When Professional Behavior Expertise Meets Real Life
Making sensory expertise practical for families in real-world moments.
Our Expertise Has to Work at 6 P.M.
As professionals, we hear parents and clients raise concerns about sensory processing and regulation every day, whether that is within a medical setting, an educational classroom, or even in the parking lot at Target.
What families are not always able to gather from us are the simplest, most practical considerations that could strengthen the work we provide as occupational therapists, psychotherapists, holistic practitioners, neurodiversity professionals, or educational leaders. Our evaluations, reports, and summaries often contain complex clinical or educational language, sometimes including DSM-5 diagnostic criteria, detailed observations, assessment results, and recommendations. That information may be necessary, but necessary does not always mean usable.
As leaders and professionals, we have a responsibility to slow down and consider what our recommendations look like in the moments when a parent or child is actually experiencing a crisis.
Let's use Mrs. Ericka Moore as our parent. It is 6 p.m., dinner is on the table, and her three-year-old son, Andrew, has slid out of his chair for the fourth time. Or it is bath night, and what should take ten minutes has turned into a 30-minute negotiation over the temperature of the water. Or it is the ride home from a birthday party that was supposed to be fun, and Andrew, who was laughing an hour ago, is now sobbing because of the way his sock feels.
Mrs. Moore does not have our report open in front of her. She is not reviewing the diagnostic criteria, searching through clinical terminology, or rereading a page of generalized recommendations. She is trying to understand what changed, what Andrew's behavior is communicating, and what she can do next.
That is where our expertise has to meet her.
Moving Beyond the Five-Sense Explanation
Most families were taught that there are five senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. That explanation is tidy, easy to remember, and incomplete.
Seven sensory systems continuously provide information to the brain. The two systems most frequently left out of everyday conversations—vestibular and proprioceptive processing—are often closely connected to the behaviors families and educators find the most difficult to interpret.
When a child cannot remain seated, becomes dysregulated after an enjoyable activity, avoids ordinary routines, crashes into furniture, or appears to react intensely to a minor event, adults may describe the behavior as overreacting, noncompliance, attention-seeking, or poor emotional control. However, what appears disproportionate from the outside may be a nervous system attempting to process more input than it can comfortably manage.
Our responsibility is not merely to recognize that possibility. We must explain it in language that allows families and other members of the child's team to recognize it, too.
Visual Processing
Bright, busy, or flickering light can require significantly more neurological effort than it appears to require. Fluorescent lighting, crowded walls, movement throughout a classroom, and screens operating at full brightness all contribute to the visual information a child must continually filter.
It is not enough to write that a child is "sensitive to visual stimuli." Families and educators need to understand what that may look like during ordinary routines. A child may turn away from a task, cover their eyes, become irritable in a brightly lit store, or struggle to concentrate in a visually crowded space.
Usable guidance should give a family a realistic place to begin. We do not need to provide ten recommendations at once; one or two clearly explained adjustments may be more effective.
Try this: Dim, warm lighting in bedrooms and homework spots. Reduce visual clutter on walls near a desk or reading nook.
Auditory Processing
Most adults understand that loud sounds can be overwhelming, but the cumulative effect of layered sound is often missed. A television, a sibling talking, the dishwasher running, a dog barking, and a notification sounding may each be tolerable independently while becoming overwhelming when experienced together.
When we identify auditory sensitivity, we should also identify the environments and routines in which layered sound is most likely to interfere with participation. Instead of broadly recommending a "quiet environment," we can provide families and educators with a practical way to determine when reducing competing sounds may be most beneficial.
Try this: Select one or two high-demand periods—such as homework, dinner, transitions, or bedtime—and reduce competing sounds during those windows. During other times, explore noise-reducing or noise-canceling headphones, either over-the-ear or in-ear, based on the child's comfort and ability to use them safely.
The device should not become the entire recommendation. The larger goal is to recognize when the environment is demanding more auditory filtering than the child can sustain.
Tactile Processing
Clothing tags, seams, certain fabrics, grass, sand, grooming activities, and unexpected physical contact can create persistent discomfort for a child with tactile sensitivity. These experiences may appear small to an observer, but they consume a substantial amount of the child's regulatory capacity before the day has fully begun.
When a family reports repeated conflict around clothing, bathing, hair care, or physical affection, those concerns should be treated as information rather than dismissed as fussiness or avoidance. The essential leadership practice is believing the reported experience, even when the intensity of that experience is not visible to us.
Try this: Remove clothing tags, explore seamless clothing, provide choices during grooming routines, and give notice before physical touch. Do not underestimate how much a "small" clothing complaint may be a genuine, ongoing irritant rather than fussiness.
