Eps 205: Wendy Bertagnole breaks down the sensory system in a way that makes PERFECT SENSE!

Subscribe to the Podcast

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:02
Kay and Jay gave joyful courage a five star review and said that it is a must read for all parents. Casey outdid herself with this wonderful book, which gives you real life scenarios, her own life experiences and different outcomes, to make sure you always have an avenue to help you on this journey. While reading her book, you will constantly shake your head yes to many things she is sharing. This book helps you think outside the box from different angles, to help you think from your child's point of view with proper cause, in addition to making you look inside yourself to see what your triggers are and why you react to different things. Parents, we've got this and Casey truly helps us in this incredible life we all have. I'm super excited to let you know that joyful courage, calming the drama and taking control of your parenting journey will soon be out in audiobook format through audible Stay tuned for more details.

Hey, podcast listeners, welcome to joyful courage. I'm so glad that you're here and listening. Joyful courage is a conscious parenting podcast, a place where I like to bring information and inspiration to the parenting journey. I'm your host, Casey Casey o'rourdy, I am a positive discipline trainer. I'm a parent coach, but most importantly, I am a fellow traveler on the journey of parenting. I am thrilled, thrilled, thrilled that you're listening in. This show is all about stepping into the personal growth and development that is always waiting for us here in this era of being mothers, of being fathers, of loving the kids that we have while staying lovingly detached from what's showing up in their lives. I know that sounds weird, right? Being detached Tanya, it'll change your life if you can do it. The show is designed to offer you guidance. You can take it, you can leave it. It's a buffet of information. Just listen, right? Just listen. Create your own value. Listen for nuggets that land for you, and if something doesn't just leave it behind, it's all good. I would love to know what you think. I have many communities that you can join. You can follow me on Instagram or Facebook. You can join in the conversation at live and love with joyful courage on Facebook or joyful courage for parents of teenagers on Facebook. So I love to be in conversation with my listeners, knowing what's going on in your life, and bringing some of what you desire most challenges that you are currently facing, bringing them onto the podcast, bringing them into these conversations, so that I can be in service to you. I really hope that you enjoy this show, and I'm confident that you will. Hi, listeners. My guest today is Wendy bertnall. Wendy is a lover of chocolate, lifter of heavyweights, believer in wearing yoga clothes most every day, and a mother of three kids, she works with moms who are frustrated with their children's behavior, helping them to once again, enjoy motherhood and their kids. With an undergrad degree in child development and a master's in special education, Wendy has taken what she's learned while raising her kids to serve others, Wendy knows that not every child shows up 100% happy and willing to cooperate every moment of the day, hmm, yeah, which can be frustrating. She believes every behavior is a form of communication, and her mission is to help every parent understand what their child is communicating through their behavior. Wendy's work is so aligned with the mission of joyful courage, and I'm thrilled to have some time to talk with her today. Hi, Wendy. Welcome to the podcast. Hey,

Wendy Bertagnole 4:09
Casey, thanks so much for having me here. I am so happy to be here and sharing this message with you, because it is just so important. Yeah, please

Casey O'Roarty 4:18
share a little bit about your journey of doing what you do.

Wendy Bertagnole 4:21
Well, it started when I became a mom almost 13 years ago. And I'll have to say I came into parenting feeling like I had these rose colored glasses. I don't know if anybody else does that, but pretty much, I thought it was awesome. And honestly, with my first child, things went really well, and I can look back now and say it wasn't because of anything I was doing. It was because of who he was. And then my second child did not align with any textbook that I had read. And at that time I had my master's degree in special education, I really thought that I knew it all, and I was like, What in the world? Why am I fighting all the time? With my second child, why did I turn into this horrible parent that I never thought that I would be? I started having anxiety attacks, I started feeling depressed. It was just not a good time of life. And then my third child came along, and things just were not getting better, and I realized that something really needed to change, and the thing that needed to change was me and my understanding of why things were happening. And so one day, I picked up a book about sensory processing, and I just had tears streaming down my face as I realized that was the reason that my son was so difficult in air quotes why we were struggling so much and why he was acting the way he was was rooted in sensory processing, and it changed the way that I parented from then on out, and for the last four and a half years, it's been my mission now to help other parents understand how sensory processing affects their kids behavior too, so they can stop fighting it and start working with it, which is drastic change, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 6:02
yeah, that's such a huge and important mindset shift, and that's we're going to talk about today. So I did have a guest on listeners will remember last June that spoke about sensory but, you know, and I was telling Wendy at the beginning, before I hit record, I thought we were having the conversation that you and I are going to have today last June, but really the conversation turned into really about energetic, sensory in our kids, as you know, more of empaths and which was a fantastic conversation. I'm glad that we got to have it, but I'm also really excited to talk about sensory systems in the context that you're bringing so I'm going to just have you tease it apart for us. What are you referencing when talking about sensory systems? Definitely,

