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’s teacher 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.
nor Jaimie’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’s independence.
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.”
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