Know Their Sensory Preferences
Did you know that your students’ behaviour, their ability to make good decisions and problem-solving skills can vary depending on their sensory preferences? These preferences can also be used by educators (and parents) to help calm a child down and regulate their emotions and body.
So, what are sensory preferences?
Sensory preferences indicate how a student likes to receive sensory input to their body and nervous system – what things they enjoy and what feels good.
By knowing our students’ preference, we can use this information to help them calm down in stressful moments, defuse challenging or disruptive behaviour and even learn emotional intelligence skills.
There are three reasons for this:
1. Knowing what our students’ sensory preferences are helps us to raise their awareness of their body and how it is feeling. For example, when he or she is starting to get agitated or frustrated.
2. It helps the student come up with his or her own ideas and solutions for calming themselves during stressful moments. Remember though, that for many years, we need to be co-regulating with them, before they can self-regulate!
3. It allows us as educators to know what helps or hinders our students from being in a regulated, calm state. Even if our students can’t do this independently yet, we are able to know what elevates or defuses big emotions and challenging behaviour.
We need to observe, and even ASK children about their sensory preferences so we are aware of the things that both trigger and calm them. Armed with this information we are much more likely to have a successful interaction when it really counts.
There are many ways in which we can do this, but it involves US as the parent having an awareness of our child’s sensory preferences, and the readiness and willingness to have conversations about this.
It is so empowering to know what calms or overloads
your students. It is also a key component in cultivating
emotionally intelligent children!
The 8 Senses — How To Find What Calms Children
We all have sensory preferences which affect our ability to interact with our environment (situations, places and people) and do our daily activities. Although for a long time we were taught about the “five senses,” there are actually a total of eight sensory systems:
1. Auditory
2. Visual
3. Touch
4. Smell
5. Movement
6. Vestibular (sense of movement and balance)
7. Proprioception (sense of where our body is in space)
8. Interoception (sense of what’s happening in our body internally)
How to decipher children’s sensory preferences using observation and conversation:
Auditory Preferences: What sounds does this student like to hear or listen to? It could be human voices, music, noises in nature, etc.
Visual Preferences: What things does this student like to look at? It could be things in the classroom, things at home, falling or spinning objects, dim lighting, etc.
Touch Preferences: What things does this student like to feel against their skin and touch? It could be different textures, fabrics, pressure, etc.
Smell Preferences: What things does this student like to smell? It could be food, nature, things outdoors, etc.
Movement Preferences: What things does this student like to do with their body? It could be spinning, jumping, running, dancing, sitting, lying down, tapping, etc.
Once we have this knowledge, we can support our kids to start using some of these preferences in stressful times, but be sure to begin with testing them out and practicing using these preferences when they are calm, attentive and receptive.
