Sensory sensitivities in our neurodivergent children

Sensory discomfort and sensory delight: one of the key areas to understanding the spending and replenishing of energy

Trigger warning: there is the mention of mental health conditions and suicidal ideation

I remember my daughter’s first trip to the zoo when she was almost two. The sounds of the animals chattering, chuffing, growling, grunting were juxtaposed with the complete silence from my girl. As crowds pressed around cages, engulfing us, my daughter clung to my husband’s back and hid her eyes in his neck. We knew she’d hit her limit. The zoo map marked paths unexplored, yet the time had come to leave. We walked out the gate and she immediately melted into a puddle of wails, breathlessly gulping at air. But it wasn’t leaving that triggered her, it was all that preceded it. We had thought we left early, measured by animals unseen, but, when measured by overwhelm, we had left late.

The last post was on Spoon Theory—metaphorical spoons measuring units of energy spent or replenished. At the zoo, my then two year-old had spent all her spoons.

The risks

If we ignore our neurodivergent child’s unique interaction with the world, they might be forced to constantly run on empty. Short-term, this can lead to meltdowns in the form of explosions, implosions, or freezing (more in posts to come). Over a period of time, running on empty can make them more likely to experience anxiety, depression, burn-out, suicidal ideation, eating disorders, and substance abuse, while suffering poor self-management, low executive functioning, low motivation for social experiences, and a lower tolerance of sensory input.^⁠1

It isn’t something to ignore.

Sensory processing

So what can we do? There are so many factors that can contribute to a neurodivergent person’s energy depletion, today we’ll examine an important factor: sensory input. Neurodivergent people often process the sensory environment differently. For many, the world is brimming with sensations that demand attention and drain energy. Understanding the impact of these sensory inputs can help us as we help the child remove or manage many impactful aspects of the sensory world.

James (name has been changed), a Christian father of an autistic child, reflects on this topic of sensory sensitivities, saying, “things that may not impact other kids so much can have a much bigger impact on our daughter… we see how she's responding to things like lights being too bright, or noises being too much, or smells being too strong. It takes effort to accept this difference, because those things are not too much for us as parents”

Rebecca (name has been changed) tells me of her autistic daughter and AuDHD (autism plus ADHD) son, “What you see on the surface/out in public/at school/at your home is not what we see in our home! Our children mask a great deal… Just because someone looks like everyone else, doesn't mean their brain/nervous system works the same as everyone else's. Just because someone appears to be coping, doesn't mean they are.”

Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash

Listening to your child and working with them on this topic is a beautiful way to come to understand them better and to equip them to navigate this world.

As Christians, we approach this topic from a wonderfully empowering standpoint:

Psalm 139 reminds us that each person, including their sensory profile, has been hand-made by God:

For you created my inmost being;

You knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made

Psalm 139:13-14a.

Who do we want our children to be like?

As our child moves through the noisy, busy, smelly, scratchy world, they might choose to wear sunglasses, earplugs, especially soft clothes, use special pens and engage in other behaviours that empower them to courageously manage their spoons in ways that neurotypicals around them don’t need to.

In encouraging this, remember that our God-made neurodivergent children aren’t called to mimic the average person, but to mimic the best person: Jesus (1 John 2:6). Jesus inhabited a limited, fragile body (Phil 2) and didn’t strive to be like everyone else, he strove to bring glory to the father (John 17:4). Remembering who we want our children to be like frees them: the standard to which we aspire is not a neurotypical existence, but an existence that brings glory to God (Matt 5:16).

The eight senses

As James said above, difference in sensory experience can be difficult to understand for those of us who do not have sensory processing difference. Let’s break it down.

There are eight senses: visual, auditory, olfactory (smell), tactile, taste, vestibular (balance), proprioception (body awareness) and interoception (internal). Each one relays information to the brain where it is processed. For many neurodivergent people, there is a difference in how the brain processes this information. A neurotypical person does not consciously register most of the sensations they encounter, irrelevant information is filtered out and only relevant information is brought to their conscious attention. People with a sensory processing difference will often filter out much less, instead consciously processing stimuli that others don’t notice, such as the feeling of the seams of their clothes, the tick-tock of the clock, or the smell of the teacher’s perfume.^⁠2

This can lead to people feeling especially drained by having too much sensory stimulation from their environment. If any of these can be mitigated, the child will have less they have to cope with.

