Regulation: Over-responsivity and Under-responsivity

Sensory integration

﻿In today's lesson, we are going to carry on looking at our sense of movement. And what we need to know about when we are oversensitive or under responsive to movement. We as therapists have tried to think of the best way to continue to support children, young people and their families. We will be exploring topic areas that we regularly provide advice and support on across all ages and abilities. Each lesson will have ideas and activities that can be carried out at home or in school. This information is to be used alongside any specific strategies or resources which have been given by your child's school or therapist. If you have any questions or would like help tailoring this to your child's needs, then please contact your local therapy service. In today's lesson, we're going to learn about when movement can be really scary. When we don't get dizzy and why that may be. When we are always on the go, why that is? And why are we sometimes very very dizzy and we may even get a bit car sick. So we're going to explore all of these things to do with our movement sense. So in today's lesson, you are going to need to work with your parent or carer. You need to have a clear and safe space where you can roll, jump and spin. You may want to have some stairs, and you're going to need four plastic cups, a bowl and a jug of water. So pause the video here to complete and get everything ready. And when you are finished, you're going to press play. Great. I'm glad you've got everything together. Let's look a little bit when movement is scary. What does that mean? When movement is really scary, it's often when our feet has to leave the ground. And it can be really tricky to lift our feet from the floor to go up or down stairs. You might feel a little bit scared when you have to go on a swing or on a slide or jumping on a trampoline. And for some people, it might even be tricky to sit on a chair when their feet cannot touch the ground. Now there's a word for this. Some people will call this you may be gravitationally insecure. So that's a big word. But all it means is that your body is really scared when your feet leave the ground. Because when your feet leave the ground, your body may not know exactly where it is and your head may not know whether it is upright or upside down. And it gets a little bit disorientated. And that is what we call gravitationally insecure. So let's have a look at something else now. Why do we get dizzy and car sick? Well, we know movement system is too sensitive. It can make us feel dizzy very quickly or even make us feel car sick. And what I mean by that is we are going to do a little activity in a little while. We're going to look at cups. And if you think about a cup and your cup is already very full, you may be very sensitive to movement because even a tiny little movement will make your head feel spinning or it may make you feel car sick. So just the fact that you driving forward maybe too much for your movement system to cope with. And you can feel dizzy and not very well. So, that's two of the things that can make it really tricky for us. The third thing is we may not get dizzy at all. You may be one of those people that you can spin, you can go on all the rides and you don't feel dizzy at all. In fact, you feel you can go do it again and again and again. We know movement sense is under active. Our movement sensors in our ears may not register the movement really well. And that means we can tend to keep spinning and moving and not feel dizzy at all. Now you may think that that's a good thing. And it certainly sounds great if you think, hmm, I'm never going to get dizzy. But it also means, that you may be someone who is always kind of looking for extra movement and movement is never enough for you. Because your cup is kind of a little bit leaky. So if you think about that cup and if it has holes underneath, it may be that it's a bit leaky. So it doesn't matter how much you move. You never going to know when you've had enough. And that can be really tricky because it can be dangerous. And it may be that you can climb the highest tree, but not quite realise how risky that is. And then if something goes wrong, you can really hurt yourself badly. But because your movement sense didn't warn you, that this may be a little bit scary and a little bit difficult, it means that you've taken a big risk and sometimes you may end up hurting yourself. So let's look at the fourth one. So with movement, when we are always on the go. Again, this may be that you don't process movement very well, and this means that you will always look for more ways to go. And you may be fidgeting and you may be struggling to calm down especially at bedtimes. You may find it really hard to sit still in class, and you might always want to kind of be up and walking around and sometimes the teacher maybe a little bit angry and you may be told off and that won't feel very nice. And you think but I wasn't naughty. It's just my body. My body is not registering that I've had enough movement. And that may be when we think about cups, it may be that your cup is just very has very very little information about the movement sense at the beginning. So it takes a lot of movement information for you to register the movement that's happening. So it means that you do register the movement eventually, but it may take a lot more. So it may be helpful. You may find it really helpful that before you have to do a lot of sitting down, you may like to do some really intense of movement activity. So you may want to do star jumps and pushups and maybe do a quick spin around. And that actually helps you to calm down. So we're going to look at all four of these things as we go along in this lesson. So I know it's a lot to take in, but you can watch this video again and again and again. And you can kind of think about which of these four ways is typical for you, especially when you look at your movement sense. So let's explain this a little bit more by using cups. I'm going to, in the next bit, show you exactly what I mean. And then you going to have a chance to have a go. I'm going to use four cups to explain to you a little bit how our movement sense works. So first of all, we are going to need four cups. And one of them, I have made little holes at the bottom. As you can see. Then I have three other cups here with