I've lost count of how many times I've heard this in response to a child becoming overwhelmed in a situation, “having a meltdown” or “going into crisis”, but two things are always true

1.      There is always a trigger

2.      It may not be obvious

We can think about it in terms of an analogy. We have the iceberg, which I'm sure many of you will have seen.

Here we can only really see the part of the iceberg that is above sea level, or in this analogy, the behaviour that we can see in front of us. We aren't able to see what other things that may be happening for the child that may have contributed to the presentation. So, in some situations it may appear that there was no particular trigger because we are not able to visibly see what it was.

You may be thinking, “if we can’t see the trigger then what is going on? How can I help?”

When the trigger isn’t obvious there are often lots of smaller things resulting in your child becoming overwhelmed, many of which would be tolerable on their own but together become too much.

For example:

• Their clothes don't feel right

• You've brushed their hair

• Someone has bumped into them on the way into school

• It's a non-uniform day which reduces predictability

• The breakfast cereal they usually have ran out

• The classroom is particularly noisy today

• They've had to wait in line longer to get into school day

• They haven't slept well the night before

  
  

This is not an exhaustive list by any means but if we think about what that might look like for ourselves, you may start to get a better idea of how this could feel:

• Your child has been up several times during the night so you've had a disrupted night’s sleep

• They became emotional because they didn't have time to play with their favourite toy before leaving this house this morning, meaning it took much longer to get ready to leave the house

• Your partner used the last of the coffee grounds so there's no coffee left for you this morning

• You're running late for work, and you still need to drop your child off at school

• Just as you're about the leave the house you drop the Tupperware box with your breakfast in and it smashes across the kitchen floor

• You can’t find your keys and now you’re really running late!

  
  

Separately, all of situations you could probably handle without difficulty, but together, I imagine that will lead to you feeling stressed, possible on the verge of being tearful, and generally feeling that you have a low tolerance for what the day will throw your way next.

The next person you met would have no idea about any of these situations, so may struggle to understand what appears to them an overreaction when they ask a question or give you a task at work. To them it appears that there is no trigger, you’re just acting irrationally.

This is why it’s so important for us to explore you, your child, and your home environment in depth when working together. Your child’s behaviours or presentation may be hard to understand but they are never random, and we will always have better luck coming up with strategies together when we take the whole picture into account. By getting to grips with everything important to your child and all the things that could be contributing to their difficulties, we’re able to come up with a completely individualised set of strategies and support to help make things much easier. 

If you’d like to start this process head to https://www.tinystridesot.com/sensory-assessment