Bopping or Flapping

My daughter has coily, curly hair that I braid in protective braids every four weeks or so. It takes about 5-6 hours. My daughter is normally a perpetual blur of motion, noise, and crumbs, so I know it’s really hard for her and we do everything we can to make it more doable.

The last time I was braiding her hair, I was listening to music on my own headphones (mostly to tune out the sound of the kids show she wanted to watch, which I find incredibly annoying but was going with it cause, again, her hair). I was feeling antsy from having spent so much time sitting in one place and my fingers were tired from braiding. One of my favorite songs came on my playlist. I really wanted to flap my hands along with the music. I really wanted to bounce on my toes, too.

A lot of the time, I’m all about adults listening to their body’s needs and trying to find ways to honor them. Right in this very moment, though, it wasn’t possible for me to flap and also braid; it didn’t feel advisable for me to stop braiding, because if my daughter was in the flow of having her hair braided, then me stopping would break the spell and probably cause a difficult time starting back up again.

So: flapping and bouncing were out. I tried to figure out what I could do.

Really all I had access to was bouncing my head, so I tried it. I did a small nod first, nodding along with the song. It wasn’t really matching the energy need in my body. I tried bopping my head more energetically. Ugh, it didn’t work. I started to feel a little bit queasy, actually. And I still wanted to bounce and flap!

So what was going on here?

I wanted some proprioceptive sensory input. I wanted the exertion feedback from my joints and arms that would come from flapping my hands; I wanted the same from my ankles, toes, and legs. I had energy inside my body that wasn’t matching the energy of the activity I needed to do (sitting still, braiding quietly). I wanted to use this energy, I wanted proprioceptive input!

What did I try to swap it with? Vestibular sensory input! The imaginary little cup of water in my ears was sloshing around as my head moved. That’s nothing like exertion from my wrists and ankles! This wasn’t a successful substitution for what I wanted on a sensory level. And since vestibular input is so uniquely powerful that it can be disorienting or dysregulating, and because I’m extremely sensitive to lots of sensations, the vestibular input was actually making me nauseated.

Okay. All of this was me-driven, with no external people involved. But this happens A LOT with kids who are seeking a sensation that’s inconvenient for their adults. Their adults decide on a replacement that seems reasonable to the adults, but the replacement isn’t actually meeting the same need. Maybe it’s not even in the same category! And then it doesn’t work for the kid. So the kid doesn’t take to it (maybe by refusing, avoiding, ignoring, misbehaving…) or the kid squashes their need and it goes unmet.

For me, in this specific instance, I could squash it until later. To me, not breaking the flow of braiding my daughter’s hair without complaint or frustration was worth feeling an uncomfortable sensory feeling in my body for a little while longer. But for many kids, if not all kids, this kind of “suppress until later” as the best available strategy is not something that they’re voluntarily choosing. It’s being chosen for them, it hurts, it’s hard to live under. Like, it’s actually painful!

When there is a need to find a replacement for a particular behaviour or action or thing-being-used-to-meet-a-need — because I get it, sometimes there is a need for a replacement and there’s no way around that — one thing you can do is try to make sure your attempted replacement is as close to the original as possible. And sometimes, “as close to” comes from an unusual lens, a sensory lens, instead of what might feel common-sense close. Head bopping to music might feel common-sense close to hand-flapping to music. But it’s actually a different sensory category — vestibular vs proprioception. It’s actually quite far away in that regard! Even something like chewing gum would technically be in the same sensory category (although I don’t think that substitute would’ve worked for me personally because I don’t like gum. But it might’ve for somebody somewhere!)

This is already getting long, and I’ve done some detailed posts in the past about vestibular input, proprioceptive input, principles for finding replacement sensory things, and the general concept of replacing sensory needs/behaviors. So click through to any of those links if you want more details!