Sensory Season Ep 6: Sight and Sound

Are the sights and sounds of everyday life overwhelming for some children, or do they crave more stimulation? This episode of Belle's OT Corner dives into the sensory experiences that shape our children’s world, unraveling the impact of visual and auditory inputs on their development and engagement. As an occupational therapist, I share my insight into the journey of light from eye to brain, and the symphony of sounds that can either harmonize or disrupt a child's environment. 

Sensory overload is no small matter for our little ones, and recognising the signs is key to helping them adapt and succeed. This episode walks you through practical strategies to minimise visual overstimulation, from simplifying living spaces to classroom modifications, or looking for opportunities to infuse additional visual input into your daily life. 

The discussion extends to those kiddos who experience auditory sensitivities, offering you a toolkit of techniques to transform potential chaos into a soothing symphony, including creating predictable soundscapes and employing proprioceptive activities.

As we wrap up, I encourage you to share the knowledge gained from today's conversation with others in your community. Whether it's parents seeking to understand their child's sensory needs, teachers aiming to create inclusive classrooms, or friends who love to learn, spreading the word can have a profound impact. 

Be sure to join us in two weeks for another episode filled with valuable insights that empower children to navigate their sensory worlds with confidence.

Transcript

Belle Parsons 0:09

Hi everyone and welcome back to Belle's OT Corner. I hope you have had a lovely couple of weeks and enjoyed our episode last week. Today we're going to dive into all things sight and sound. So this is our visual and our auditory systems. As always, we're going to keep the same framework of what the sense is, what it looks like when a child can be having some difficulties, and then always finishing up with those tips and tricks and those strategies for what we can do to help these children be a little bit more comfortable, be able to engage in their occupations and be ready to tackle the world around them. So today we're going to start with sight first. And similar to last week when I paired them up together, when we did taste and smell together because they kind of impacted on each other, sight and sound, funnily enough, can impact upon each other as well. So we'll start off with sight.

Belle Parsons 1:11

So what is sight and how does it work? Well, as I'm sure you've all guessed, sight works by visual stimuli and that's picked up from our eyes and there are different parts in our eyes. There's rods, there's cones, there's a cornea, there's the lens, lots of different bits and pieces. You don't need to worry about what does which job. The basis is visual. Stimuli is picked up by the visual receptors in our eye and they will detect things like light, they'll detect color, they'll detect movement, they might detect shape and orientation of an object, so they detect all these different bits and pieces. This information then gets sent to your optic nerve and up and along your optic nerve and into your brain. Now, unlike some of our other senses, sight is a little bit different. Actually, sight and sound are a little bit different because they have their initial pathway up to the brain, where our brain actions it if it is important or not important, as always, if it is a threat to my safety and therefore I need to act on it faster and I need to have that faster action plan and or if it's something that I can just think about a little bit and I'm just going to add that into the picture I'm building about my world around me.

Belle Parsons 2:31

Now we have that same process within our visual system we figure out what's happening in the world around us and if it's a threat to myself, we then have an extra cognitive layer that goes on, which we're not going to talk about today, but I do want to emphasize that the visual system is a little bit more complex and we will dive into the higher complexities of it in a different season, because it doesn't. It relates, but it doesn't relate, and I want to keep them a little bit separate to make it easier for you guys to chunk down and understand. But the visual and the cognition side of our visual system is when we get into visual perception skills, and so this is where you might hear things like form closure, visual figure ground. There's lots of different terminologies here, but it's essentially about the thinking that goes on and how our brain is cognitively processing the images that get sent up to it, different to how my brain responds to the sensory environment that I am in and what my sensory needs might be within different environments to be able to help me to engage. So today we're just going to focus on the real sensory side of how it works. But the kind of higher order cognitive thinking bits and pieces is still important. We're just going to talk about it in a later season, but I did just want to highlight that it does exist. We're just not going to address it today.

Belle Parsons 4:05

So our visual system, so our site, works in combination with our vestibular and with our auditory system, and so our auditory system. Think about it. If you hear a sound, the first thing you tend to do is you turn your head to look to see where that sound is, particularly if it is a scary sound or a sound that your brain recognises as needing your attention so someone calling your name, a car running down the street really fast, maybe an ambulance, a loud crash. When we hear these things, typically we will then turn our head so that our brain can match our visual field with that sound to give us more information, to then be able to develop a more accurate action plan for what we're then going to do in response to that input. It also is teared out with our vestibular system, which I did mention in our vestibular episode. So go back and have a listen to that one. But the crux of it is if they weren't talking to each other, any movement that you would make, your visual system would bounce around all over the place. But for more detail, jump back and have a listen to that vestibular episode.

