Touch sensitivity
A child receives sensory information from their entire skin through nerve cells. Sensations occur both when a child touches something and when something touches them. Movement and temperature are also part of the spectrum of tactile information.
Oversensitivity to touch can therefore affect your child in many ways, and it can be difficult for others to see or predict how it will affect them.
Observe and respect your child's responses to tactile sensations. Let them tell you what feels bad and what feels good. Let your child have a say in their clothing choices and sleeping arrangements. Create calm mealtimes. Talk to your child's daycare centre and school about their stress factors and the need for special arrangements.
A child with sensory hypersensitivity will often find clearly structured tactile sensations soothing. On the other hand, withdrawing from the flood of sensations can bring relief and wellbeing in their daily life.
Clothing and fabrics
- Wash new clothes if your child dislikes the rough feeling of a new fabric. Soft and oversized clothes often feel the most comfortable. When you find the right garment, get more of the same.
- Clothes can be worn inside out, with the seams and labels on the outside. Cut off the labels if necessary.
- Some children find it comforting to wear a tight gym outfit under their clothes to bring a sense of deep pressure and prevent uncomfortable clothes from touching their skin.
- Let your child choose their own nightwear: some prefer to sleep without clothes, some in tight clothes and some in loose, soft clothes.
- Make up the bed with soft sheets.
Structuring and practising tactile sensations
- You can make a nightly routine of massaging your child with your hand or a ball, a clean paint roller or brush.
- Try wrapping your child gently in a blanket, exercise mat or duvet. This can give the child calming and structuring deep pressure experiences.
- Build a tunnel or hut out of fabrics or blankets with your child or let your child crawl under a heavy blanket – a blanket fort can be a refuge for your child from the sensory overload.
- Encourage your child to invent tactile activities that they would like to do (e.g. playing with different materials, modelling, ceramics, playing with sand, baking together, etc.)
- ‘Heavy work,’ such as carrying, pulling, pushing, hanging and jumping, produces calming and structuring sensations that often benefit children with tactile hyperesthesia.
When a child is overly sensitive to touch or other sensory input, they are often sensitive around the mouth as well, which can make eating difficult. They may react to the temperature, texture, taste, smell, or aroma of food.
Sensitivity around a child’s mouth may show up as a strong gag reflex. The sensitivity of the child's oral area may be manifested as a sensitive gag reflex. The child may also avoid touching food and may not put fingers or objects in their mouth.
- Involve your child in cooking every now and then. When cooking, your child gets to use all their senses to explore food and its textures. If they ask, let them taste the ingredients at different stages of cooking.
- Awakening the senses in advance can ease the upcoming sensory overload. For example, you can offer a cold or bubbly drink or crunchy food to start the meal.
- Try to create a calm mealtime and block out extra stimuli.
- Alternatively, you can offer extra stimuli if it helps your child to process the food and concentrate on eating. For example, a balance cushion or a weighted plush may help.
- Pay attention to cutlery: If your child has a hearing sensitivity, minimise the sounds coming from the dishes. Think about the size, shape and surface material of the cutlery for your sensitive child.
- If your child has a hypersensitive sense of smell, minimise odours, for example by ventilating the space. Heating enhances the aroma of food. The senses of smell and taste are strongly linked. See if the same food tastes better slightly cooler or even cold.
- Tasting doesn't always have to be the objective. Allow your child to just smell or touch the food and practise sensory stimulation.
- Give your child permission to take the food they are tasting out of their mouth and put it into a napkin, for example.
Sound sensitivity
A child with hypersensitivity is often sensitive to noise, meaning that the sounds in their environment can disturb and overwhelm them more than usual. The child may also react to sounds that others don't pay any attention to. The ticking of the clock or the hum of an air conditioner may disturb your child.
On the other hand, a child with sound sensitivity can make noise themselves and seek out auditory experiences on their own.
Often, it is easier to tolerate noises that you produce and are familiar with than strange noises or sounds produced by others.
Creating a calm home environment
- Pay attention to the background noise at home. Is the radio or television on for long periods? Do the rooms echo? Do the doors slam when they close?
- Make sure your child has a chance to calm down. Ensure a peaceful place and some quiet time to read, do homework, play or relax.
- Lower your voice at home and encourage other family members to do the same. Talk calmly; whispering can also soothe the child. Avoid shouting and go to the child and talk to them directly.
- Let your child become comfortable with different sounds. Listen to noises and discuss them. Name the sounds and guess their sources. Your child will be more comfortable when they know what the different sounds are.
- Try to avoid loud, unexpected noises. If possible, warn the child in advance of loud noises and allow the child to leave the room while the drill or blender is being used.
- Noise made by the child themself is easier to tolerate. Suggest that the child starts the vacuum cleaner, blender or other loud appliance themself, so that the child can control the appliance.
Finding relief outside the home
- Engage in exercise or intense tactile stimulation before a noisy situation. Anticipatory sensory experiences may help to improve tolerance to auditory stimuli.
- Try to avoid long periods in noisy environments, also when outside. Traffic, crowded places and echoing spaces are often overwhelming for those with sound sensitivity. Choose quiet corners in cafés and quieter streets in the city.
- Provide earplugs or hearing protectors or, alternatively, headphones that allow the child to listen to music in public areas or in situations where they need to concentrate. Listening to soothing music can also make it easier to move around in noisy environments.
- Suggest a staggered transition to daycare or school, so that your child has the opportunity to be in a small group or alone when they need to put on clothes or at mealtimes, for example.
- If possible, the school or daycare centre could reserve the quietest locations for your child's class, meals and morning meeting.
Visual hypersensitivity
A child who cannot pick out just the essential stimuli in the environment and filter out the rest can react to everything in sight and become overstimulated.
Often, visual stress is caused by light or movement. Sometimes, an abundance of colours or things can feel overwhelming to a child.
Tips for home
- Check whether there is anything visually distracting in the environment. Bright colours or lighting? An abundance of items that grab your child's attention? Indoors, use soft lighting and simple, clear patterns. Use curtains to block direct sunlight from windows.
- You should keep your child's toys and belongings in drawers or cupboards in the bedroom when they are not in use. Shiny surfaces, pictures and paintings can also distract your child.
- Avoid visually surprising your child by turning lights on and off unexpectedly or using the camera flash in the same room as the child. Always tell them about upcoming visual stimuli in advance.
- Let your child wear sunglasses, a cap or a wide-brimmed hat, even indoors if necessary.
- It can be difficult for a child to pay attention to something if there is a lot of movement in the background. Turn off the TV, let the child withdraw from the shared living room. Bring a small children's tent with pillows, blankets or other cushions into the living room.
Tips for school
- It could be a good idea to arrange spaces where your child can retreat to in other places besides their home. For instance, the school could set up a small, quiet space for recovery in the classroom, separated by a screen.
- At school, often the best place to sit is at the front of the classroom, where there is less visual stimulation than at the back.
- When doing homework, only keep the necessary materials on hand to minimise stimuli.
- If white paper feels too bright, try different coloured films over the page.