Wendy Bertagnole 6:51
and I'm glad we're bringing this distinction in at the beginning, because I think there's this misunderstanding of the sensory system. A lot of times we think of sensory as just something that kids with autism have, or just something that people have who have problems. But really, we all have a sensory system, and we haven't learned really much about it. We know, see, hear, taste, touch, smell, but there's two more systems that nobody else really talks about, which is proprioception and vestibular. And all of these sensory systems come together to help us experience the world around us, and it dictates how we respond to it. So when we have a teenager who is 13 and still a super picket eater, we realize it's no longer a phase, and there's nothing on the face of the earth that we can do about it. We can look back and say, Okay, why are they a picky eater? It's not just who they are. Them trying to be stubborn or anything like that. There's truly something behind it. And what is it in the sensory system that's a that's causing them to be a picky eater? And how can we support that?

Casey O'Roarty 7:55
So it's not because I did a really bad job of exposing them to a variety of different kinds of food. Are you giving me permission to let myself off the hook here? Wendy,

Wendy Bertagnole 8:04
absolutely. I feel like the first three and a half years of my son's life was me feeling guilty about not being able to change his behavior. And in reality, it's yes, we can have effect. We can have an effect on our kids behavior, right, for better or for worse, but until we understand the sensory system, we just don't get a full picture of how we can truly support them. So absolutely Casey, you're off the hook.

Casey O'Roarty 8:29
Well, and you said there was the five sensory Right? Like the ones we know, and then there's two others.

Wendy Bertagnole 8:35
Okay, so let's imagine this. I like to think of all of us as having seven cups inside of us. Each cup represents a sensory system. Okay, all of our cups are different sizes. So some of us have super small ones, like as big as a shot glass, some like even as big as a thimble. Then other senses are massive, like those big gulp 711, gigantic cups that you can just fill so much stuff in. The size of the cup determines how much stimulation in that area that our body can accept. So for example, with vision, people with a big vision cup would be the ones who love a lot of light. They don't need a lot of they don't get overwhelmed by a lot of light, whereas a person with a small visual cup is going to be overwhelmed by fluorescent lights or by the TV if they're in front of it for too long, or like my son, if he's in the sun for too long, he gets a migraine. So that's a small visual cup. Hearing is the same thing. A lot of moms have small hearing cups. We get overwhelmed by a lot of noise. We can't drown out background noise. We can't drown out crying. But people with a big hearing cup would be ones who like to have a lot of music on, or they can drown out noise around them, or things don't bother them. Sounds don't bother them. Taste is the same thing. Kids with a big taste cup would be ones who like a lot of flavor, spice, whatever small taste cup would be, would be ones who prefer like bland food. So again, picky eaters could be you. Avoiding the taste thing that makes sense? Yeah, totally. So I'll keep going with the rest of them just real quick. So the touch sense is a big one, and it's how we feel things on our body like on our skin. So people with a small touch cup would be ones who can feel the tags on the back of their shirts, or they're picky about how their socks feel, or they only like to wear soft clothes, whereas the big touch cup, people would be ones who walk through Target and touch everything on the shelves. She's asked them 5 million times not to right? And then the smell cup, I think every woman who's ever been pregnant understands what it's like to have a small smell Cup where you gag at the smallest smell that nobody else even recognizes, which can also affect picky eating, as we know, if we've ever been pregnant, right, large smell cups would be like my sister, who smells everything before she puts it in her mouth. And she's not a two year old. She's a 30 something year old. You know, we just have these things that we naturally gravitate towards to either fill our cups or keep our cups from overflowing. The two that are lesser known are the proprioception and vestibular cup. And these are actually huge when it comes to understanding kids who are labeled as wild or aggressive or can't sit still. So proprioception has to do with Wait, say

Casey O'Roarty 11:20
that word again, proprioception. Proprioception, okay, yeah,

Wendy Bertagnole 11:26
we can write it down for sure.

Casey O'Roarty 11:27
I am proprioception, okay, yes.

