Making School a Sensational Place

by Chynna Tanara Laird Print This Article

It has been discovered that 30% of school-aged children are labeled as having learning disabilities. Seventy percent of these children have Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), also known as Sensory Integration Dysfunction, as the underlying cause of their disorders.

A love for learning starts in childhood. Seeing the glimmer in a youngster’s eyes when they’ve mastered something is truly an amazing thing. Unfortunately, some children struggle with severe sensory issues that can interfere with the way they learn. This doesn’t mean they can’t learn; only that they must learn in a different way.

When my daughter, Jaimie, was diagnosed with SPD at the age of two-and-a-half, one of my main concerns was how a child barely able to handle the sensory stimulation of simple things such as a bath or a car ride was going to be able to function within a busy public school system.

In the end, I decided that if Jaimie was going to have a fighting chance in public school, I needed to do everything on my part, as her parent and advocate, to make sure she had all the assistance she needed to thrive alongside her peers.

Children with sensory sensitivities or SPD have a higher risk of slipping through the educational cracks due to misdiagnosis and misunderstanding. The problem isn’t that these children have difficulty with learning; their struggle is staying focused as other stimulants in their environment fight for their attention. And for these children, who often need constant movement to organize their little bodies for tasks at hand, the aspect of sitting still for lessons can be an additional challenge. The answer starts and ends with the child: seeing and working with what they can do and “tweaking” the rest, wherever possible.

Parents and teachers need to work together to help these children find ways to cope in situations where environmental stimuli can be too much for them. Most teachers want to do everything in their power to help make the school experience a positive one and encourage parental support in making this happen.

In our situation, I was lucky to have had a wonderfully supportive teacher with years of experience working with children with all levels of ability. We’ve all worked hard at keeping the connection between school and home strong in order to provide Jaimie with the best possible stepping-stones for academic success.

Allow me to share some important ways to make that connection happen:

Arm yourself with resources. In our situation, not only was Steve working in a government position and was able to reach people in higher places that the general public couldn’t, Jaimie’s teacher could too.

When I first tried enrolling Jaimie in Kindergarten, the principal told me Jaimie was too old. (We’d kept Jaimie back a year because we had felt, as did her therapists, that she wouldn’t have been able to handle the social aspect of school.) Long story short, Jaimie’steacher informed the principal, with the head of the school district of our area, that, “It is up to a parent to decide when to start their child in school. The choice is made when the parent decides the child is ready to begin school, not the system.”

We learned that contacting our provincial (or state) educational representative (for us it is Alberta Education), or at least visiting the link, is invaluable. Parents should arm themselves with such information as the local community services that can provide assistance, the sorts of assistance and tools their child will need as well as any assessments the child will need even before starting school. If parents have all the reports and necessary documents in hand for their first meeting with school representatives, they’ll be miles ahead and cut through a lot of red tape.

Set up a meeting of the minds. The first step to paving the way to a child’s success is meeting with the people he or she will be in the most contact with. After Steve and I decided we’d try public school, I immediately contacted Jaimie’s potential Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. “P”—as she tells the kids to call her. I chatted with her over several months about SPD, how it can affect children’s school performance, Jaimie’s level of it, her strengths and weaknesses as well as asking Mrs. P. about her personal experience with special needs children—which, thankfully, was immense.

These meetings should eventually include the school principal, or vice principal, the child’s main teacher(s) and the main contacts at the community funding service who’ll provide the teacher’s assistance, OTs or other tools the child needs. This “meeting of the minds” is how the child will acquire what he or she will need to thrive.

Parents should come to these meetings with such information as professional reports and assessment data, any copies of OT notes they may have been given during sessions as well as any recommendations for treatment options. These are particularly important because they provide invaluable information about what the child needs to function in various social settings in a positive way. Plus, parents are the experts in their child on a personal level so their input is important. Professionals provide the labels, the jargon and the tools; parents provide the loving, calming strategies that work for the child at home—in their “safe zone.”

