Regulation: Over-responsivity and Under-responsivity

Sensory integration

﻿In today's lesson we are going to look into the sense of touch, and we're specifically going to have a look at when we are over sensitive or under sensitive to tactile information. 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. So what does it mean when our skin is too sensitive or when our sense of touch does not register information correctly? That's what we're going to learn about, and that's what this whole lesson is about. So we're going to look at when our skin is too sensitive to touch, when we sometimes miss out on tactile cues, we're also going to look at what is it when we avoid touching things? And when you're really distracted by what we can feel. At the beginning of this lesson, I want you to pause the video here to collect all the items that you'll need. You are going to need four different coloured felt tip pens and some paper. So get all of those things together and then press play, and we will carry on with the lesson. Let's have a look and remind ourselves of what our sense of touch helps us with. Our sense of touch helps us to recognise and interpret touch such as soft, hard, pain, temperature, as well as it helps us to stay safe. It's one of the biggest organs in our body, so there's a lot of feeling that happens in our tactile sense. When we are overly sensitive to touch it can make it really hard to tolerate when people want to touch us. So when someone wants to give you a hug or even a handshake, it can feel a little bit like yuck, and you don't really want to do that. When you're over sensitive, it can make it really hard to tolerate any pain, so if you have a little scratch it may feel like the worst thing ever. When you're over sensitive to touch it can also make it really difficult to tolerate some seams, so when you're wearing some socks, some people are very sensitive to socks or labels in their clothing, and it feels really itchy and scratchy. When you're over sensitive to touch it can make it really hard to join in with messy games or even touching food can be a struggle, because you'll want to wash your hands all the time and you don't like yucky stuff on your hands. So all of those things can have a big impact on what we do everyday, when we are overly sensitive to touch. Let's have a look at what happens when we are under sensitive to touch and under-responsive. So when we're not registering touch cues, it means that we don't always notice when our face or our hands are really messy. It may mean that we really struggle to find stuff in our schoolbag, and it may also mean that sometimes we will keep touching other people to the point that they get a little bit irritated, because we don't register that tactile information. It may also be when you're not registering touch very well, it may be that you will fiddle with a lot of things and your hands kind of reach out to all sorts of stuff on your desk and you're always, kind of, fiddling with something. And that can be really hard, especially in a classroom situation, your teacher may get annoyed by that. But it's not because you're naughty, it's just that your hands need a lot of tactile information. For this activity, we're going to be a touch spy, so ask your parent or carer to join in, and I want you think about making a list of things that are too much, or too yucky, or too distracting, or maybe too confusing to touch. Once you've made this list you can share it with your parents, with your carer, or with the rest of your family, as well as with your teacher. And this will really help you to start to think about all those things that are not comfortable when you have to touch it. So let's move on, you're going to pause the video, here, now, to complete the task, and then once you've finished, press play, and we will finish the lesson together. Fantastic, well done for being an awesome touch spy! And then we're going to carry on learning more about our touch sense in the next few lessons.

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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