#4 Parenting Hack: How Your Child’s Sensory Preference Determines Where They’ll Be Most Successful
Discover where your child falls on the sensory preference spectrum and how you can use this information to determine what kind of workplace best suits them. Learn more about Chelsea at www.chelsea-whitaker.com and you can check out her online, on-demand course, The Parent’s Guide to Discovering Your Child’s Dream Job at: https://chelsea-whitaker.teachable.com/p/discovering-your-childs-dream-job/ Chelsea: Hi everyone. This is Chelsea Whitaker, and I'm here with my sister Nicole today. We're talking about a parenting hack: how your child's sensory preference determines where they'll be most successful. I'm talking about sensory preferences based on Dunn's model of sensory processing that we use in occupational therapy world. We use this to identify how individuals relate to their environment with all their five senses and how they process those senses and how it determines their behavior. Although this is created for people with autism, I find it relates to everyone of all different ages. In fact, it has helped me be more successful and knowing in what environment I'm going to be most comfortable. It relates to you as a parent because knowing your child's sensory preference is going to help you set them up for success and the job environment that works best for them. So, we're going to talk about four different sensory preferences: sensory seeking, sensory sensitive, sensory avoidant, and low registration. Nicole: So, Chelsea. This is like a really technical occupational therapy thing, but I get it because you go around behind me making fun of me, kind of saying "sensory seeking, sensory seeking" because you recognize that I'm sensory seeking and I need lots of noise, lots of things to look at, and that's just how I work best. If I'm in a room where it's totally quiet, I'm going to start talking or I'm going to start singing because I need to fill up that room with noise because I can't handle being in a place that's totally quiet. So, auditory sensory input... that's just one type of sensory input. Beforeyou describe each of the four sensory styles and preferences, so parents can see which applies to their child, tell me about what sensory input is for each of the five senses. Auditory, like I said, is music... Noises... Having TV on in the background, people having background conversations. It can be as simple as like the humming of an air conditioning system or the humming of lights tapping on a computer, tapping on a keyboard... Chelsea: Right, and once you see the brightness of colors, the number of objects you have to process. If you're driving, you have to process all the signs, the road signs, the smells, wherever you go. If you go to a restaurant, there's going to be some strong smells there, but if you go to a block where there are several restaurants, there's going to be a lot more restaurant smells to process at one time. Nicole: What about taste? Chelsea: So if you add a lot of spices to your food, or if you find that food is bland without a lot of salt, a lot of pepper, you would be more sensory seeking, but somebody who just can't handle the texture of certain foods, like apple sauce or cottage cheese, they might be sensory sensitive or avoidant.
