School is a pretty overwhelming experience for many children.

For traumatised or neuro-diverse children, it’s tens or hundreds of times worse. The senses are assaulted for hours and as they try and cope with it all, their emotions are constantly being shaken: shake, shake.

Sensory Overload

Noises – the chaos, the chatting, bells and alarms, slammed doors and teachers yelling. Even just being in the hall for assembly or in a class of pupils all shouting to be heard above the hubbub. For children who are sensitive to sound, this is like standing next to a huge speaker stack during a rock gig. Who could bear that for six straight hours? Some might be able to wear ear defenders, but others aren’t able to cope with the looks, the comments, the sensory feeling of them.

Touch – being jostled in corridors, having people in the lunch queue bump into you, the physical contact in PE, random strangers touching your hair or body. Never mind being pushed into a wall, or tripped or hurt. Their skin might be super sensitive and even a light touch can tip them into overload. For my daughter, she loathes having her hair touched and it happened All. The. Time. My son cannot bear certain textures – he physically shrinks from having them near his hands.

Smells – the lunch hall, the science lab, the toilets where boys and girls are spraying themselves liberally with deodorant. It’s enough to make children gag. Or be unable to eat. Or be physically sick. My daughter would have deodorant sprayed at her as part of bullying, making her recoil at the smell and onslaught.

The Need to Move

Sitting still is expected. You sit, listen and work without drawing attention to yourself. Because you are desperate to be invisible, to exist under the radar, so the teacher doesn’t notice you, ask you questions, expect you to speak out loud. But that means trying not to jig your leg, tap your fingers, rock your body, move.

My children need to move. Often. Not just little knee-jigs, but wholesale walking, running, jumping. My daughter would tremble, chew (nails, hair, clothing) and stim just to give her need to move a tiny outlet. Too little though. My son has a whole day in one classroom today and he’s worried because he won’t get to move between classes (necessary to help him cope).

Shake, Shake, Shake

All these things are shaking our kids. They are trying to cope, but it’s too much, too exhausting. Hours spent reading faces, trying to work out what to say, what not to say, how to fit in and appear normal. How to avoid doing anything that might single them out as different.

Imagine sitting in class of Russian students (or any language you don’t know) and being asked to remember everything they say, so you can report it all back later. How long do you think you’d be able to cope? To concentrate that hard, trying to work out everyone’s names, who says what and when, and what they are saying?

For our kids, its a room with ten Russians, all taking at top speed, whilst someone is poking you painfully in the ribs, wafting the smell of rotten eggs or sick under your nose, with fire alarms going off just by your ear. How long would you last?

Would you like or choose to do that six hours a day, five days a week, for much of the year? For years? No? Yet we ask our kids to do it, without blinking.

Exploding Coke

By the end of the school day (or earlier), the effort, the shaking becomes too much to bear. The child might lash out (cue detentions and exclusions), or they might keep it together until they come home.

My daughter is an exploder. She would come home and then scream, shout, cry. For hours.

My son is an imploder. He comes home, grunts, grabs food & drink, then hides in his bedroom on the X-box. Unable to talk about whatever is going on, whatever shook him up today.

Teachers say that children are fine, are coping, seem happy. Parents say they’re not fine, they’re not coping, they’re really unhappy. And sometimes we get stuck at that impasse, when it’s all masking.

What Can Schools Do?

Whilst schools can provide fidget items to help a pupil to stim, or ear defenders/ noise reduction, there is little they can do about the numbers of pupils, the teachers shouting, the alarms, the smells.

What we need is a radically different design of school. A low-sensory school, with:

• low level lighting (not glaring fluorescents) and blinds to reduce sunlight (remove shiny, mirrored surfaces)
• low noise levels with noise absorbing soft surfaces (carpet? soft shoes? lights for alarms?) and teachers who understand that shouting creates fight or flight responses
• enough space that pupils can move around without being jostled
• menus and lessons designed to avoid olfactory (smell) overload – or separate eating places for those who find the refectory to be unbearable
• encouragement for pupils who need to move to get up, walk about, to do what they need to keep their body calm

Inclusion isn’t giving a child ear defenders to cope. Inclusion is designing a low-noise environment that suits everyone.

It might be a crazy dream, but if only schools were more like this, then perhaps all our children would be given the chance to thrive.