me. There we go. And what I'm going to do is, we are going to fill these cups to different levels. So here is my water. And I have got a bowl with me. So the first one I am going to fill to about half. Okay. The second one, I'm just going to fill a little bit, just like that. And then the third one, we are going to fill three quarters of the way. Okay. So let's talk a bit about our movement sense. If we think about it as cups, we can then see how a little bit of movement or a lot of movement will affect us. So when your cup is half full, that means that your tolerance for movement is about half. So tolerance means how much your body needs movement or is looking for movement. When our cup is half full, we can maybe get up in the mornings. We can go downstairs and we can have our breakfast and get ready for school. And that will involve a little bit of movement. Then we may get to school and we may be sitting at our desk. We may go to another lesson and that will be another little bit of movement. Then we have break time, where we'll be running around. So that's a lot of movement. And then we will come back from school and we may have a little play date. So we may be moving a little bit more. And then by nighttime, you can see our cup is getting a little bit fuller. So when it kind of overflows, then we know there's been too much movement. So maybe then at bedtime, we only do a little bit of movement. And you can see our cup is about full, but it hasn't overflowed. So it means that sense of movement have been kind of just full to the bottom. And when we go to sleep, our cup will empty. So here is my, empty a little empty, to about half again. There we go. Ready for the next day. So that is when your movement sense is working well. And it's all the movement input that you get throughout the day, it's just enough to get you through the day, but it doesn't make you overexcited and it doesn't make you're overtired either. But hang on. What happens when we start off with our movement sense being only a tiny tiny bit of foot full, what we may be doing then, is we may want to look for lots and lots of movement opportunities because unless our cup is half full, we may not register that we are actually moving. So when your cup is this size, it may be that you don't get dizzy, that you fall over quite a lot, or that you are looking for so much movement during the day you are fidgeting, you are fiddly with staff. You kind of run around a lot and you might get told off for that. Because you will be someone who will be looking for a lot of movement opportunities. So let's see what that looks like. So in the mornings, you might get up instead of just walking downstairs. You may want to run downstairs, do a few jumps and go a little bit crazy. And that might fill your cup a little bit. Then you go to school and you have some movement over there. And a break time, you will be running around playing tag madly with your friends, in school, you will be fidgeting. The teacher might tell you off because she thinks you're not listening. And that will kind of make you important things up to there. Then you come home and you may be running around the park, and you may be jumping around and really find it hard to sit still and do your homework. And that might be a little bit more movement. Like that. So by the end of the night, your cup is still not full. So at night time, you may really find it hard to go to bed. Because your movement sense has not yet quite registered the movement for the day. And that means that you will be looking for a lot of movement and it may be really hard for you to settle down to sleep. So that's one thing that can happen to our movement sense. And that is what we call being under responsive to movement. So what happens when we wake up? Our movement is already three quarters full. That means, we already, our tolerance level is already high. So only a little tiny movement may overflow. And that could mean that we get grumpy. We get tired. We get, yeah, just struggling with the day. And we may get told off quite a lot. And we might not understand that, but it may be because our cup is already nearly full. So what does this look like? So in the mornings, when you wake up and your cup is already this full, you can only tolerate a little bit of movement. So when you wake up and you have breakfast and you go downstairs and you have to wash your hair and you have to have a shower and you have to pack your bag, your sense of movement may already be very full. So by the time that you get to school and then you have to do PE and you have to do some movement, look what happens. And it's not even break time yet. Oh, dear. Our sense of movement is overflowing. And that could, as I just said, could make us feel quite emotional. It can make us sad, it can make us angry, it can make us feel a bit mad at times as well. So that is when we are very sensitive to movement. It could be like an overflowing cup. So we can only tolerate a little little bit of movement. So let's see what happens with leaky cup. So remember this is the one that I've made some holes in. So you know what happens with leaky cups. Do you think it's going to hold the water? I'm not sure, but let's have a look. So with a leaky cup, it means you start off the day. Let's see, what happens. Oh dear. In the mornings, When you starting, can you hear that? Yeah, your cup is leaking. So it doesn't matter how much movement you put in throughout the day, it's always going to leak. So let's have a look at what that means. So in the mornings, you wake up, you've got a leaky cup, and they maybe a little bit of movement tolerance in there that hasn't leaked out, but not a lot. So now you know you need to get up, you need to go downstairs, you need to clean your teeth, you need to kind of pack your bag, you need to maybe feed the pets. So here goes the movement. and it's still leaking out. Can you see that? It's a bit tricky to see. I'll to kind of make it as best as I can. But is leaking. So what happens? You do more movement. So you may be jumping around you maybe starting to spin around. Oh my gosh! And it keeps leaking. Then you go to school, you cannot sit still because you've got a leaky cup when it comes to your sense of movement. So you may be jumping up and down on your chair. You might get up a lot. You may spin around, you may want to do a lot of running around the classroom. And your teacher tells