How Sensory Affects Behavior with Wendy Bertagnole

Today, we have an amazing guest and a friend that I met on the Instagram space, Wendy Bertagnole. I just love what she teaches what she stands for. She is a lot like me with — all behaviors communication, and we can't just ignore the junk and hope it goes away. We have to understand what our child's communicating and then support with support them with the new skills.

I’m going to share some of the super valuable things she shared with me in our interview. But if you want the full effect, listen to the podcast!

“Sensory is this thing that I think everybody has a misinterpretation of a lot of people here sensory and they're like, oh, yeah our five senses. They think oh, yeah that's for kids with autism or that's for kids with sensory processing disorder or whatever. But really what most people don't know is that sensory affects all of us all the time.

It affects our emotions and our emotions then affect our behavior. So the more we understand the reality of sensory and how it affects all of us the more we can address and be proactive with behavior and it’s this magical little nugget of knowledge that I think every mom should have.”

Ever since Wendy introduced me to sensory, and its effect on behavior, my eyes have been opened. Something that's really stood out to me was one of the sensory things was proprioceptive input and she talked about how we have different preferences. So some of us like to sleep with like heavy blankets on or have tight jeans or whatever and I was like, that is me it changed my life. If I don't have a heavier comforter, I have to put pillows on top of me to get to sleep and so it just helps me figure out my own sensory preferences and calm my body.

Exactly and I think that's the power of understanding sensory as we can say. Oh, that's why I do this or that's why my kid does that or that's why I feel so much calmer when I have this. So for example, one of my sensory things is I cannot handle my skin being dry or dirty.

So all growing up I would (this sounds really weird and really gross) but I would lick the inside of between my thumb and my finger because that's where it gets dry. The most I would look at so that it would be not dry which made it even drier. But now I don't lick my hands that's really gross. So I have to keep lotion on hand all the time. Otherwise if my hands and feet are dry. I get really anxious. I get really snippy and I get really upset. So it's just a little thing that I can do to them again proactive with my behaviors. The same thing happens with my daughter actually has a similar sensory preference and if her feet get dirty, she gets really upset. So one time I just wasn't thinking for family pictures and I had had her and cute little flip flops. And of course we were from jumping around in the dirt and so her feet got dirty and all of a sudden she's in like massive meltdown mode right during pictures.

No this is not happening. But thankfully because I knew that was one of her sensory preferences. We had baby wipes in the car and lotion because I get it right so it was so much easier to just go and say oh I know why she's freaking out her feet are dirty. This is an easy fix wiped off her feet put her shoes back on and she was fine and we just stayed out of the dirt. It was fine. 

Before I learned any of this, every time I thought about sensory. I thought of two things, first of all sensory play. So you just play and get messy or whatever. That's one thing. Second, I heard about the sensory preferences type of stuff, I was always thinking of sensory processing disorder. But everybody has these sensory preferences and if we know our child doesn't like to have her feet dirty, we can prepare with wipes in the car, then we've helped that we understand their behavior and we've helped them sort it out super quickly because we just understand why they're having this strong reaction.

We can't just ignore the behavior that we don't like, if I just ignored my daughter and her freak-out session when we were in family pictures, her feet still would have been dirty. She would have just had to get to the point where she was ignoring her own body to be able to please me to be able to get past that meltdown and that's not effective and it's not emotionally helpful for anybody. 

What’s the difference between sensory preferences and SPD?

Since your preferences are something we all have and it just tells us where we prefer things to be for our body to feel right. Sensory processing disorder are when those preferences get in the way of everyday life — when they prevent us from eating food. Like there's some kids to eat literally five different foods or 10 different foods. That's a little bit more extreme. So the more extreme would mean closer to sensory processing disorder.

The Cup Analogy 

Imagine that we all have a series of seven cups in us and each cup represents our seven senses. (Yes, there are seven— there's actually nine but we're just going to go into seven cuz the other two are less researched). 

