Children with attention problems often have difficulty with processing sensations, like sights, touch, sounds, smells, and so on. They can miss or overreact to what they see or hear, such as different gestures, vocal intonations, and the like. These difficulties make it hard for them to differentiate between their own and other people's emotions and between someone's true intent and imagined intent.
We will look in more depth at how children make sense of what they see and hear and develop complex visual-spatial skills. Here, we are concerned with how children modulate their reactions to sensory stimuli and become flexible in what stimuli they can handle.
Some children with attention problems are overreactive to sensations and get distracted by every sound or sight or touch. Others are underreactive, so sounds or touch or visual input hardly register. These children tend to get lost in their own world. They may get absorbed in imagination, sometimes in brilliant and creative fantasy, but they have problems interacting with others. Some children can enjoy fantasy and also be interactive and have good relationships, but are not flexible enough to do so at the same time. How Do You Get Diagnosed With ADHD
Other children who receive the ADHD label are sensory craving. They seek sounds, sight, and touch and seem to want more and more. These children are extremely active and want to move and jump and crash into people and things. They are fidgety at school and can't sit still. This pattern is often the most challenging for parents and educators and all those around the child. As we pointed out earlier, people have argued from an evolutionary perspective that this kind of action orientation was once adaptive.
In modern society, this view holds, we are constraining the natural and appropriate activity level of children. However, in today's world, at work, in school, in sports, or the arts, it is necessary to be flexible, to be able to adapt to the situation at hand. Enterprising and creative people can structure their own activity level, but you have to be organized and in control to do that. There will always be an occasional need to sit and listen an classroom or take in what someone else has to say, or learn from others, as well as times when initiative and intense effort and activity are essential. Even the most physically active or quietly reflective of us needs to be flexible in how we modulate our activity.
Self Awareness
There are two basic abilities that help children modulate their response to sensations: self-awareness and flexibility. As children become more logical and their thinking grows more complex, they begin to be able to describe their own internal world. "I can't seem to slow down." "I tend to get scared by these loud sounds but not quiet ones." When children can think in this way, they can control themselves and their environment better and thus stay calm and attentive. A child can say, "I'm getting fidgety. I need to go outside and run" or even ask a teacher, "Can I walk around a little bit while I listen?" An understanding, flexible teacher might let such a child walk around in the back of the room while listening to the lecture.
Using these higher levels of thinking, an overreactive child or adult can sense that he is not going to learn as well in a busy, loud auditorium, or he may avoid rock-and-roll concerts or go out on the balcony during a noisy party for some alone time. A child who is self-aware may also be able to help his caregivers, parents, and occupational therapists identify the experiences that are calming for him. Often rhythmic activities, such as music, or firm hugs or squeezing one's own forearms or hands will help soften the overload.
Sometimes jumping on a trampoline, swinging, and getting what we call "vestibular input," that is, sensations in the inner ear, may be calming. The child may have noticed this about himself, and now he can act on it to help maintain his focus and attention. From more simple requests, such as "Shhh, Mom" or "Tone it down," to more diplomatic and elaborate explanations, a child can, in a sense, create environments that are more regulating and calming, in which he can pay attention and focus more easily. How Do You Get Diagnosed With ADHD
For underreactive children, becoming aware of their inattention may take time. When adults ask them, "Where have you been?" or "Didn't you hear the homework assignment?" these children need to recognize that they were lost in their own thoughts. A child who can know his own tendencies and say to himself "I've been daydreaming again" is on his way to becoming attentive at appropriate times.
Flexibility
Children with attention problems also need to become more flexible in the level of sensation they can tolerate. A sensory overreactive child needs to be able to deal with an ever-wider range of stimuli. Parents and caregivers can help the child do this by combining soothing activities like rhythmic movement with very, very gradual increases in sound or touch (different light touches on different parts of the body) or bright lights or colon, and so forth. Find an activity that the child experiences as very soothing and gradually add exposure to a wider range of stimuli. The more verbal the child is and the higher level of thinking he uses, the more he can cooperate in these ventures.
A sensory-craving child may need to be exposed to gradually decreasing levels of sensation, and helped to notice more subtle stimuli - soft colors, whispers, light massage, and so on. To learn more, you can check out How Do You Get Diagnosed With ADHD.