Wendy Bertagnole 11:32
And that has to do with activating the well, our proprioceptive receptors are inside of our joints, all over our body. Anytime our joints are stimulated, anytime they're moved, it activates that sense. So kids who like a lot of movement and a lot of pressure, those are the ones with massive proprioceptive cups. So for instance, sometimes there will be kids who are always moving, they're always on the go, or they don't ever sit still in their chairs? Well, they just have big proprioceptive cups. Or the kids who do things harder than they mean to like the 15 year old who's just like a big teddy bear. That's what I remember calling a friend of mine when I was little. He's this gigantic guy, and everything he did was super hard. You give him a hug, you know you're going to get a bear hug. You get he gives you a tap on the shoulder, it's going to be more like a slap, and he doesn't do it intentionally. It's just he's filling his proprioceptive cup. And vestibular has to do with our body being in motion, so spinning, twirling, running, any of those things. Kids who get car sick easily would be ones with a small vestibular cup, or ones who don't like spinning or going on roller coasters, whatever, they have small vestibular cups, and they'll avoid those things. But a large vestibular cup would be kids who are constantly in motion again, like flipping, twirling, spinning, they love the gymnastics or swimming or Ninja or whatever those things are that really activate that vestibular sense and fill up that vestibular cup. Okay,

Casey O'Roarty 13:02
so let's go over those two one more time, just because I want to get clear on the distinction, and I want listeners to be really clear. So the proprioception, right? Thank you. Yeah, in the joints. And it's about so it's, it's not movement, or it is movement. This

Wendy Bertagnole 13:22
is where the two kind of they overlap, a little bit overlap, yeah, because a lot of times you're getting vestibular and proprioceptive and tactile and seeing and hearing. You know, there's bombarding in all senses. But yeah, so the vestibular receptors, I didn't say this, so thank you for clarifying. Casey. The vestibular receptors are in the inner ear. And I don't know if you ever remember looking at a diagram of the ear, and we have that fluid in the inner ear with those little hairs, weird things, right? Anytime that fluid tilts, that activates the vestibular sense. So anything that would make that tilt, so tilting your head back and forth or running would definitely do that, but the body being in motion would be the vestibular sense, the pounding on our joints and the feedback that our joints are getting from running, would be proprioception.

Casey O'Roarty 14:10
Okay, got it? Oh my gosh, this is fascinating,

Wendy Bertagnole 14:16
isn't it so cool, and it's fun. Once you start getting down this rabbit hole, you can see why a lot of people do the things that they do. So for instance, my husband, he has a huge proprioceptive Cup, which means that it helps us understand why he has to go to the gym every day. Truly, He has to go to the gym every day because it helps to calm his body. It fills his proprioceptive cup so that he can sit in his chair and work during the day at the office, if he doesn't get that, he's anxious, he's irritable, he's not himself because his cup is empty. When our cups are too full or too empty, that's when we get into fight, flight or freeze or just irritability mode, and we want to avoid that so we can start to understand other people and the reason that they do the things that they. Do not because they have autism, but because they have a sensory system.

Casey O'Roarty 15:03
That's so interesting. I'm thinking about my son, who's now 13, and when he was little, he was one of those kids, right, who couldn't stop, like, he just didn't ever want to stop moving. And if we were even if we tried to, like, watch something, if there was music, or if there was this opportunity or any kind of prompt to move, even on a screen, he'd be up and moving. And even now, at 13. I mean, you know, the whole phone thing, he can totally self medicate with that and stay on the couch. However, what he really ultimately wants to do is he wants to be out in the world, interacting, moving his body. And I think that it's such an interesting conversation to recognize, you know, that we all have various I love, that I love the visual of the cups,

right? And I And, do you think, like, so you mentioned being pregnant and certain smells, ooh, gross. But when I'm not pregnant, I'm not I can really take in all different kinds of smells. And the same with like, I love listening to music and hearing a lot of music, but as soon as I drive into like, a busy city that I'm unfamiliar with, or a parking lot I have to turn down the music,

Wendy Bertagnole 16:24
yes. So this is an interesting thing that I love explaining to parents, and this is it makes so much sense So stress can shrink our cups. It sounds like you have like an average size auditory cup, right? Average tolerate hearing, right? I mean, like you're average, but when you're under stress, or when you have to focus, it's going to shrink, and your body's saying, uh, sorry, I need to focus all my attention on not crashing or whatever it is, and everything is going to shrink. So you probably are a little bit more sensitive to the sunlight in that time. You're probably a little Your senses are heightened, right? So you can only tolerate a little bit. Oh

Casey O'Roarty 17:03
my gosh. Can I just connect some more dots that's happening for me right now. So I also notice I can be really easygoing about clutter. But if I start to look around like I know I'm going to come back to screens, because that's the latest thing that's been on my mind is our screen use. But when all of a sudden I notice everyone on the screens, and I start to feel stress around that I'm also like and look at all the freaking clutter in this house like it's immediately. So it's a sensory thing and connected to stress,