Olfactory Processing
Cleaning products, candles, perfumes, food preparation, and other everyday scents can be genuinely distressing for someone with heightened olfactory sensitivity. Because scent is experienced differently by each person, the child may be reacting to something that the adults in the environment barely notice.
A recommendation to "avoid strong smells" is unlikely to be useful unless we teach the family or educational team how to identify patterns. When does the reaction occur? What products, locations, foods, or people are present? Does the child avoid the space, report feeling sick, cover their nose, or become increasingly irritable?
Try this: Use unscented or lightly scented products in shared spaces, particularly in bedrooms, eating areas, classrooms, and other locations the child cannot easily leave. Track whether specific products, foods, people, or environments consistently precede discomfort.
Gustatory Processing
Taste cannot be separated from texture, temperature, smell, and the intensity of flavor. A child described as a "picky eater" may be managing genuine sensory input rather than attempting to control an adult or refuse cooperation.
Professionals must be cautious about reducing feeding concerns to behavior alone. Families need permission to observe preferences as meaningful data: Which textures are consistently accepted? Which temperatures are avoided? Does the child tolerate mixed textures? Is the difficulty connected to chewing, swallowing, smell, predictability, or another factor requiring further evaluation?
Try this: Offer variety without immediate pressure and pay attention to texture, temperature, smell, and presentation preferences as meaningful information—not simply a phase to push through. Keep a familiar option available while introducing unfamiliar foods gradually.
Feeding or swallowing concerns may require referral to a qualified occupational therapist, speech-language pathologist, dietitian, or medical provider. Strong leadership includes recognizing the boundaries of our own discipline and coordinating with the professional whose expertise is needed next.
Vestibular Processing
The vestibular system, located within the inner ear, contributes to movement, balance, and the brain's understanding of where the body is in space. Some children seek spinning, swinging, jumping, or rough play because movement provides organizing input. Others avoid playground equipment, become carsick easily, fear having their feet leave the ground, or become overwhelmed by fast and unpredictable movement.
It is not enough to tell a family that their child "needs more movement." We should help distinguish between movement that supports regulation and movement that increases dysregulation.
Try this: For a child who seeks vestibular input, build in planned movement opportunities—such as swinging, spinning, jumping, or trampoline time—before activities requiring sustained focus. For a child who avoids movement, begin with slow, predictable options such as rocking or gentle swaying rather than anything fast or unexpected.
Recommendations should remain individualized and, when needed, informed by an occupational therapy evaluation rather than applied as a universal sensory solution.
Proprioceptive Processing
The proprioceptive system receives information through the muscles and joints and contributes to body awareness, force, posture, and coordinated movement. Differences within this system may be observed when a child crashes into furniture, hugs with unexpected force, frequently stomps, chews on objects, or appears unaware of how much pressure they are using.
Activities commonly described as "heavy work" may provide organizing input for some children. However, simply handing a family a list of sensory activities is not the same as developing a meaningful plan.
Try this: Incorporate safe "heavy work," such as carrying groceries, pushing a laundry basket, completing animal walks, or participating in other pushing, pulling, and carrying activities. A weighted blanket may also be considered for downtime when it is appropriate for the child and used according to relevant safety guidance.
Families need to know why an activity is being suggested, what response they should observe, and how to determine whether it is regulating, overstimulating, ineffective, or unsafe. The activity itself is only one part of the recommendation. Interpretation and follow-through are what make it useful.
What an Article Cannot Fully Solve
These seven systems do not operate independently, and they will not present identically in any two children—or even in the same child on two different days. Sleep, hunger, illness, emotional demands, environmental changes, communication needs, and cumulative stress can all affect how much sensory input a nervous system can manage.
An adjustment that regulates one child may overwhelm another. A strategy that worked yesterday may not work today because the child's internal and environmental demands have changed.
This is why generalized recommendations must remain a starting point rather than being treated as a diagnosis or individualized plan. As professionals, we should resist the temptation to provide a list of sensory tools without first understanding the child's patterns, environments, responses, and functional needs.
Interdisciplinary collaboration matters here. Occupational therapists, psychotherapists, educators, medical professionals, neurodiversity coaches, and other practitioners may each hold a different piece of the child's story. Leadership requires us to bring those perspectives together, remain within our professional scope, and ensure that the family is not left alone to translate competing terminology and disconnected recommendations.
The measure of our expertise is not how complex our report sounds. It is whether Mrs. Moore can recognize what may be happening when Andrew slides from his chair, resists the bath, or begins sobbing over his sock—and whether she leaves our care with a clear, realistic, and individualized direction for what to do next.
Our expertise has to extend beyond the evaluation room, classroom, or office.
It has to work at 6 p.m.