Belle Parsons 5:14

So the other part that can impact upon our vision that I should address as well is it is separate to. So how we process our vision is separate to the vision that we have. And so if you do have concerns about your child's vision, number one is to always go and get their eyes tested, because we want to see are they actually not being able to interpret that information? Because it's their eyes and maybe it's how their eyes are moving and their eye control and the convergence of their eyes, and so this is when we have two eyes that are working together and so we're not getting too much overlap in our vision, and that is a separate component to what we're talking about today. That's kind of the nitty gritty of how the eyes themselves are working, before we then send that message up to our brain, and that sending that message up to our brain is the bit that we're going to be looking at today, which is then separate to what happens when the brain starts to think about that information, which is that visual perception skills, which we'll talk about in a later episode, but always my first point of call, if I ever have parents or teachers querying some things with vision, number one go and get your child's eyes tested, because it never hurts to know, and if they come out as no issues with their vision, that's when we can then take that next step.

Belle Parsons 6:35

So, in the crux of it, it is our eyes detect all this information. Being light, colour movement is the really big ones. This information is then sent up our optic nerve to our brain and our brain then processes it. As is it important that I need to have an action plan for this, is it not important? And in some cases, as I know you guys know now, it might be that we have an under responsive child and so we're not registering some of these things anyway, which we'll talk about in a second. So that's the how it works.

Visual Over Responsive.

Belle Parsons 7:10

Now let's talk about what it might look like if a child is having some difficulties with this and, just like last week, we're going to talk about these in terms of over responsive and then under responsive, and with strategies of what to do after each one. So over responsive and this, as I'm sure you guys are getting really good at knowing now, this is where we're noticing lots of input, and if you're new and you've just picked up for this episode, go have a listen to some earlier ones, particularly the first episode that I did on this little season, because it breaks down some of these words that we're talking about, but over responsive. So I'm going to notice things in my vision. We'll get to noise in a second. Notice my visual field more than someone else might and things in my visual field might bother me more quickly than somebody else.

Belle Parsons 8:07

So when we see children like this and we see children that might be having difficulties in this area, we might see a child that blocks their vision, covers one eye. Maybe they use their hand to kind of almost like a cap or they pull a hoodie really low over their eyes. Maybe they squint a lot or they're rubbing their eyes. Typically these children might be quite fatigued after having to engage in a task that does require a lot of visual input. So maybe they've had to look up at the board for a really long time in class or at home. Maybe they've been doing some reading and you notice that after engaging in this, where there's that big strain on their eyes, they'd maybe start to rub their eyes a little bit afterwards.

Belle Parsons 8:50

These children might be bothered by bright lights. So it could be you walk into a store and they've got those really awful fluorescent lights on and you can see the child might pull a bit of a face or have a bit of a physical reaction, or maybe it's when they go out into bright sunlight, and so playground times could be really tricky, and you might notice a child that prefers to be in the shade instead of out and about in the bright sunlight. These also could be children that you notice are distracted and overwhelmed in busy environments, and so they are just noticing too much, and so in the classroom it could be if the child is sitting further in the back of the class and you've got beautiful artworks up on the wall on the child's left there's glass windows on the right, then the child can see everyone walking up and down the hallway. You're in the front with the board trying to do your presentation, but to the left of the presentation is the plan for the day. Under the presentation might be different resources the kids can come and get.

Belle Parsons 9:54

There's five kids to my left, there's four kids to my right, and all of a sudden my little brain is trying to process all of this information all at once and it just gets too much, and they can experience what we call overload, where their brain cannot process anymore, and so they then consequently might disengage from the situation. They might not be able to follow instructions because there is just too much their brain is trying to process from a visual perspective. Too many colors, too many moving objects, too many different things that their brain is trying to decode. You also might notice that these children may avoid eye contact or be taught listening very actively, but not giving you eye contact. And just a side note on this I don't believe eye contact is essential at all for any sort of engagement or communication. You can have fantastic conversations with somebody, for example, when we have conversations on the phone is just a really obvious one. It's not a necessary component.