Wendy Bertagnole 17:36
absolutely, absolutely. Isn't it so interesting, and it just goes to show how our body determines a lot of the behaviors that we're having. If you know now that when you get stressed, you're going to be more irritable around vision and hearing and whatever else you might be triggered by, you can say, okay, it's not that all of a sudden, my house is a disaster my kids are horrible and everything is too loud. It's that I can no longer tolerate these things. So you can know how to set yourself up for success. So for instance, I do the same thing Casey when I'm driving. I cannot have any background noise if it's a stressful driving situation. So I'll just tell my kids, and it's so powerful. Listen to this. I was just tell them, you guys, my ears can't handle noise right now, so I need everything to be quiet, and they get it, because I'm not saying you guys need to be quiet. I can't deal with you guys right now. It's not me or them, it's my ears truly can't handle it. And it's so powerful to be able to talk about our bodies like that, because then we're not just saying I don't like this food, I don't like the way the house looks. The house is always messy. We're not blaming it. We're truly internalizing it and putting the meaning on what is really happening. Got

Casey O'Roarty 18:48
it that is so useful. So how does sensory affect? I mean, we just talked about how it affects my behavior. But So how is it, you know, what are some things that you find working with clients that are behaviors that are showing up that really come back to this sensory piece so

Wendy Bertagnole 19:08
many things, but anytime a child is adamantly refusing something, or they're really digging in their heels, or they're constantly trying to get something, whether it's movement, like you said, with your son, or whether, like, I have a friend whose teenage daughter was always she had a hard time paying attention in school, and they were looking at labels of ADD or ADHD, or what's going on with her. You know, how can we fix this? Well, what we found out is that she has a small hearing cup and a large proprioceptive cup, so noises around her were really distracting to her, and her body needed movement, so sitting in a noisy classroom all day was like the worst thing that they could possibly do.

Casey O'Roarty 19:48
Yes, hello. Typical high school environment, totally,

Wendy Bertagnole 19:51
right. So the interesting thing is, is we found out that we could put her towards the front of the class. It's a little bit she could be close. To the teacher so she doesn't have to drown out as much noise. And chewing gum actually activates the proprioceptive sense, because you're activating your jaw, the joints in your jaw, so it's calming her body. It's filling her proprioceptive cup while she's sitting in a chair, and we're able to support her to be able to pay attention in class. So anytime there's something that you just feel like my kid isn't getting it. They're always refusing this, or they're always doing this, and you've tried everything, like punishing, grounding, whatever you try to do, ignoring it, and none of that works. It's probably a sensory thing well. And what I really

Casey O'Roarty 20:33
am appreciating about this conversation Wendy is that there's nothing wrong with our kids, totally and like the story you just shared, you know, I think it, I think that it takes really enlightened grown ups, and we're all moving in that direction. Of course, all of my listeners are incredibly enlightened, as are you and I. But you know, it takes an enlightened adult to shift from Why can't this girl just get it together and pay attention, this is what we do in high school, to being really curious and looking for a solution that works for her to be in the classroom while meeting her sensory needs. I just think that it's so respectful. Yes, it's so think

Wendy Bertagnole 21:22
of how empowering it is to teach our kids these things from such a young age, so that they then know as adults how they can function their best in the world, right? Yeah, so like I remember all growing up, I hated having my hands dry or my feet dry, like I just couldn't stand it anyway, no

Casey O'Roarty 21:44
dry, like flaky dry or, like, not wet, like, like

Wendy Bertagnole 21:49
dry, like flaky dry or dry, like, if I have sand or dirt on my feet, like I'm gonna freak out.

Casey O'Roarty 21:58
Like my daughter, my

Wendy Bertagnole 22:00
daughter is the same thing. So I remember one time I was 17. I was not a two year old, and we had played sand ball volleyball as a family. It was a super fun experience. And coming coming out of the sand onto the dry cement with my bare feet, all of a sudden, I was just like, oh my gosh, I can't handle this. And I had no idea why, but all I could focus on was I need to clean my feet. I need to clean my feet. My family wanted to go out to ice cream and do all these fun things, and I just shut down. And I'm sure my parents were like, oh, teenage hormones, like, hello, she's having a mood swing, yeah. And I remember looking back on that now understanding sensory like, all I needed to do was go to a bathroom and wash off my feet and the tantrum would have been over. But there were so many other ways that they could have looked at it, which I'm sure we all did, but it now makes sense. So understanding our bodies and the way that they function best, it just puts us it sets us up for success in the future to deal with all of our little, I don't know, quirks, I guess you could call them or sensory preferences that we all know, that we have. So

Casey O'Roarty 23:02
do you, you know there's a lot written and talked about with the uptick in anxiety, and I think there's a lot of factors here. I think that you know the fact that our kids have, you know, basically their entire school career, have lived through active shooter drills. I think that, you know social you know, the prevalence of social media hasn't helped. There's there's things right in the environment that are definitely contributing. But do you think that there's also, you know, some answers in recognizing our sensory preference to the anxiety? Yeah, well, you talk a little bit about that. I know I'm going off script here, but

