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Key points
- In school, higher levels of sensory stimulation alongside academic demands can feel overwhelming for kids.
- When kids come home from school, they may need to release all that has been pent-up.
- Tools around the house that can help include swivel chairs, a laundry basket with pillows, and binaural beats.
Does your child get home from school and just lose it?
When it’s time for homework, does it feel like a constant battle?
Within the context of childhood development, kids are learning to manage their physical and emotional states of regulation. With often-full schools and classrooms, and higher levels of sensory stimulation alongside academic demands, this can feel overwhelming for many kids.
Our kids try their best to manage those physical and emotional feelings in school, to varying degrees. They then come home, to their safe space, where they can release all that has been pent-up.
But wait! There are expectations, to different extents: Homework. Dinner. Cleaning their rooms.
It can feel like too much.
As their caregivers, we have powerful self-regulatory tools in our tool belt already within our home setting that we can adjust to meet their needs
Here are some examples you can easily implement into your existing after-school routines:
- Cardboard box/laundry basket stuffed with pillows: Using a large-enough laundry basket or cardboard box with a few pillows provides your child with a a nice squeeze to their whole body (through proprioceptive input). It can be a nice place to read, do homework (they can just use a clipboard), or tell you about their day. Depending on the child’s size, this would determine the size of the laundry basket/box. This would be a good tool to use if the child is feeling low energy, high energy, or emotionally dysregulated.
- “My list of 10”: Tell your child the following: “Everybody has strengths, and things that they need to work on. Some days feel harder than others, and this is a great tool if you are feeling mad/sad/worried and need a boost in your confidence.” Your child should come up with 10 things that define who they are. Ask your child: “Think—what makes you special? What makes you unique and amazingly awesome?” Have them write out their list, and attach it to a keyring, use it as a bookmark, hang it in their workspace, or put it on a surface by their bed, etc. They should look at this list whenever they need a boost.
- Velcroed everyday items: There is a therapeutic value of putting the "scratchy" Velcro dots on everyday items that children use on a daily basis, adding a sensory component to the materials, rather than relying on external fidgets and manipulatives. The scratchy Velcro surface acts as an alerting tactile (touch) input through receptors in the skin. This would be a good tool to use for children who frequently feel low energy, or who like to fidget with items—high energy. Examples of items where children can place Velcro could be at the top of the shaft of a pencil or pen, on the bottom and/or sides of a water bottle with a resistant straw, on the bottom of notebooks or a planner, at the bottom of a chair or desk, etc.
- Swivel chair: Swivel chairs are great for a lot of reasons. They offer a good amount of vestibular input, so they are calming to the nervous system—good to try for students who are feeling emotionally dysregulated. They can also increase arousal levels for those children who are low energy, as this type of input serves as alerting. It is important to note that you should be careful with the amount of vestibular input you use, as its effect can last for four to six hours and may not show up until later. Do not allow your child to spin too fast—remind them to use self-control, and this could be a great seating option for those who need it.
- MP3 player/laptop: Upload tracks of binaural beats music to a classroom MP3 player or to your child’s computer or MP3 player, with a focus on relaxation, creativity, or focus/attention. Thus, when your child is feeling low energy, they can use a focusing/attention track of music with higher frequencies of music. When they are feeling emotionally dysregulated or high energy, they can use a relaxation track with lower frequencies of music. Binaural beats/tones are tones of slightly different frequencies, presented to each ear. Research has shown that binaural beats can improve attention, creativity, and overall relaxation (depending on the tone). You can upload binaural beats music (e.g., Hemi-Sync®) directly to the MP3 player/computer.
All strategies listed are from the third book in my Awesome and in Control Curriculum.
