Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD): When Sounds, Clothes and Textures Make Children’s Daily Life Difficult

The morning begins with a difficulty that no one expected. The child sits on the floor, irritably tears off his sock, complains that the seam "hurts his finger" and categorically refuses to wear his uniform. The school day progresses, the adult insists, trying to demonstrate that the fabric is soft, and the crying turns into a crisis.

In another situation, this same child arrives excitedly at a children's birthday party, but desperately covers his ears as soon as the music starts playing. In the classroom, he moves away from an artistic proposal with gouache paint in his hands, although he shows a keen interest in the illustrations and stories that the teacher tells.

Everyday scenes like these invite an essential question: What is this child feeling during an activity that seems so simple and natural to others? Sensitivities to clothes, sounds, textures and lights do not constitute "trickery", "stubbornness" or "lack of limits". These are variations in the way the nervous system captures, processes and reacts to environmental stimuli, affecting everyday participation. Understanding them is the first step to offering a welcoming and effective response [1].

What does sensory processing mean?

O sensory processing is the neurobiological mechanism by which the central nervous system receives, modulates, organizes and interprets information from the body's own sensory receptors and the environment, generating an adaptive response.

When we think about the senses, we usually only remember the five traditional ones: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. However, psychomotor development and emotional regulation critically depend on three other fundamental systems [2]:

In school life, learning is not just a cognitive act; It involves being able to remain seated comfortably, filter out the background noise of the classroom, tolerate contact with notebooks and paints, and actively participate in an environment full of simultaneous stimuli.

Why do we need to be careful with the term TPS?

The expression Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) has gained enormous popularity in clinical conversations, support groups and social media. However, it is essential to maintain scientific precision: its definition as an independent nosological disorder still does not have universal consensus in official diagnostic manuals (such as DSM-5-TR and ICD-11).

In a historic and respected position from 2012, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) alerted the medical community to the absence of universally validated diagnostic criteria for SPD as an isolated medical condition. The entity recommended that pediatricians and clinicians carry out a comprehensive assessment, as sensory changes often coexist or are part of the picture of other neurodevelopmental conditions, such as:

• Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): where sensory hypo- or hyper-reactivity appears as a formal diagnostic criterion;
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD);
• Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD / Dyspraxia);
• Anxiety Disorders and Emotional Overload.

This historical and medical contextualization must be read with serenity [4]. The absence of an isolated CID code for the "TPS" does not invalidate the child's real suffering. In this article, we use the term as a key to understanding authentic sensory needs, without transforming everyday manifestations into hasty labels. A child who frequently covers his ears needs to be welcomed and listened to; This behavior alone, however, does not allow us to say that she has autism or any other condition without a qualified interdisciplinary assessment.

How might these differences manifest themselves?

Each individual's sensory profile is unique. In the neurological modulation model, responses to the environment can vary widely between two poles, which can even coexist in the same person depending on the sensory channel:

• Hyperreactivity (Hypersensitivity): Exacerbated responses to stimuli that go unnoticed by the majority. Sounds of a blender or vacuum cleaner, fluorescent lights, the light touch of the skin or the smell of the school cafeteria can trigger escape, pain or panic reactions.
• Hypo-reactivity (Hyposensitivity): The brain needs much more intense stimuli to register information. The child may not realize that their face is dirty, appear not to react to minor pain or remain apathetic to sound stimuli.
• Sensory Search: The continuous need for intense movement, body pressure, jumping, bumping into walls or objects, and touching all available textures in an attempt to self-regulate the nervous system's level of alertness.

Clothes are a daily laboratory of this reality. Rigid labels, raised seams on sock toes, synthetic fabrics and tight waists create constant irritation. Allowing the child to try on items before purchasing, removing tags and opting for clothes without protruding seams are practical solutions to consider [5]. Before labeling morning refusal as "stubbornness", it is worth thoroughly investigating where the sensory discomfort lies.

What does this change in school learning?