Wendy Bertagnole 23:40
Oh, it's fine. That's how you want absolutely because when our cups are overflowing or underfilled, it puts us into a survival mode, which is fight, flight or freeze, and it can often just trigger really strong emotions. Now imagine a child who's Okay, let's say a 15 year old who doesn't understand what's happening inside their body to cause these mood swings or to cause these different things. They're in this constant state of like, How can I protect myself once they don't know what's going on, they don't know how to protect themselves. They just know what people are projecting onto them, that you're moody or you're really mean or you can't pay attention, and absolutely, that would increase their anxiety about who they are and how they can, quote, unquote, fix themselves, and they don't even know really what's wrong or why they're doing it. That's so

Casey O'Roarty 24:35
interesting. And I'm thinking about a recent situation. We had gone just last weekend we had gone to the movies. Was like seven o'clock movie, and by the time we came out of the movie, there was this, like epic lightning storm happening. And my daughter had just gotten a new kitten, and we were driving as we were driving home. Home the lightning storm, which was like, not every couple minutes. I mean, it was like every 2030, seconds, there was this huge flash of lights. There's this visual experience, right? And then it just, we finally got close enough, and we drove into the storm. And so then it was just this pounding rain on the car. And all of a sudden my daughter said, you know, to my son, she's like, do you have your ear pods? And he did. So he gave it to her, and she put in her the ear pods and turned on music and covered her eyes, you know. And I know she was worried about her kitty, and just there was like sensory overload was happening for her, and I was I thought it was so cool that she was able to recognize there are things I can do in this moment to change the experience that I'm having, or at least alter the experience that she was having. Now, she was still stressed on the way home, but she, you know, didn't have to list. She blocked out the sound of the rain and blocked out the visuals of the lightning, and I think that that really supported her in coming home and walking in the house and not feeling like crazy person totally.

Wendy Bertagnole 26:12
So that's called sensory regulation, which is just a big fancy word for making sure that your small cups are not overflowing, and your big cups are full. And so I love that example, because it showed that she had smaller cups, or her cups were overflowing in that moment, and she was able to say, Okay, enough. I'm going to cover my ears. I'm not accepting any more visual stimulation, right? I'm going to put soft, calm or whatever happening. I'm pretty sure that

Casey O'Roarty 26:42
I'd have to ask her, but I'm pretty sure she put on some like, wretched rap music, but whatever,

Wendy Bertagnole 26:47
whatever, it made her happy, right? And it was music that her body wanted to be able to calm down. So she was making sure her cups were not completely overflowing by the time she got home. That is sensory regulation, just regulating the cups well. And

Casey O'Roarty 27:01
I just think, yeah, yeah. I think too. I'm curious too, you know. And when our kids are young, we're paying attention and noticing and offerings, you know, and creating solutions for them. Hopefully, when they become teenagers, it's so easy to misread what's happening, and I'm guessing it probably can start when they're younger as well. But how do we support our kids? And you know, because we're, ha, there's the there's having an experience, and then there's observing that you're having an experience, right? And I think that a lot of childhood is in the first camp. It's having the experiences, being in the experience. So how do we what are some things that you do, or coach people to do, as far as supporting our kids in creating that outside observer of recognizing, oh, I'm I'm having this experience so that they can step into that sensory like, recognize, like, oh, I need to do, you know? I mean, they wouldn't use these this language, but like, oh, sensory regulation would be useful right

Wendy Bertagnole 28:04
now, totally. And I love that. You know, they probably won't use that language. But we know our kids best, and so one of the first things that I teach parents to do is have an open conversation about sensory preferences and talk about everybody's sensory cups. And the cool thing about it is, is when you talk about everybody's sensory cups, it levels the playing field so nobody is weird for, you know, having to have the AirPods in their ears, or nobody's weird for not liking the the site of the lightning that we all have our little preferences. And once we understand those, we can then step into supporting them. And some of the things I like to do is give parents language around how to support it. So, you know, in that example with your daughter, she could have just said, my ears and my ears and my eyes need a break right now. And everybody can respect that. You know, we can talk about our bodies as a sensory system. We can say, my my body needs to run right now, my daughter the other day, she's seven, and she tried to tell me that her body needed sugar, and that was a little bit much. Right now, mom, totally my body needs chocolate all the time. But when we can start speaking to what our bodies need, it's it's so much more empowering for kids to be able to step into that different role, like you said, of not just being the experiencer of these experiences around us, but truly being like I get what's happening, and I've seen it all the time in my students. I have one student who's her her daughter's 12, and she has understood and talked about the sensory system for two years now in their home, just as a regular thing, just like we would, you know, like I have a cut on my arm, or, you know, my eyes need glasses, whatever. Why can't we talk about our sensory system that way? But she stepped into this phase where she can now understand other people's sensory preferences too. So it's, it's really an evolution that. Especially teenagers, they can catch on too, really fast.