you off because she called understand why can you not sit still? But you've got a leaky cup. And your sense of movement is just not enough for you to register it or to process it. And that means it's really really hard to sit still and to concentrate and to do tasks especially when you have to use both hands. So break time comes and you run around, you play all the active games that you can. Oh dear. That cup is still leaking. It's actually leaking a lot more now. So what happens is that by the end of the day, your cup is still empty. But you've done lots of movement and no one can understand why you are never still, you are always on the go. But it's because you've got a leaky cup. And that is the whole thing with the movement sense. But you can apply this to all the other senses as well. So if you've got a cup for your tactile sense, you've also got a cup for your visual sense, for your listening sense, for your smell, sense of smell. You've got a cup or cups for each of these senses. And when this is really tricky and when your cup doesn't start off by being about half full in the mornings, it can be really hard to process all of the sensory information. So you're going to have a go now, and you're going to make your own leaky cups. And chat it through with your parent or carer and ask them to explain it again with you. Maybe you can help to explain it and see which cup you think you are when it comes to your sense of movement. What we're going to do now is you're going to pause the video, to complete this task. So first of all, we're going to look at filling four cups. And then you're going to press play and I will tell you what to do next. So first of all, have four cups. I've called them A, B, C and D. Fill cup A to three quarters with water. Fill cup B with only a tiny bit of water. Fill cup C, but halfway with water. And then the fourth cup, make some holes in the bottom of cup number D. And you don't need to fill that with water at all. So once you've done that, press play and I will tell you what to do next. Brilliant. Now, the next part of this activity is you're going to think about which cup is mostly like you. And just in a bit in the same way that I've explained in the video about the four cups, you going to fill each cup. And I want you to really have a chat with your parents or your carer about which of these cups represents you best. So remember, cup A where you filled to three quarters is the cup where you are oversensitive to movement. In other words, it doesn't take much for your movement system to become overwhelmed. Cup number B, is the cup where you've only filled it to a tiny little bit in the bottom. And that cup, is the one where you need a lot of movement input before you register movement. So it means that, you know, before you expected to sit still or stand school or do something you know, either go to sleep, you may be someone who needs a lot of movement actually, which goes against what people think. So you may be someone who really needs to do lots of jumping and presets just before bedtime. Because your body needs to register the necessary amount of movement before you can process it. Cup number C where you filled it halfway, is where your movement system processes information and kind of just about a typical way. So you need some movement during the day, but not too much. And when you need to kind of sit still, you can do that. And when you need to go to bed, that's not hard for you. So that's cup number C. Cup D with the leaky holes, is where you may be doing a lot of movement throughout the day, but you never ever get enough. And that's the leaky cup of registering sensory input. So pause the video here, and then have a go at this activity and then press play once you're finished. Wow. Well, I know this is quite a long lesson, but I think it's really important that we figure out which cup is most like us when it comes to our movements sense. So here's our final activity. And it's a fun one and it's a quick one to do. So what are you going to do is, if you feel comfortable, you might have a go and see just check out these different cups and see how movement affects you. So you're going to work with your parents or your carer, make sure that you've got quite a big, clear, and safe space available. Now, first of all, I want you to see if you can jump off a small step or one of the stairs, the last, the first step of the stairs to see if you jump off that and see how that makes you feel. Because remember when I talked about being gravitational insecure. So please don't do this if you feel a bit scared about movement, don't do that. Or you know, that's one of the things that you can do, but if it's fine, you may think, I want to do more jumping or okay I've done one jump that's enough for me. It's really good to have these chats with your parents or carer to really explore what your sense of movement is like. Next, you're going to lie flat on the floor and you go into a roll in a straight line. This is often called a log roll and see how that movement makes you feel. Do you feel dizzy? Or do you feel okay? Have a chat with your parent or carer about this. Next you're going to bend all the way forward and reach, then reach all the way up and behind you. Because that movement, as we've done in a previous video is, in a previous lesson as well, really stimulates those little kind of inner ear canals. Remember those semicircular canals? And tell us what, tell your parents or carer what that impact is on you. What's the effect of that. And lastly, try and find a kind of open space and make sure that your parents or carer are standing quite close to you for this one. So spin around three times or shake your head quickly from side to side three times and then tell your parent or carer how it feels. Okay? So have a go at this and then press play when you're done. Wow, well done. You have done great. And I hope you've learned a lot about your sense of movement. And I hope that it's been helpful chatting to your parent or carer about movement and that in future you can share all of this information with your friends and with your teachers and for them to help understand a little bit better how your body works.

Regulation: Over-responsivity and Under-responsivity

Regulation: Over-responsivity and Under-responsivity

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

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