How do your child’s senses help them to control their attention?

Attention and our senses are inextricably linked. When we control our attention to focus on something important, our brain needs to ignore other stimuli. Think about when you need to make a tricky manoeuvre in the car, do you turn the music off or down? This is your brain reducing sensory input to help you concentrate better. Your child is starting to be aware that they sometimes need to make a change to help them and their concentration. 

Their senses help them to regulate their levels of alertness.  

Your child is just beginning to understand how their senses support them to regulate their levels of alertness and they are learning how to use their senses to help them to focus by reducing or increasing sensory stimulation.  

For example, it’s quite common for children and adults to be sensitive to certain sounds and some may seem unbearably loud, even though people around them don't seem to notice them. This can be very distracting and sometimes uncomfortable.  

Your child may need some support while they work out how to process sensory information and still get on with what they are doing. 

These things might help your child to calm, and help them focus: 

• Gentle rocking  
• A hug 
• Rhymes or songs involving opening and closing their hands 
• Sucking something thick, like yoghurt through a straw 

When they need to feel more alert in order to focus, these things may help: 

• Running, jumping or dancing 
• Clapping games 
• Having a cold drink 
• Eating something crunchy 

Some sensory elements that make your child uncomfortable will be easier to spot than others – perhaps the sound of hand driers in public toilets, for example.  

Others will be less obvious, so if they mention a sound or sensation they get somewhere that makes them distracted or uneasy, try to tune into how they're sensing their surroundings and encourage them to put into words in the best way they can what they're feeling. 

For more information: 

Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust. (2011). Understanding sensory difficulties. 

NHS. (2022) Conditions. Hyperacusis.