If you haven’t read Part 1 to this blog post: Sensory Strategies for Remote Learning: Sensory Seekers, I am attaching the link here.

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When it comes to remote learning or home schooling, your child may have a hard time focusing and feeling calm when their environment is perceived to be overstimulating for them. In other words, their brain is perceiving the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures in their environment as way more stimulating than they may actually be. To understand how that may feel, imagine trying to focus on a new skill while hearing a constant screeching sound of nails on a blackboard or trying to read with bright florescent lights being flashed in your eyes. Similarly, our kids with sensory processing issues may be having a hard time focusing when their environment is not made comfortable for them.

For our sensory avoiding children who are constantly over-responding to sensory stimuli, it is important to decrease or remove feasible sensory stimulation from their working environment to create a more calming atmosphere for them to learn in. Below are some ways you can do just that.

Quiet Area:

Be mindful of the sounds in the house especially when your child is engaging in their school-work. Sometimes it may be something as simple as closing a window or quieting a sibling that will prevent your child from feeling overstimulated with sounds. Avoid having your child work in high traffic areas of the house where family members are constantly walking in and out of. Turn off the TV and/or all other visible screens. Have other siblings engage in a quiet activity while your child is completing his work.

Noise Reducing Headphones:

If you find that your child is still distracted by noise in the room despite your efforts of quieting the room or that they are quick to cover their ears over sounds that may not be avoidable, have your child wear noise reducing headphones to block out irrelevant sounds. These headphones will still allow your child to hear the main voice in the room such as the parent giving instructions. You can also look into these headphones with an audio connection to a laptop if your child is tuning in to his remote school lesson.

Laptop Settings:

When your child logs onto their remote lesson, be mindful of all the sensory stimulation that comes along with that. Decrease the brightness of the screen if your child is sensitive to bright lights. You can also switch to night-mode on the laptop (available on both Macs and Windows computers), use an anti-glare screen filter for the screen or even have your child wear anti-glare glasses. Be sure to place the laptop in an area of the room where there are no lights directly facing the screen to avoid a glare. In addition to adjusting the glare and brightness of the laptop screen, adjust the volume as well so that it is not too loud for your child. Kindly request students to mute their volume if they haven’t done so already while the teacher is speaking to the class. Lastly, make sure that your child is viewing his screen in the ‘active speaker view’ and not the ‘gallery view grid’. This will ensure that he sees only the person talking and not have all his peers displayed on one page, which can be visually overstimulating.

Sound Machine:

A sound machine that can provide calming sounds such as water and ocean waves is always great. But always see what sounds your child reacts positively towards. A sound machine also muffles excessive background noise and can mitigate the impact of sudden loud sounds which may otherwise startle a sensory avoiding child.

Dimming/Turning off Lights:

In between lessons or when your child is starting to feel overstimulated, you can dim or turn off the lights to give your child a break from the visual stimulation.

Reduce Visual Distractions:

Avoid setting up your child’s workspace by a decorated wall or a wall with too many picture frames, colors and/or patterns. Sitting by a bare-wall with neutral colors is encouraged. Having your child’s workspace by a window can also welcome a lot of distracting sounds and visuals, which may impede in their ability to sustain focus and engagement during their remote lesson. Set up desk dividers if your child is sharing the workspace with a sibling. Also, try to limit visual distractions on your child’s workbooks by covering up the page to only show the math problem he or she is working on. When your child is writing, you can block out excess lines on the page to only display the line your child is writing on by folding the paper or covering the other lines with a dark colored paper or folder (to provide contrast).

Calm Down Area:

If you find that your child is feeling really anxious or overstimulated, you can create an area in the house for them to ‘calm down’. Whether it is inside a tent placed in the corner of their room or underneath a table, creating a space to help your child return to baseline before returning to their remote lesson is important. Inside the ‘calm down’ area, you can have calming music/sounds, as well as calming toys such as glitter wands, a water tube, or even textured toys that they prefer.  

Mindfulness and Deep Breathing Activities:

Mindfulness activities are a great way to help your overstimulated child calm down during times of high anxiety. Helping them focus their energy on one particular area of the body or one particular area in the room, naming/observing various sensations around them (what they see, smell, feel, taste, etc) or engaging in deep breathing exercises are just a few of many ways mindfulness activities can redirect your child to a more calm state. Check out this book for more mindfulness activities to try with your child that are playful and easy to do. If your child is having a hard time engaging in deep breathing exercises during times of high anxiety, you can try to get them to take deep breaths by blowing up a balloon, blowing at a pinwheel, blowing a party blower noisemaker or even pretending to be a dragon.

Hope this post was helpful. Please share any tips or suggestions in the comment box for more strategies that work for sensory avoiding children. And of course, reach out to me if you have any questions or suggestions for future blog posts. See you in my next post!