Sensory overload triggers are not always obvious. Photo / Zhivko Minkov
Sensory overload triggers are not always obvious. Photo / Zhivko Minkov
The peas were fine yesterday, today they’re not. The beach was fun last week, but now your child can’t tolerate the sand.
All parents will recognise moments like these, but when your child is neurodivergent the inconsistencies can feel constant. A refusal can quickly escalate into a meltdown and thepeas they happily ate yesterday might go flying across the room today.
It’s bewildering and stressful for parents. And for onlookers, it can read as bad behaviour, or even bad parenting. But occupational therapist and sensory integration specialist, Elen Nathan, says meltdowns and refusals are often signs of a nervous system on high alert.
Her message is simple, “it all boils down to a sense of safety”.
Speaking to Sonia Grey on this week’s episode the No Such Thing As Normalpodcast, Nathan says many parents arrive at her practice feeling overwhelmed. Long waitlists for assessments, conflicting advice and judgment from others can leave them unsure about what to do next.
Nathan says research into neurodivergence has evolved, and with that comes a change in focus when it comes to sensory processing.
“The focus has historically been on the strategy,” Nathan says, “the focus now is on the person.”
And the person - if they are neurodivergent - will often have a different way of processing sensory stimulation. Nathan says this means the trigger may not be obvious to parents.
“You’re trying to fix the peas,” she says “but it might be that the seams in her socks are uncomfortable today. If you’re trying to find every trigger, you will exhaust yourself and you’ll burn yourself out.”
Instead, she encourages parents to try and look past what might have caused the behaviour and focus on the fact that their child isn’t feeling safe.
“Safety is not the absence of danger, safety is a felt sense of being safe,” says Nathan.
Occupational therapist and sensory integration practitioner, Elen Nathan.
Humans scan for cues of safety roughly four times every second. For children with heightened sensory sensitivity, that constant scanning can make everyday environments feel overwhelming.
A child might refuse sand at the beach because it feels different after rain. They might reject food because the texture is slightly different from what they expected. Or they might suddenly become distressed about something adults can’t immediately identify.
What adultscan do is co-regulate with their child. Sometimes that simply means acknowledging the difficulty their child is going through. Or it may mean accepting that dinner needs to be predictable foods - like chicken nuggets - for a while.
Nathan says this won’t necessarily be forever, progress often comes when the pressure is removed.
That shift in perspective can help release pressure on the child and also be liberating for the exhausted parent.
It’s not always easy to see challenging behaviour through the lens of safety, especially as you’re picking peas up off the floor. But the good news is meltdowns and refusals will often ease as kids start to trust their environment, and the people in it.
“Just gather your children, love them, care for them, make them feel safe,” Nathan says.