Provide a history. Most schools require a health history. But it’s a great idea to include the following:

Triggers – what sensory stimuli in the classroom environment would produce the greatest struggles for your child? (Think about lighting, smells, sounds, closeness of other children, etc.)
Activities – What sorts of activities would your child struggle with and need “tweaking” in order to participate? (An example would be children whose tactile sensitivity is so severe, an activity like finger painting would cause a break down. Or, alternatively, a child who needs to feel or smell the paint in order to experience it. Giving the first child a paintbrush and the second child permission to use hands with fun smelling paints are great options.)
Transition difficulty – this is a common struggle for children with sensory sensitivity. Be sure to voice which areas may present a higher degree of difficulty.
Routines – Most children with SPD have rigid routines they follow in order to cope with their sensitivities. How can these routines be used in school to make transitions easier?
Needs – What does your child need in order to feel more comfortable in the classroom? This includes anything from special seating to calm down tools to items he or she needs to feel like part of the group.
The good stuff – It’s crucial to add what your child excels in. They need to be seen as more than a child with difficulties. Plus the good stuff can be used as an incentive to do the work children need to do as well as to remind them of what they can do when they struggle.

Options. Options are crucial for a child with sensory struggles. There are days where certain stimuli may not affect Jaimie at all but on others the same stimuli will catapult her through the roof. Teachers need to be sensitive to this aspect of SPD and have options available for certain activities so that even when a child is too sensitive to finger paint, for example, he or she can still participate in the same activity with a few…tweaks (such as a paint brush or using rubber gloves).

Of course, those of us with children who have SPD and other sensory sensitivities understand that our children need exposure to sensory stimuli or they’ll never learn to function in the outside world. Sure, he or she may need to do things in a different way but the task can, and should, be encouraged.

For children who are distracted by noise, there is an option of earphones to block out excess noise or seating them away from windows or classroom doors. For children who cannot handle certain smells, being seated near the front of the class is a great option. For other children, like Jaimie, who aren’t able to handle too close of a proximity to other children, being seated near the front or on the outside during circle time, craft times or in general help to keep them focused on the task at hand.

It’s all about choosing options that help to include the child instead of excluding them or making him or her feel different.

Balance. An important point to make here is that children with SPD should never be left completely alone only doing what they find comfortable. I noticed for the first few weeks, neither Mrs. P. norJaimie’s aide interacted with her much; they basically left her alone to do her own thing. That didn’t help Jaimie either as it wasn’t teaching her how to cope within the social aspect of school. And the teachers are unintentionally isolating her even further from her classmates. There needs to be a healthy balance between respect for the child’s triggers and doing activities within his or her comfort zone and the level of sensory exposure he or she is given.

Balance includes baby steps, small exposures at a time, a lot of prep time (description and discussion), constant positive feedback and teaching the child to use his or her words.

Teach the necessity of calm down time. At home, we’ve set up a small pup tent for Jaimie where she stores her favorite writing books, pens, a small light, a few stuffies and some books. This is her tiny sanctuary—her place to escape to when her world it a bit too overwhelming. Such a place needs to be set up in the child’s school place too.

At our first school meeting, one of our community funding assistance representatives said, “Does Jaimie need alone space? We can get her one of those eggs from IKEA. When things get too scary, overwhelming or upsetting, we can encourage her to go in there, pull the door down and regroup. Then we are encouraging her not to leave the place that’s bothering her but how to remove herself until she can go back to it with renewed calmness.”

I couldn’t believe what a difference just knowing such a tool was available made to Jaimie. She doesn’t use it very often because, for Jaimie, losing control is worse than people knowing she has SPD. But she’s gone in the egg a few times and her teacher has said by separating herself from stressful situations—even for just a few moments—has been enough to give her a bit of courage to try again.

Knowledge, understanding and respect. These are the most important aspects of setting our children with sensory sensitivities up for academic success—each aspect leads right to the next. What impressed me the most about Mrs. P was that she believed wholeheartedly in developing and nurturing a child’sindependence.

This woman has decades of experience behind her with children of various developmental delays and levels of abilities from basic learning struggles to severe behavioural issues to Autism, AD/HD, even fetal alcohol syndrome. Her infamous quote has always been, “All children have the ability to learn. We simply need to discover what works for them…what turns that light on…then bring it out so they can see themselves shine.”

Read: Teacher Tips for Making School a Sensational Place

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Making School a Sensational Place

Allow me to share some important ways to make that connection happen:

Provide a history. Most schools require a health history. But it’s a great idea to include the following:

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