Casey O'Roarty 30:02
Oh, yeah. And I think that my daughter has a heightened sense of other people and their experience, which is a blessing, you know? It's a blessing, and it's also a curse, because sometimes during the teen years, I think it's easier to be kind of on the surface, right? I think that when there's a lot of depth that starts to show up, and you look around you at all these dysregulated humans, you know, and the drama and everything, it's like, it's it can be overwhelming. So I have a question about resiliency. So we all have these cups, and we have various degrees size, what we can handle, tolerate, was the word that you used. And so where does resiliency and developing resiliency fit into this conversation?

Wendy Bertagnole 30:54
It's a great question, and I like to think of resilience as being able to go through difficult things and come out on the other side. So if we can there's, I would say there's two phases to be able to be resilient with our sensory preferences, and first is to recognize what they are and how they affect us. So just like you did, you know, you said, when I get stressed, my hearing cup shrinks and my visual cup shrinks. So being aware of that definitely helps us to be able to go through those tough times when you're feeling super stressed and yelling at all of your kids for the disasters and for the messes that they're making, or just

Casey O'Roarty 31:28
simply walking into an airport with my family, oh yeah. Like that alone, oh yeah. Anyway, visual

Wendy Bertagnole 31:35
overload, oh yeah. Huge. Getting you anxiety, just thinking about it, I totally get it So being aware of them and then trying to be proactive to support ourselves through those situations. So maybe you could take a tip from your daughter and get some air pods, but your kids on leashes. They wouldn't go on leashes. But you know, like, do your best to protect yourself so that you know I am going to go into a stressful situation. How can I set myself up and my kids up for success, so that, and then also giving ourselves Grace afterwards. So when we know that we've lost it because our visual cup was overflowing and our hearing cup was overflowing and it was stressful and it was an airport, we can look back and say, You know what I see how I could have done things different and giving ourselves grace for that. I think those two things are really powerful. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 32:28
I'm wondering too where, and this might have more to do with stress than it does the sensory piece. So I just bought the self driven child. I don't know if you've read that book. I would love to tell you who wrote it, but it's upstairs. It'll be in the show notes listeners, and I'm on page like 19, right? And it's already I'm just blown away by how aligned I am with what these authors are writing about, which is really, and I'm not going to do it justice, because, again, I'm on page 19, but they talk about that sense of control, and when that's missing, you know? And so I'm guessing that's where the stress comes in. We're we're missing this sense of control, and so our stress is higher, and so our tolerance for sensory preferences gets shifted.

Wendy Bertagnole 33:28
Absolutely. So the cool thing about this is, control, power, all of those things are certain traits that we would see in a child who has a really difficult time regulating their senses on a regular basis. So they tend to be the kids who are labeled as defiant or manipulative or controlling or really powerful, right? But really what it is is they're trying to control as much of their environment as possible, because they're never knowing when their environment is going to control their body. So they

Casey O'Roarty 33:58
are, they are regulating like so their regulation comes through this need to control. Yeah,

Wendy Bertagnole 34:04
absolutely, absolutely, yes. And the cool thing is, too, when we prepare our bodies, when we know that we're stepping into something that's going to offset our sensory system, we can prepare our cups for it. And I don't know if this really fits into the analogy, but it's almost like if the preparation can kind of increase our cup size, if stress strengthen, preparation increases them. So, for instance, a child who has a small auditory cup can be loud and can listen to loud music on their own terms when they're in control of it. Because when it gets to be too much they're in control, they can turn it off, but if somebody else makes an equally loud noise, oh, all bets are off. Yeah, so that that idea of control is huge, and it's just our body preparing itself for what's to come.

Casey O'Roarty 34:51
Oh my gosh, that's so interesting. So So okay, and we have these kids, and we have our i. Our own baggage, right, which includes everything we were raised with, message wise, as well as whether or not there's an audience as well as, you know, perceived audience, or even just what will people think out in the world. So how do we and I know I'm thinking about listeners and and myself, like, how do we support a sensory preference without feeling like we're giving in to undesirable behavior. So like imagining this 15 year old in the classroom, and I actually even as I'm saying this out loud, it's kind of obvious, but the 15 year old that you're talking about in the classroom who can't pay attention and is maybe even disruptive, because it's so uncomfortable to be in that space. And we say, Oh, just we're gonna put you in the front and we're gonna let you chew gum, even though gum is not allowed in school. How? And I can hear like the grown ups that are watching this saying, like you are rewarding that child for undesirable behavior. Oh, heaven forbid, right? Which I don't think that's not what I think it's the other adults that are less enlightened,

Wendy Bertagnole 36:09
right? We are speaking to the collective them.

Casey O'Roarty 36:13
Yeah, them, those guys.