Belle Parsons 10:53

But why we can see children that might find this more challenging is because visually, there is so much going on on the face. My lips are moving, you can sometimes see my teeth and my tongue, and sometimes you can't. My cheeks might move. If I'm smiling and getting really excited as I'm telling a story, my eyes will widen or narrow and be very expressive depending upon how I feel about the story, and then my eyebrows are going to be doing a whole bunch as well, depending upon how animated I am as I'm sharing this information with you, and for some children this is great because it gives them lots of extra cues about what I'm saying and what's important, but for other children that is too much information for their brain to process.

Strategies for Visual Over Responsive

Belle Parsons 11:35

Because the crux of this is arch brains can only think about so much at once. We have only so much power in our brains, and if I'm having to use up most of my brain power processing what I'm seeing, I can't process what I'm hearing, so I'm missing instructions. I can't process thinking about what I'm supposed to be learning, and so I'm not engaging in that because it's just it's too much. And that is not the child's fault, that is not the teacher's fault, that is not the parent's fault. There is no fault here, it is just the reality. And so what we do is we help these children to try and minimize some of these cognitive demands and how much their brain is having to think about and interpret, so that they can then focus on the tasks that they need to do. So we also might see some of these children that are over responsive can have difficulties with moving objects and judging how fast things are moving, and again, this can be because they are just watching so much that they don't notice and can't judge that as quickly. So what can we do? How can we help decrease some of that cognitive load. How can we help these children engage in what we are trying to help them do? And there's lots, but the biggest one is for these little over responsive kiddies.

Belle Parsons 12:57

Unsurprisingly, we want to try and reduce the visual input if possible. Okay, and so when we think about this at home and again we're going to think about it around occupations Well, what is it that we're trying to help our child do at home? Maybe at home it is the morning routine and you notice that your kitty gets so distracted, looks at so many different things. Sees a toy they want to play with, sees something else is all over the shop and we just can't figure out what to do. Okay, so one thing that we could look at doing if you think your child might be really over responsive is we can decrease some of that visual input.

Belle Parsons 13:38

Maybe we look at using a very simple visual on a blank wall. So bathrooms are a great one because they're typically a little bit plainer. Or maybe there's a room in your house or a corner in your house where you can have not any artwork, not any toys, nice, quiet corner where maybe we can stick up a little visual of what we have to do. So that is the only thing in your child's visual field, so that they can then really focus and attend to that task. It might be that we bring the clothes to this corner so that the only thing that we have around is what we're trying to focus on In the classroom.

Belle Parsons 14:18

Reducing visual input can be looking at where a child is sitting and physically sitting in that seat and looking around and seeing what can your line of sight see, and thinking about where you stand as the teacher during the day and if you look in that direction, what can the child see and what could be minimized when you stand in a different section for teaching or maybe at mat time, sit where the child will normally sit and have a think. What can that child see? If it is that their line of sight goes straight outside and there's lots of movement outside? Maybe it's the area where kids do PE and so there's constantly different classes moving in and out or maybe sitting that child somewhere else, but they don't have that same level of visual distractions. Looking at how many displays the child can see from their desk, I'm not saying, don't have displays in your classroom, but just be mindful of where you put them up and maybe you set up your classroom so that you have a corner that is a little bit planar, so that if you have some of these children in your class you can sit them up so they have that when they look up, instead of looking up and getting all of this really overloading and overwhelming input.

Belle Parsons 15:26

The other things that we can do is things like dimming lights, and obviously this isn't always possible at school, but some schools have different covers that you can put over lights. At home you can look at dimming your lights or only using lights and like the adjacent room can be a really nice one, particularly if you have like an open plan living space Turning on one light in one area, but you're kind of working a little bit separate from it when you're outside, or even, in some cases, inside, think about using sunglasses. You know we automatically put sunglasses on if it's a bright, glary day because it's nicer for our eyes and it means we don't have to squint. It is the exact same approach. We just might use them a little bit more readily for some of these kids and help them start to identify. Oh, you know, I can see your eyes are squinting. Let's try these. Did they help? Did they not help. And sometimes you know, even if your child isn't speaking, you can still have these conversations about wow, your body looks a little bit calmer or you're wow, you're smiling, I think you like those, I think they're helping you, and then you can practice trying them in different environments as well. But it's just again that idea of muting my visual environment a little bit.

