kids as well. So clothing can have a really, really big impact. Like I say, all the way to, you know, refusing to leave school. When I say that, it sounds as though that's all on the child, but actually it's that they can't physically put clothes on because it's so challenging. And this one again is a really, really common one, and we've got to be really careful how we address this as well. And this is kind of similar in terms of strategy-wise as to the second point with the noise sensitivities, in that we can look for in-the-moment strategies, and then we also need to consider that wider picture of a child's regulation. So in terms of in-the-moment strategies, you know, we can look for clothing that is more comfortable making sure that we cut out tags or looking for seamless clothing. You know, you can get seamless socks and seamless underwear. If you're in the UK, I think Marks and Spencer's and I think Asda do a range of sensory clothing. I'm sure there's lots of other ones out there, but they're always really helpful to try. But actually, a lot of the times it's the, the child is just really specific on the materials of the clothing and how it makes them feel. And what happens is they— a lot of the way that children respond to these sensory sensitivities are laid down as emotional responses in the brain. So then what happens is we start getting this anticipatory anxiety about putting clothes on. So even just when we wake up in the morning, they wake up in heightened sense of overwhelm when it's a school day because even just the thought of putting the clothes on sends them into that fight, flight, or freeze response. So a lot of parents have a real battle, you know, getting them out of bed and, you know, getting the morning going. And, you know, it's just from the minute they wake up in the morning, it's knowing that they have to put those clothes on can be really challenging. And this is where that kind of underlying regulation is super important because we need to make sure that again, like with the noise sensitivities, we're emptying the child's cup using regulatory strategies so that they have more capacity to deal with not just the feel of the clothing on their skin, but helping them deal with the related anxiety around that. And it's a bit like a chicken and egg scenario with sensory sensitivities because often these children also have anxiety as well. So it's what comes first, you know, is it that the, the child has sensory processing challenges which over time has led to anxiety, or is it that the child was a naturally anxious child and then that has resulted in what looks like sensory processing challenges. And it's not an easy question to answer, and obviously often we don't know which came first. But often the missing piece of the puzzle for these anxious children is understanding their sensory needs and getting those regulatory strategies in. Because if we can just help children to feel calmer and more regulated, then of course they're going to be much more open to trying new clothes or, you know, whatever that might be. And again, those regulation strategies— I hate saying that it's different for each child rather than giving you specific, you know, concrete things, but it, it really is. And that's the challenge that parents have, is that they can't kind of just Google, you know, and get the answer. Um, but, you know, a lot of parents that I work with in this situation with clothing find benefit from doing rocking activities, you know, that real rhythmical— it's like what you do with the baby, isn't it, when they're little, you know, you'll rock them to soothe them, or bouncing, whether that be on a trampoline or on a ball, or deep pressure massages and big bear hug squeezes. All of those are— can be really helpful in terms of regulating. Alongside then choosing clothing that your child feels more comfortable with. And it's not an easy fix, okay, it's definitely worth persevering with because there's def— you know, we can definitely make progress with it, but it can be a real tricky one from a behaviour perspective.

Yes, yes. So I mean, I just— that is all so interesting, and I think you know, where you and I are so aligned. It's about looking at the child and looking at their needs rather than trying to sort of force them into doing something, um, or, you know, persuading them with a reward, or, uh, you know, it just— or threatening them with some kind of punishment if they don't. Um, so it's, it's this sort of, you know, the child is at the center and we're, and we think, okay, you know, he's having this sort of reaction in the morning, let's have a look at what it is. Um, can we help by just, just the acknowledgement, um, that we know it's hard for them to put on certain clothes? Can we also help by getting different clothes? Um, can we help by, by liaising with the school and saying, you know what, um, that this school shirt— let me, one of my clients I just— we, we figured out that the regular everyday school shirt caused a massive problem, but the sports shirt didn't. So I just advise my clients, ask the school if he can just wear the sports shirt, because it's going to benefit them. Yeah, if he's wearing the sports shirt and is able to engage in class and not running out or, or, you know, hiding himself then that is a massive benefit for them. Definitely.

Yeah, one of the mantras that I always, you know, say to parents is, see behaviour, think sensory. So just imagine you're looking at your child's behaviour and just pick up a pair of goggles and pop them on, and all of a sudden you're just looking at their life, for their little world, through sensory goggles, and you're really starting to try and unpick what's going on beneath the behaviour.