Wendy Bertagnole 36:16
Here's how I like to see behavior, and this is Wendy's view of behavior according to everything she's read. So take it with a grain of salt. But I really like to think of it as a weed. The top of the weed is the behavior. So the child not paying attention in class and doing whatever they're doing, you know, you're talking to other kids, whatever the stem would be, what triggers it? So what's triggering it? Well, the noise, the things, whatever, getting attention, trying to get trying to gain access to whatever, trying to escape something. Sure, all of those things can be the trigger. But what's the root? Well, the root is sensory. Got it so sure. We can address the behavior, which is, stop talking, do your work. We can punish them until they do their work, or whatever. We can even address that call for attention, which is supposed to be this horrible thing, heaven forbid we call for attention, heaven forbid we try to escape something, but you're really never addressing the root of it until you get down to sensory or skills that they are lacking, that gets into raw grain. But those are the things that are really informing those behaviors. So that the thing that we can do is definitely we tell our children it's not okay for you to talk in class. You can control that. You can absolutely control that. And I know that you tend to talk more when your hearing cup is overflowing, when you're when you're hearing too much noise, or when there's too many things on the wall around you, and you just can't pay attention to the teacher. So how can we help you to be able to focus on the teacher and not talk to your people around you. Would this help? Would this help? You know, what can we do? And we can even go into least restrictive environment. What's the least restrictive thing that we can do, or least possible thing that we can do to support that sensory preference that's causing the behavior without telling your children it's okay to do what they do? Yeah, totally. The answer, Yeah, completely.

Casey O'Roarty 38:03
And I love the weed analogy, and an analogy that my listeners have heard me talk about from positive discipline is the iceberg, right? So the undesirable behaviors being what we can see and remembering that there's all sorts of stuff going on. And I think it's important to point out, too, that it's, and I'm guessing you would agree with me, it's not always a sensory thing. It could be something different. But I mean, if you know, keeping with this example of the girl in the high school class, and then moving her to the front and giving her some gum to chew, and that doesn't solve the problem, then you know, there's something else going on. And you know, I think that having just one more layer, one more possibility for parents to be considering. And, I mean, I was just in a conversation with a friend of mine whose eighth grade daughter is having a really hard time and, and, you know, labels have been thrown out for her add odd. I can't wait for her to call her after this conversation and to encourage her to look into sensory stuff, because, you know, especially as we move into the teenage years, it's so hard to sometimes to make sense of what we're seeing, because our kids start to look more and more like full grown humans, and so we forget, I think that they're still in this like developing skills place, and the skills that they do have may not be consistently practiced, right? And so you had mentioned something about giving ourselves grace, right? But I think also giving our kids grace, and just really staying in the mindset of, you know, let's, let's look at this from multiple lenses, one of which being this sensory lens. So I love that, I love that, and I really appreciate that you. Said, you know, it's not like, Oh, it's okay that you are just a complete asshole to that person. Let's just have an overflowing touch cup, you know, like, yeah, no, both things exist, and how are you going to support yourself the next time you feel like that without being, you know, disruptive, disrespectful, rude to the people around you. Because guess what? Your cup is going to overflow again in the future, you know, so practicing what I'm hearing you say is really supporting them. And one, recognizing what's happening when it's happening, and then two, looking for solutions,

Wendy Bertagnole 40:38
definitely, and it's supporting the sensory and then looking for the skills that they're lacking once they have their sensory system supported. So it'd be like, you know, a lot of people think, Oh, they just need to figure it out. Well, that would be like throwing you into an airport and saying, you just need to learn to be calm. Yeah, so we're just going to keep throwing you into an airport and until you figure it out. Well, anxiety. Well, no, we're gonna put you in an airport with all of the support that you need by supporting your sensory preferences and teaching you the skills, and then you can be the best version of yourself, definitely. So

Casey O'Roarty 41:12
what do you think about weighted blankets? Oh, I

Wendy Bertagnole 41:15
love weighted blankets. I sleep with one. Yes, I do not think they're an end all be all thing. And I actually get so incredibly irritated when I see these amazing ads on Instagram and social media that talk about this swing to end all meltdowns, or a weighted blanket to solve all your children's problems. No, it's one supportive piece that may or may not help depending on your child's preferences. So if you have a child with a large proprioceptive cup, they need that that weight, right? But let's say your child also has a small tactile cup, they're not going to be going for that weighted blanket, because it's going to affect their small tactile cup. So it doesn't work for every child. So it's not a solution to end all meltdowns or all behaviors. It can be there to support children who are benefited by it, and I assume by the question that you're not a huge

Casey O'Roarty 42:08
fan. No, I'm actually, I'm just super curious. No, I'm not. I have no judgment. I'm actually thinking my 16 year old has in adolescence. Anyway, sleep has been is an issue for her can be an issue for her. And so I was actually thinking about trying that out and seeing if it was helpful. Can