Belle Parsons 16:42

We can also look at if we think within the classroom again. So for some of those teachers that listen along to my podcast, thinking about what we put on worksheets how much colour do you have on your worksheets? Can you print one in black and white for this child, or can you print and have a choice? Or if you don't want to single out the child by having a black and white one, well then maybe we look at giving the child a second piece of paper that's just blank and white and they can cover up half of the worksheet to make it really clear what section they're focusing on, because all of a sudden that cuts out their visual load of how much their brain is having to process and it helps them then focus on what they need to do.

Belle Parsons 17:26

The other one that we can look at is helping them have little brain breaks or little eye breaks, and so these can be when you start to notice a child getting a little bit restless maybe they're squinting a lot or you know that you've just done an activity that has really required a lot of their visual skills saying, hey, let's go and have a little movement break, let's go and have a body break, let's go and give your eyes a break. And this is when we can actually even though we're thinking about and doing this for a visual system, we can actually look at them building in. Let's go and do some of those proprioceptive activities we talked about a couple episodes ago. Let's go and get a drink of water. That still counts as a little break, because I'm still getting a bit of movement in and my eyes are getting to adjust to something different and not having to do that sustained strain. Maybe the child would like to go and play with a little fidget. That's really predictable, that they can spin and just watch, and that's going to help them have their little break.

Visual Under Responsive

Belle Parsons 18:24

But building in breaks around times when you know, or even just before. So again, in previous episodes I've said that we can do them before or after, so we can kind of help get ready before we're going to put that do that task that we know is going to be challenging. So do that occupation that we know is going to be really tricky, or we can do it afterwards to help our brain kind of calm down and resettle again. So that's kind of what we can think about doing with those over responsive kitties. And the biggest one is starting to have that curiosity. So the biggest takeaway is have that curiosity around. Well, what is this child seeing? What is my child seeing? Or what is a student in my class seeing? Get down on their level. So, if they're a smaller child, scratch down to their level and see what they see, because you'll be surprised how different of a view it is of the world than what adults tend to see. Being up taller, and a lot of the time it's a lot busier, because they'll be right at that height of all the cupboards where they don't have doors and they can see everything inside, whereas in an adult line view we look straight across the top of those cupboards. So get down on their level, be curious and start to think about which bits and pieces we can change and what bits and pieces we can minimize to decrease and reduce the visual input that this child has to experience, particularly when we want to help them be able to engage in a different task. Okay, what about our under responsive kitties? So again, I'm sure you're all used to this by now, but I'm just going to remind you.

Belle Parsons 20:03

These are the kids that need lots of input. So we might see these children will miss visual information. They may lose track of things or not be able to find things. You might be so frustrated and you say, go and get your t-shirt and they've gone into their room and it's on their bed and it's the only thing on their bed but they can't locate that in their room. These children we might see have difficulty with their tracking in their reading. They might have difficulty discriminating different letters. Some of these bits do come a little bit more into our visual perception side of things and so we will address particularly some of the reading and the discrimination of letters and shapes. We will address that in a separate season.

Belle Parsons 20:44

We also might see some of these children will seek out lots of visual input. So you might see kids that really like spinning toys and holding them really close to their eyes, or maybe they like really bright lights and will always gravitate towards toys that have lights on them or anything that lights up. And again they might hold it up really close to their eye, to the point where you might look at that and go, ooh, doesn't that hurt your eye? Like don't you have that painful reaction. But no, they find that really helpful because it's helping meet the input that they need. You also might find they like really complicated and visually complicated video games and computer games where there's lots going on and lots for their brain to have to interact with. But it's quite fast, it flashes, so it's really visually exciting for them and so they might have a really strong preference for playing some of these games. So when we see these kids and it's actually starting to impact upon their ability to engage, so maybe they're missing instructions and missing visual information or maybe what they are seeking out is actually becoming so much that they can't then engage into a different task.

Strategies for Visual Under Responsive

Belle Parsons 21:53

What can we do to help these kids? Number one the opposite of what we were saying before, we wanna increase our visual cues and input. We wanna find activities where we can build in more visual input. If it's visual cues, so we might get some really colorful painters tape and tape it around things that they need to find. So maybe in school if they have a tray but their tray looks like everyone else's tray, I might put some really bright tape on their tray to help them scan and find it. If it's where their bag goes or where their coat goes, I might paint theirs a different color or wrap something around their hook to make it that contrast.

