Hi! I have 2 kids who are 10 & 11 years old.
The 11 year old is clearly sensory seeking, but the rest of us are sensory sensitive. I really, really don’t want to accidentally send the message that they’re ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ for their stims just because it happens to clash with the rest of the family.
The 11 year old will repeatedly drum or bang on things, constantly make loud verbal stims, etc. This drives me & the 10 year old crazy.
Having a ‘mixed’ household in terms of sensory needs has got to be relatively common.
Has anybody found any good solutions for this?
- I just found out about haptic headphones and thought that might work for the 11 year old, but I’m worried they’ll turn the volume up enough to damage their hearing (they currently have kid-style headphones with a volume maximum they can’t override since they tend to turn everything up to max volume).
- I gave them a fidget ring which they LOVED, but their classmates could hear it and started to give them weird looks so they stopped wearing it. When you’re neurodivergent it’s hard enough to fit in, so I didn’t push it.
- I thought about seeing if they’d like some of the little ouchie type fidget toys for heightened stimulation.
Any ideas? What have you guys figured out if you have both sensory seeking AND sensory sensitive members in your family?