It’s the tail end of February, the garden has been a bog for weeks, and everyone has spent far too long indoors. If there’s a time of year when nursery rooms are at their loudest, brightest and most crowded, this is it. Which makes it exactly the right time to talk about the children who find all that hardest to bear.
You know the ones. The boy who claps his hands over his ears the moment singing starts. The girl who chews her sleeve to rags. The child who crashes into furniture and squeezes friends too hard, or the one who melts down at 4pm every Friday for no reason anyone can name. It’s tempting to file all of this under behaviour. Often it’s something else: information about how that child processes sensory input, arriving in the only language they have.
Eight senses, not five
The five-senses model we all learned at school is missing some of the most important ones for early years practice. Alongside sight, sound, touch, taste and smell sit the vestibular sense (movement and balance), proprioception (knowing where your body is in space) and interoception (reading your body’s internal signals, like hunger, a full bladder or rising panic).
Once you know about those last three, a lot of puzzling behaviour reorganises itself. The child who never sits still at carpet time may be seeking the vestibular input his body needs. The one who crashes and squeezes may be looking for proprioceptive feedback. The one with unexplained meltdowns may not feel hunger building until it’s overwhelming. Children can be sensory seekers, sensory avoiders, or (confusingly) both at once in different senses, and recognising those profiles is the first genuinely useful step.
Audit the room before you address the child
Here’s the reframe we find most powerful: before asking what’s wrong with the child, ask what’s loud about the room. Walk your space at child height. Count the sources of noise running at once: the hand dryer, the singing next door, forty children’s echo off hard floors. Look at the lighting, the visual clutter hanging from every ceiling, the walls where every inch competes for attention. Then ask where a child overwhelmed by all of it can go. If the answer is nowhere, that’s the first fix, and it’s usually cheap: a calm corner, softer light, less on the walls.
Our Sensory Processing and Sensory-Friendly Environments course includes exactly this kind of room audit, along with practical strategies that help children regulate: movement breaks before sitting still is expected, heavy work like carrying and pushing, quiet retreats that carry no whiff of punishment.
Families, and when to call in help
Two more pieces complete the picture. First, families. Parents of sensory-sensitive children have often had years of hard supermarket trips and judgemental looks; a practitioner who describes their child’s needs without judgement, and shares what works at nursery, is offering something rare. The conversation goes both ways, because what parents know about bedtime and bath time will save you weeks of trial and error.
Second, knowing your limits. Most sensory needs can be met well by a thoughtful setting, but some children need an occupational therapist’s assessment and a proper plan. Training helps you tell the difference, so you neither refer every fidgety child nor sit for two terms on a need that deserved specialist eyes.
Build rooms where every child can settle and learn
The course covers the eight senses, sensory seeking and avoidance, room audits, regulation strategies and working with families and OTs, with an NFAQ-accredited certificate on completion.
Spring will arrive eventually, the doors will open again, and the garden will absorb some of the noise. But the child with his hands over his ears doesn’t need to wait for the weather. He needs adults who understand what he’s telling them, and a room that stops shouting at him. Both are within reach this term.