Belle Parsons 22:34

So we're building in more visual cues In terms of worksheets and things. Maybe we look at using a colored sheet of paper, like an A3 colored sheet, and then putting the worksheet on top to give that contrast, give them that extra input and help them find and think about what they're doing In terms of writing in these things. Maybe we look at putting highlighter on the line. So again, increasing that contrast for the child and also it can help with letter sizing and letter placement and a whole bunch of other fun things. But at its core it's actually helping break down where all of those lines are and maybe to start with I'm just gonna do two at a time and then I might do three lines at a time and then the child might really benefit from it.

Belle Parsons 23:17

So we might go and highlight their whole book and you might build up to the child putting the highlighter through their own book to be able to be that extra visual cue. We also wanna provide opportunities for them to get extra input. Particularly if we've got a child that is already seeking out, we wanna allow those opportunities for them and so maybe if a spinning fidget is gonna be really disruptive in class, we can look at alternatives. We're gonna put this child in the place where they have a lot of visual information in the classroom, so they might be on the opposite side of the classroom to the child that we were talking about before. Maybe if this child finishes work quickly, or maybe if you're noticing they need a little bit of extra visual stimulation, we're gonna give them mazes, eyespies, puzzles, all of these activities that require that extra visual thinking component. Also, there's some great fidgets that have really strong visual sides, like kaleidoscopes, those little egg timers that have liquid that slide down them. They can be fantastic and not too distracting and not too noisy for other children. At home you might do things like watching different optical illusions together. They can be really nice, and so we just look at building in other activities around the tasks that we know are gonna be tricky to help these children get enough of that visual information so they can then attend to what they need to.

Belle Parsons 24:46

So that is our visual and our sight all wrapped up. So we have that idea of taking in information, it getting processed by the brain and our brain then being able to respond to it. And when we have those kids that are over responsive and they're just processing too much, the number one thing to think about is get down on their level, see what they see and see how much you can, if possible, decrease or what we can use like a hat, like sunnies, like a hood, to decrease some of that visual input. For some of those under responses it's the opposite. It's if they are seeking it out, how can we help them build in more? If they're not seeking it out, that's fine too, but how can I add in some extra visual cues around these daily tasks to help them, help bring their attention to it and help draw that visual attention to what we need them to focus on?

Auditory Intro

Auditory Over Responsive

Belle Parsons 25:39

So now let's get into our auditory so sounds, so auditory again. I'm sure you all know, but this comes from our ears and our ears will detect things like volume, pitch, different, the duration of sounds, and it also has things like how we can filter our background sounds and isolate what's important as well. So this information that gets collected from our ears again travels up to our brain and our brain has this instant. Is it important, is it not? Is it a threat to myself? So that flight response? And then what do I do about it? Just like auditory, so just like us sorry, this is auditory. Just like visual, so just like our site that we were just talking about, our auditory system has the same sort of higher order thinking that goes on auditory processing. Now, again, this is slightly different and we're not gonna touch on this today, but this is when we start to think about what am I hearing, discriminating between different sounds, as opposed to what we're talking about today, which is that initial processing of the sound. How do I react and respond to different sounds? So what might it look like if a child is over responsive?

Belle Parsons 27:00

And so these are the kiddies that might notice lots of different sounds and can become quite overwhelmed by lots of different noises. These are the kids that might experience sound as painful, even sounds that you might not understand or you might not have heard. They could describe as hurting my ears and covering their ears and maybe on their face. You can see they've scrunched up their face and it's a physical sensation for them that that is painful, that sound. These are the children that you might see that startle easily or that they'll cover their ears a lot.

Belle Parsons 27:38

Typically we see with some of these kids they can start to build up a little bit of fear and a lot of avoidance around tasks or activities that will involve unpredictable sounds or sounds that they know that they're not going to like, and so they will pull out every strategy in the book to avoid being in these situations. And sometimes these can be then seen as woozy behaviors that start to come out as a protective instinct from I'm not gonna go into that situation where I know that sound is gonna be, so I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure my body does not get in that room and I don't have to do that Sudden noises. So things like fireworks, vacuums, hand dryers in bathrooms, all of these that are really quite A. They're quite loud, they typically have quite a high pitch, but they're not predictable if, unless I have control over them, or a child that started screaming or someone that started crying, all of these different things, when it's unpredictable sound, can be really tricky for these over responsive kids.