Wendy Bertagnole 42:28
I give you my my opinion and what I tell my students to do before they invest in a $200 blanket? Totally, please, so find out if your child will respond fairly well to it. Okay. What you can do is you can get a long tube sock and fill it with rice, just dried rice, so they're getting and you just tie off the top of it, right, super cheap hack, and put that on their shoulders or on their chest when they're trying to fall asleep to see if that is calming to them. Now, for a 15 year old, you might need a couple of them, but see if she responds well to the pressure and the weight, or mimic that weight with something else, like maybe a really huge comforter or something like that, just something that's that has a lot of weight to it that you can put on her body to see if her body responds well to it by with calmness, because something this is getting a little bit deeper, but proprioceptive stimulus, like stimulation, can be either calming or alerting, okay, depending on the child. So some people are really calmed by running, right? So maybe you have a child who's a cross country runner who comes home, they're like, Oh, that was amazing. Or another child who goes for a run and they're like, Oh, I could run, like, 500 more miles, and it's alerting to them. Same thing with deep pressure. It can be calming or alerting, okay.

Casey O'Roarty 43:42
Oh, thank you for that. Yeah, I can't wait for the look on her face when I tell her this on your body, we're just checking something out. Is there anything else that you want to add here? Wendy, did we cover it all? Was there anything that you wanted to land with listeners before we wrap up.

Wendy Bertagnole 44:02
I feel like this has been really good. I feel like we've covered a lot and yeah, I feel like it'll give people a lot to really go with and see. You know, if they have a child who's who tends to be overactive or a picky eater, or gets headaches a lot, or overstimulated by the TV, it'll give them one more thing to look at that's natural, that doesn't involve medication, that they can definitely do at home. Love

Casey O'Roarty 44:25
it. So I always, if you listen, you listen to the podcast, so you know what's coming. But so in the context of all that we've talked about, Wendy, what does joyful courage mean to you? Oh,

Wendy Bertagnole 44:36
having the courage to see our children as our teachers and our leaders, and to me, that means, just with my journey of parenting, I came into parenting thinking I was the end all, be all and I was really awesome. And it wasn't until I started listening to what my kids needed that I started feeling like, Okay, now I'm stepping into. Who they need me to be, and that took a lot of courage, because it's not the Pinterest cute stuff that other people are doing in and that was it took a lot of courage for me, but that's where I've truly found the most joy with my kids, and that's my answer. Nice.

Casey O'Roarty 45:12
So I didn't tap into this very much in your bio, but tell the listeners a little bit about what you do out in the world and where they can follow your work. So

Wendy Bertagnole 45:23
you can follow me on my podcast, which is the exceptional parenting podcast, yay

Casey O'Roarty 45:29
podcaster,

Wendy Bertagnole 45:30
I know, so fun, where we talk about being the parent to children who seem to be an exception to every rule, and anybody who has a kid like that, you get it. And you can find me on my website, at exceptional parenting podcast.com and I'm Wendy Burton on Instagram, just because exceptional parenting podcast was not a good name on Instagram, but in all of those places, and through my courses and programs and membership, my goal is always to teach parents how to support their children through their sensory systems and through learning the skills that they're missing, so that they can truly be the best versions of themselves, and that parents can start to step into being the best versions of

Casey O'Roarty 46:13
themselves too. Thank you.

Wendy Bertagnole 46:15
Yeah, thank you for having me on. This was so fun. Casey,

Casey O'Roarty 46:22
hey, yay. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. I so appreciate every single one of you and the ways that you show up for joyful courage. Thank you. And did you know there are ways that you can give back? I have a Patreon page, which is a place where you basically can donate one, five or $10 towards the sustainability of the program, and just as a way to say thank you, and you can check that out at patreon.com/joyful. Courage. That's www dot P, A, T, R, e o n.com/joyful, courage. I have some benefits and bonuses for people that are in my Patreon community. You can also let me know what you think by heading on over to Apple podcasts, leaving me a five star rating and a review. I love to read the reviews on air, so whenever I get a new review, I share it, and it really just helps me know what you love about this podcast, what is landing for you, what is useful. Like I mentioned at the top, I am active on Instagram and Facebook, both places you can find me at joyful courage. And please know that you're always welcome to join into my Facebook groups live in love with joyful courage, as well as joyful courage for parents of teens, yes, yes, yes, yes. We're back in the weekly mode, so I'll be back next week. Can't wait to have you listen again until then, take a deep breath, follow it into your body, take a moment to notice what's currently alive for you. Imagine that you can take the balcony seat for a higher perspective of whatever is currently going on in your life and trust that everyone's gonna be okay.

See more