Yes, yes. Oh, that's just so helpful. So we've talked about poor attention and how to help with that in terms of maybe things like, you know, breaks and more movement. We talked about noise sensitivity and how we can help with that with perhaps, you know, reducing it through earplugs, headphones, or other means. And we've talked about clothing sensitivity. And as always, We've given a, you know, a few tips. With your work and my work, we work so much deeper when we personally engage with parents or through our video courses. So there's, there is always more to learn, but it's, you know, just so helpful to have had that summary. And we'd love to know, I'm going to come on in a minute, so hold on, and I'd love your input on the, on the question of the week. How do we deal with it if adults around our child are skeptical of this approach and kind of don't, you know, don't want to engage with us in it? But how do we find you, Vikki? What, what, what, how could parents reach out to you?

Yeah, so the best place to find me is on Instagram, and I'm @sensoryoccupationaltherapist, and I'm on there most days. So come over and join me. There's lots of free information on there, so go and have a little binge watch of all the videos on there.

Brilliant. And do you have a free guide or so, or you have a quiz, I think, don't you, on your website?

So there's a sensory handbook actually that I've just created for parents, so this will probably be something that'll help to answer your question as well that you're coming up to. But yes, if you go onto Instagram and you'll see it's one of the first few posts on the top because it's pinned to the top where where you can just comment and I will ping you over a free sensory handbook. So it gives you lots of information about what is sensory processing, how to figure out if your child struggles with sensory processing, and then it's got some strategies in there to help deal with meltdowns and things. So yeah, free resource on there if you want to go and nab a copy of that.

Lovely. And I have a great free guide, 10 Tried and Tested Ways to Manage Tantrums. And mood swings. And that you can get that by going to myparentingsolutions.com/tantrums. So myparentingsolutions.com/tantrums. So lots of really helpful information. And let's come on to our question of the week. So how do we respond if someone says they're just doing it to get attention? We just need to tell them off. Um, and you know, my response is that I think if you're listening already to this podcast, you're probably a parent that wants to raise your children with love, compassion, and boundaries. You know, you and I know, I'm sure, that boundaries are really, really important. So we know that when kids have a tantrum, they feel totally out of control. It's not a question of choice. And so, you know, why would we— they'd be doing it to get attention. It's not about that. It's the fact that they're overwhelmed. They don't know what to do. So my response would be saying, look, saying to a parent, you know, or perhaps even a teacher, maybe with other children, telling them off might work. We find it actually makes things much worse. We find it's like putting petrol on a fire. And we are working on ways to help our child stay calm and have better emotional regulation, but that takes time and we're not there yet. And if I was talking to a teacher, I might say, these are the kind of strategies that we think would really help you to, um, help him or her. In class. And what would you add to that, Vikki? Is there anything that you might say that you might add?

I think expanding on what you've just said, but from the perspective of a neurodivergent child, because it doesn't matter if your child has a diagnosis or not, not all children who are neurodivergent get the diagnosis. So I think it's important to acknowledge that and to remember that Children who are neurodivergent, the way that their brain processes information is, it's neurological, you know, it's not a manipulative behaviour. They're not choosing to do certain things, they're not trying to manipulate the situation. It is a neurological response to something that they're struggling with. And I would say actually that this goes for our neurotypical kids as well. You know that, you know, yes, majority of our kids aren't responding in a manipulative way. There's something about the environment that they're finding challenging, or there's something about their way, the way that their brain and their body is feeling that they're finding difficult, or it's something about the task or the demand or the expectations that you have as the adult that the child has found difficult. And I think One, trust your gut. Like, if you feel that there's something going on, or that you feel that a certain parenting approach isn't the right way for you and your child, then trust your gut and go with it because you know your child better than anyone, you know. So stick with— stick to your guns. Um, secondly, what I would say is that we need to be, um, You know, thinking about being proactive rather than reactive. So rather than the other adults kind of focusing on the problem, if you like, you know, brainstorm some strategies. No one wants to get stuck in the, you know, your child is a problem type of conversation. It's, well, look, these are the strategies that we're trying, similar to you said, Camilla, these are the strategies that we're trying, please get on board and let's monitor it and review how it's going.

Brilliant. And I think, you know, I love that, that we know our child the best, and so often a parent's intuition is right. Obviously, you and I are here to teach parents more and to help them learn and encourage them and give them information that they may not have known about. But with that, they know their child the best. So yeah, well, it's been so helpful. Please go and get my guide, myparentingsolutions.com/tantrums, which I think will really help with handling tantrums and mood swings. And Vicki is on Instagram, and I'll drop that in the show notes. And it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today, Vicki, and thank you so much for, for joining us.

Thanks for having me. It's been my pleasure.