Strategies for Auditory Over Responsive

Belle Parsons 28:45

These kids might also be bothered by sounds that you might not notice, and so it might be the ticking of a clock, it might be the oven cooking something at home, maybe there's a fan going on in the other room All of these sort of subtle background noises that, from my brain, typically not always. If I'm tired or haven't had a coffee, I tend to notice the ticking of a clock and it can drive me insane. And there are some clocks that I have not bought because in shops I see how noisy they are. But most of the time I surround myself with things that don't bother me as background noise, and so that I then don't have to think about that and I can spend my time thinking about and focusing on what is in front of me. So what can we do to help these kids? Well, we can make sure that the environment is set up as much as possible. So if there is a clock that is really bothering your child and you're at home, try a different clock. Truthfully, it's not worth it. I picked different clocks. We can set up the environment to set it up for success.

Belle Parsons 29:50

If there are sounds that we know are gonna be tricky for the child, making them as predictable as possible. I have to vacuum or actually vacuum is a different one, because you can vacuum when the child's not home, but maybe when we're using a hand dryer okay, we have to dry our hands. We're gonna put it on for one second, so on and off. Or if you know it's one of those ones that you're going to touch and it's going to keep going, ok, it's going to be loud, let's count together how long it's loud for. So we put it on and we're counting one, two, three, four, five. Oh, it was just five seconds. Now we know for next time. And so we start to make these predictabilities around the sound so that the child's brain and their body can get ready to process that information and starts to know what is expected. Things like ear defenders and noise-canceling headphones can be fantastic because they can just mute down how much that brain is having to process.

Belle Parsons 30:52

Within the classroom we can look at again where we place that child within different experiences of the day, and so maybe at PE if you know there's going to be a loud whistle in any of the games maybe just trying to encourage that child to be a little bit further away or giving them that pre-warning. In assembly, we might look at where that child sits to make sure that they're not right next to a speaker, because that is going to be too hard for them and they're not going to be able to engage in assembly. In the classroom, you might look at where that child is sitting to make sure that they're not next to a really noisy kid and start to have these considerations around the environment that we're putting in place and how we can make sure this is supporting the child or having things like ear defenders possible for the child to use. You can also look at the physical environment in terms of rugs and curtains and things that are going to help to soften the acoustics within the space as well. Within the classroom, we also might look at having a quieter corner or a space where the child can take those breaks, and so if you notice that they're really starting to block their ears and they're starting to get a little bit distressed or a little bit dysregulated or they're not focusing as well, encouraging them, oh, let's go and finish your work in the quiet corner, let's go and have a little break over here and separating them out, giving them that little bit of space to help them then be able to focus and engage on the task at hand. It's also where we can use things like some of those proprioceptive activities to help our brain reset and look at fidgets and things to shift our focus. And so if I do have to listen to something and it's going to be really tricky having a fidget in my hand so that I can focus on that sensation and that tactile feeling typically a build in a little bit of heavy work with my fingers having to work hard and so that can then help shift my brain I'm still listening, but this is helping me manage that noise component as well. So that's another thing that we can look at building in.

Belle Parsons 32:54

And then we have our under responsive kiddies and within our auditory system, our under responsive kiddies are kiddies that might miss instructions. These are also kiddies that might seek out extra noise, and so they might talk all the time, they might script what they are doing, they might hum all the time, they might make different vocalizations as they're doing things, and frequently they won't notice that they're doing this, and so you can say stop that noise and they could turn around and go. What noise? What was I doing? They don't know. Their body is automatically doing it to help them focus. They might have difficulties recognizing where different sounds are coming from. They may not respond to their name and so you could call their name and it's not the now. Sometimes they've heard you and they're not responding, but if you think they actually they have, they just haven't heard you or they haven't processed it.

Strategies for Auditory Under Responsive

Belle Parsons 33:50

This is when we can think about maybe we have an under responsive kiddie. They're missing instructions, they are a bit lost in there. Lots of different noises going on, but they doesn't bother them. They might have a preference for louder sounds, particularly if they can be in control of those louder sounds. So they might be the really, really noisy kid in your classroom and these sorts of things we might see in a child that needs that extra bit of auditory input in their day. And so what we can do to help these kiddies is a couple of things. We can give them extra noise in an appropriate way. So maybe they have headphones to listen to music. Maybe they have headphones to listen to music.