So a big cup would mean our body is seeking more of that a little cup is our body only tolerate a little bit of it. So we're going to avoid it most of the time.

Our seven senses are see, hear, taste, touch, smell, proprioception, and vestibular.

Somebody with a large hearing cup would be one who likes to have the music on and they don't mind background noise. They can have a conversation with people without having things bother them noise does not bother them really, and they enjoy the noise. 

Somebody with a small hearing cup (which is most moms at like 6 p.m) would be one where loud noise can be really overstimulating or just overpowering and too much. 

Like when I take my kids to the trampoline park, I have to seriously like take deep breaths and tell myself. It's going to be it's not forever. But also if there's just too many different noises it overwhelms me. So that's the thing about understanding sensory is when we know we have a small cup in a certain area we can work on accommodations to be able to tolerate these things or we can prepare ourselves with strategies to be able to address them. So, you know, I still take my kids to the trampoline park. I just know it's going well me so I'm going to have to do something to calm myself down during and after.

Proprioceptive

Proprioception is the amount of pressure or movement that exists in every single joint in our entire body. So the more pressure and stimulation, there is the more proprioceptive input. Proprioception tends to be very calming. So like you said you like weight on you at night. You probably have a pretty big proprioceptive cup and so you probably like a lot of movement you probably feel really calm after you workout or after you are outside with the pheasants or whatever it is. You probably receive a lot of really great proprioceptive input from that.

So knowing that that's a calming thing is really great kids. A lot of times, kids who are labeled as aggressive tend to have big proprioceptive cups because a big huge massive bear hug feels really easy to their body. They don't understand that. 

There are so many different times when we need calming strategies right in the moment of an in a heat-of-the-moment. It's not time to teach your kids or stop them. It's time to help them find their calm when we have these ideas. We can help them find their common different ways. So it's not here's a sensory box just to give you just because it's random and people say it's good. 

What would you suggest to people who are using the sensory boxes? Would you just have it be for play? What do you have to say about sensory boxes?

I love that you asked us and I say it's an individual thing, just like there's not one parenting strategy that works every time for every child. There's not one sensory plaything that's going to be right for every child. So for example, if you have a child with a small touch cup they’re going to be more overwhelmed by a Sandbox. 

So if it's calming to your child, you'll know. If it's overstimulating to your child, you should still have them engage in it in a different way like with tongs, for example, instead of putting their hands in the sand. They can grab things with tongs — still great fine motor activities

Vestibular

The vestibular is just our body being in motion. It's just when our body is in motion when our head is tilting when we're swinging when we're spinning when we’re in a car — that's filling the vestibular cup. So people with a large vestibular a cup, they're going to love those things and people with a small vestibular cup, they’re going to hate those thoughts. Maybe they get carsick. Maybe they're just like me and I cannot for the life of me swing it just holy cow. I get sick. It's horrible. I hate it. You won't find me on a Merry-Go-Round. It's just not my thing. So people who hate roller coasters part of that might be a sensory preference. Absolutely. Absolutely.

How do you figure out if your child is seeking or avoiding? 

Those with a big cup will be seeking and those with a small cup will be avoiding. If the big cup is too empty, it triggers strong emotions or anxious emotions or anger or whatever it is. 

If a little cup is too full it triggers those negative emotions come up as well. 

So naturally our body wants to keep it perfectly level. And so it's going to do whatever it can to keep that level. 

People say, oh your child's just trying to gain attention or gain access to something or oh you're just your child is just trying to escape this. Well escaping and avoiding and gaining access to something aren't necessarily bad things. If your child is trying to gain access to something because your body says they need it. It's okay if your child is trying to escape something because their body says that needs it. That's okay too.

It's just another level of helping us understand the functions of behavior. 

We don’t say “they shouldn't be escaping or they shouldn't be like trying to seek your attention.” It's not about what they're doing. It's about how they're doing it and so we want them to still get that attention. But we want to teach them. 