Importantly, senses don’t only drain energy. Many neurodivergent people have a mix of sensory-avoiding and sensory-seeking behaviours.^⁠3 Some stimuli are especially invigorating for them. Many find rocking or spinning to be relaxing (vestibular stimulation), or touching or chewing certain things calming, or find watching patterns of light mesmerising. Some find loud noises or the gentle bubble of a fountain relaxing.

Dr Luke Beardon, an expert in sensory sensitivity, says that for some autistic people, they have positive sensory experiences that are more than just pleasant, he describes it as “sensory joy”. For our autistic daughter, it’s the feeling of our dog’s fur. Dr Beardon says that for some autistic people, this joy is the best thing about being autistic, he says “there’s this extraordinary juxtaposition on the one hand of sensory joy and on the other hand sensory distress sometimes within the same individual”^⁠4

Photo by MI PHAM on Unsplash

An activity

The best way to discover what depletes or feeds our child’s energy is to get it from them. Whether they are able to communicate this verbally or using aids, or we observe their behaviour and allow their reactions to communicate it. Together with your neurodivergent child, you might like to complete the table below to start the process of shared understanding.

Energy in/energy out

For each item, if it gives energy, put a +, if it drains energy, put a -. Leave it blank if it doesn’t have an impact. There’s space for you and your child to add more things that add or deplete energy, think through each of the eight senses.

Hopefully this chart will prompt you and your child to think widely about all sorts of sensory inputs. A 10 year-old autistic girl shared with me, “I don’t like people chewing. Sometimes I can’t sit with my friends at lunch because they eat so annoyingly.” So she would add the sound of chewing to the chart as an energy depleter. She also said, “I like to go for a walk or bounce on a yoga ball or use my gymnastic bar. I have a gymnastic room where I have lots of mats to flip on.” So she would add these as energy replenishers.

This chart could help you know which small, thoughtful changes will make a difference to your child. You might turn the lights out over the dining table, suggest they jump on the trampoline before they have a shower, buy earplugs for them for noisy environments, etc.

Christian mother, Amelia (name has been changed), tells me of adjustments they made for her autistic daughter, “We switched our appliances like the microwave and washing machine to mutable ones with no beeping. We also have all phone sounds off. I had never noticed all the sounds in our house until I had to minimise them when our daughter was running from the room with her hands over her ears at certain sounds during a particularly energy-sapping year for her.” 

As we saw in the last post, God has chosen to weave limitations into the fabric of all humanity, there is no shame for our child in having limits. Jesus walked the earth as a limited man and worked to bring glory to God within those limits. The beautiful thing is, when stop fighting our children’s limitations and instead accept them and work with them, often the child will grow in their confidence to be able to mitigate their own particular spoon-sappers and be free to safely spend their spoons of energy, knowing they have systems in place to replenish them.

You might like to keep reading: see my article on sensory kits, invisible sensory kits, exhaustion, balancing energy in/energy out, and the sensory experience for some at church.

FOOTNOTES

^{1 Attwood, T. and Garnett, M. (2023). Autistic Girls and Women, Webcast event: Attwood and Garnett Events. Accessed August 2023: attwoodandgarnettevents.com}

^{2 To assess any given environment, the Webster framework can be a useful guideline but should be adapted according to categories that are impactful for the individual neurodivergent child, Webster, A. A., Saggers, B., and Carrington, S. (2021). Inclusive Teaching for Students on the Autism Spectrum. In S. Carrington, B. Saggers, K. Harper-Hill, & M. Whelan (Eds.), Supporting Students on the Autism Spectrum in Inclusive Schools: A Practical Guide to Implementing Evidence-Based Approaches, Routledge. (pp. 47-57)}

^{3 Grant, Robert Jason, et al. The Complete Guide to Becoming an Autism Friendly Professional : Working with Individuals, Groups,
and Organizations, Taylor & Francis Group, 2021. (pp. 104-107)}

^{4 Luke Beardon, Demystifying autism and overstimulation, BBC, 2023. This is a helpful look at depleting and replenishing stimuli.}