Belle Parsons 34:32

Maybe we look at building in some other sensory strategies like a move and sit cushion that's going to give that little bit of feedback, that little bit of proprioceptive feedback, and we're gonna build that in so we can say, look, we're gonna use this to help your brain focus and so that you don't have to hum, because it's really tricky for the child next to you. But we're gonna make this need in a different way For a child that might miss a lot of instructions. We might have a visual cue to ensure that we have the attention before giving the instruction, and so this could look like having a cue card on the child's desk and flipping it one way when you need to say something and flipping it the other way, or tapping on that child's desk or moving something within their space, or having that child closer to you as you're teaching so you can give those different cues. That's gonna help him go. Okay, hang on, someone's about to tell me something important, so I need to look up and I need to pay attention. We also might give that child a little bit of extra time to process the information, or we might look at using building in visuals or writing down the plan on having written instructions as well as verbal instructions, because we know it's gonna be tricky for this child to attend to our verbal instructions solely, and because that's taking up so much of their brain and having to pay attention to this and having to listen, they may not be able to remember it as well. So that's when we can have step by step, we can have written components, we can have photos and we can break down that task a little bit easier At home. This is when we might use different visuals, and it could be visuals for the morning routine, it could be visuals for the steps to cook some breakfast or make their own bowl of cereal. It could be visuals to tie their shoelaces, whatever it is. Instead of us having to talk them through every single step, we might just sit down next to them and show them and not talk as much, and help them manage and process the information in a way that's actually going to match what their needs are.

Belle Parsons 36:41

If we see a child that likes to hum and likes to have vocalizations, we might find times that are appropriate for them to be able to do this, and so if there is a table that is a little bit noisier in your class or at home, if that's helping them focus and do their homework well, fantastic, we're going to let them do that. But if we have to go out somewhere and actually we can't do that as much, or in classroom it's impacting upon another child. Maybe we can look at studying these children or we can look at them building in headphones where we can listen to music, so something else can give that sound and that input. Or maybe we look at some music for the whole class where you can have background music on, and that's again something you can look at doing at home. So again, it's looking at how we can build into their life other opportunities to get that sound that they are seeking out.

Belle Parsons 37:37

So the big takeaways for auditory for those under-responsive kiddies we want to look at building in more where possible, but also looking at other ways that we can communicate the information. So making sure we have those cues, making sure we have that attention before we're giving those instructions and things For our over-responsive kiddies. These are when we want to make our sound as predictable as possible. We want to change the environment to decrease as much of this noise as we can. It's not always possible but as much as we can and for both we can look at using in some of those proprioceptives, some of those vestibular activities. That we know is very regulating throughout all of our sensory systems to help them manage throughout the day.

Belle Parsons 38:22

So which bits are tricky? Where can we build these in around the times that are going to be challenging? So around PE, when it's going to be noisy, around assembly time, when it's going to be noisy After they've just come back from playground. Maybe you've just done a crazy arts and craft activity in class and it's gotten really noisy because all the kids have really enjoyed it, and so then we're going to build some of these in to help these kiddies be able to resettle, refocus, reorganize my brain so that I can then get on with the next task or the next activity or whatever. Whatever the task might be, could be at home that it's, then it's time to get ready, to get dressed. Who knows what the occupation is. But we look at where are those times of challenge and how can we build in the appropriate supports to help the child through them. So that brings us to the end of all things sight and sound, so all things for our visual and auditory systems.

Belle Parsons 39:18

I can't believe how quickly this has gone. We only have one more episode left for our sensory season and that is going to be on our tactile system in two weeks. Now, if you have any questions at all about things that we have gone through, if you have any queries, anything don't think it's silly. I'm putting together a bit of a Q&A episode and, if I get enough, I will do a little podcast episode to answer any questions around our sensory system. So please start sending them through. You can DM me on Instagram, you can email me at bellsotcorner at gmailcom. Whatever you like, send through your questions so that I can then put together a slightly more targeted answering your Q&A's about our sensory systems.

Belle Parsons 40:06

To wrap it up, but for now, please like follow rate. It all really helps. Send it to your friends, send it to your best mates, send it to your teachers Anyone that you think is going to benefit from the podcast. It really helps me get it out there so that I can get all the information into the ears of people that it's actually going to be. But that's all from me for today, guys. I hope you all have a lovely week and I will see you in two weeks. Thanks, bye.