“Hey, if you need a hug from Mom just come up and say hey Mom, I need a hug.” 

I always use church as an example of this because kids usually try to escape church, by screaming or crying or being super disruptive and wiggly. Escape is not a bad thing. If they need a break they can say “hey, I need a break,” but if they're doing this total tantrum behavior to get a break — then that's where we want to teach them a new skill to be able to communicate. Okay. I need to escape this it's not working for me.

Imagine if you have a child with a really big proprioceptive cup so their body is saying move move move move move and they have a really small hearing cup. So their body is saying I can't handle noise maybe of churches like the worst place possible for them. 

So wouldn't it be so much more effective to teach our kids to say. “Hey, my ears need a break right now or my body needs to go on a walk right now.” And that's so much easier way to empower our kids to do that rather than to just say if our kids don't know their sensory system. Then it just comes out as behavior and they don't know why they need to escape it their bodies just screaming at them. 

Do kids who have different sensory preferences get misdiagnosed with things like ADHD?

Yes.

I don't know the research right now. But, I have no problem with a diagnosis and I have no problem with medication a diagnosis. My first form of action for everything is to look at the sensory preferences that could be involved. We're going to look at that first and we're going to do what we can to be proactive or those sensory preferences. And then if it's still interfering with daily life or in a way that we just can't handle or is really extreme…then we can go and deal with the rest of it. 

Can children who have ADHD, get support through knowing sensory preferences?

Absolutely, almost always. Kids with ADHD could have some more support if parents knew what their sensory preferences were exactly. I actually just talked to you to my friends who have children with ADHD. One of them's on medication for it and explaining the sensory stuff to them. They're like, oh my gosh, I see now how to help him do this and how I can help him focus, and why he's always so moving all the time all these things. So it's not an end-all be-all, but it is a great first form of action when you suspect that there is something. 

I had a parent I was coaching — and she was eating dog food, sand, EVERYTHING non-edible. We want to make sure that it's not a deficiency. So, I suggested she get that checked for iron or whatever. It came back negative. So, it's probably just an oral sensory table preference, like she just needs a lot more oral sensory input and I'm not like an OT, so I can't diagnose the sensory diet or a processing disorder, but knowing this I'm like she probably needs some more oral sensory input. 

So why don't you try to feed her more crunchy foods before she plays outside, or why don't you try, you know like to suck a necklace or something that's more appropriate for her to chew on that you you feel comfortable with. She's eating edamame crunched up with something else for a sandy texture… which is giving her that input in an appropriate way. 

What was funny — is someone's like well this sounds like a sensory diet. Is she an OT? And I was a little bit bugged because I know I’m not an OT. And I'm not saying she has a sensory processing disorder, but knowing our kid’s preferences is part of understanding their behavior and when we can understand that behavior, we don't have to have this autism diagnosis or this SPD diagnosis to put supports in place for them in school or at home or whatever. Do you have anything to say about that? 

I think it's our responsibility as parents to understand our kid’s sensory preferences and then support those.

I mean, somebody could say gosh if you're giving your kid any kind of vitamins that sounds like something a pediatrician should be doing you know, there we can go to the extreme right off that we can't do anything on our own. I'm not an occupational therapist either and I coach people on sensory processing because I understand it and because it helps.

Where can parents have an in-depth look with you regarding sensory support and behavior? What do you what materials do you have for us?

I have a workshop coming up which would be fantastic, where we go over the sensory preferences, what they are, and how it translates into behavior. 

My specialty so I have my master's degree in Special Ed, my bachelor of development very similar to what your background is. My favorite thing to do is teach people the “why” behind behavior so they can be proactive and preventive. 

That's what I love doing, especially in this workshop coming up!

I have a free workbook that people can gain access to on my website off the exceptional parenting podcast, and on my Instagram @wendybertagnole.