The school environment is dense in terms of stimuli. For a student with auditory or tactile sensitivity, the mental energy that should be directed towards decoding reading, mathematical calculations or understanding the teacher's explanations ends up being drained by the continuous effort of resisting physical discomfort. [3].

Consider a concrete pedagogical situation: a student sits near the classroom door. Every time someone passes through the hallway, there is peripheral visual movement, conversations, and the reflection of outside light. The child stops writing constantly, loses track of the notebook and shows inattention. By being transferred to a more protected desk, away from the door and with less sound reverberation, she is able to complete the proposals with fluidity.

This discrepancy in performance is a precious pedagogical clue. It shows that the difficulty was not necessarily one of cognitive competence, but rather of environmental accessibility to learning. This perspective dialogues directly with the strategies we detail in our article on Inclusive Pedagogical Practices in Basic Education [7].

How can the family observe and support?

The best parenting tool is descriptive observational record. Instead of recording generalizations like "he doesn't stay still" or "he fights to leave the house", try writing down:

• What was the exact activity at the time of the discomfort?
• What were the environmental conditions (noise, light, temperature, number of people)?
• Which strategy reduced discomfort (moving away from noise, wearing loose clothing, offering a firm hug)?

This systematization transforms the conflict into useful data to share with the pedagogical team and therapists [1]. Furthermore, changing the dialogic approach is transformative: asking "Is it the seam of the sock or the elastic that's bothering you?" validates the child's experience and builds a channel of mutual cooperation, eliminating the clash of wills.

What adaptations can the school implement?

Guidelines from international pediatric services, such as those from the British NHS, point to low-cost, high-impact adaptations that can be easily tested in school routines [6]:

• Space Organization: Position the student away from open doors, windows facing the courtyard or noisy air conditioning motors;
• Acoustic Damping: Place felt protectors or tennis balls on the feet of desks and chairs to stop the screeching noise of dragging on the floor;
• Visual Clarity: Avoid excessive pollution of murals and posters glued exactly on the wall in front of the blackboard's field of vision;
• Decompression Zones: Allow structured sensory breaks in an environment with lower light and noise intensity when the level of cognitive fatigue is high;
• Use of Sound Dampers: Provide passive noise canceling headphones for critical moments, such as the playground signal or events at the sports hall.

What is the role of each professional?

Supporting children with sensory demands requires ethical interdisciplinary cooperation:

• Occupational Therapist (OT): He is a legally and technically qualified professional to evaluate sensory profiles, map the impact on activities of daily living (ADLs) and apply specialized interventions. A American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) expressly recommends that sensory interventions be anchored in documented and individualized clinical assessment [8].
• Psychopedagogue and School Team: Our role in Psychopedagogy is not to prescribe sensory therapy or make clinical diagnoses, but rather to investigate how these sensory barriers impact access to objects of knowledge. We investigate which teaching materials work best, adjust the time required to complete tasks and mediate the relationship between the child, the teacher and the school group.

Is every activity with stimuli a "Sensory Therapy"?

You need to be careful with commercial fads. Playing with modeling clay, creating corners with pillows or buying toys labeled as "sensory" are valid and rich recreational initiatives, but are not equivalent to Ayres Sensory Integration (ISA) [9]. Ayres' approach is a specific therapeutic methodology, based on neurobiology, which requires rigorous professional certification and specific equipment.

Furthermore, science demands responsibility. A broad systematic review published in 2024 in the prestigious American Journal of Occupational Therapy (AJOT) analyzed the clinical evidence of school sensory interventions, warning that no isolated adaptation should be adopted indiscriminately: each resource needs to be measured by its real results on the functionality and comfort of that specific child [10].

Understanding experience to build possibilities

A scratchy label, the high-pitched sound of an alarm or a sticky texture on your hands may seem like insignificances to those observing from the outside. But for the child whose brain processes these sensations as a real threat, the suffering is genuine and exhausting.

Supporting children's development requires abandoning hasty judgments in favor of sensitive listening. When the family and educators are willing to investigate what is behind the behavior, paths open for simple adaptations that give the child back the comfort, joy of learning and confidence to explore the world in all its sensory richness.