Summer can bring freedom and fun — but with its new sensory and emotional experiences, summer can also be sensory overload, emotional fatigue, and unexpected challenges for kids with unique sensory-emotional profiles (SEPs). In this episode, we dive deep into how to support your child’s SEP through summer’s shifting routines, hotter days, unstructured time and newly structured time. With summer bringing new experiences, your child may also be presenting in new ways. It’s a great time to review a...
Jun 30, 2025•30 min•Season 2Ep. 53
Summer can bring freedom and fun — but with its new sensory and emotional experiences, summer can also be sensory overload, emotional fatigue, and unexpected challenges for kids with unique sensory-emotional profiles (SEPs). In this episode, we dive deep into how to support your child’s SEP through summer’s shifting routines, hotter days, unstructured time and newly structured time. With summer bringing new experiences, your child may also be presenting in new ways. It’s a great time to review a...
Jun 25, 2025•30 min•Season 2Ep. 52
Picky eating isn’t just about preferences — it’s about how a child is experiencing their world. Today’s episode is one that many of you have been requesting — we’re diving deep into picky eating, not from a behavioral or surface-level view, but through the powerful lens of sensory and emotional processing. This topic often resurfaces during times of change and stress — like the transition from the school year to summer — and it's important to look beneath the surface to understand why mealtime c...
Jun 13, 2025•29 min•Season 2Ep. 51
As we approach the end of the school year, many of us are preparing for big transitions—siblings coming home from college, summer camps kicking off, family vacations in the works, and those familiar routines starting to shift. So today, we're looking back at one of our most timely episodes—because it’s more relevant than ever. In that episode, we explored how changes in routine, while exciting for some, can be overwhelming for kids with sensory and sensory-motor differences. While most of us app...
May 28, 2025•34 min•Season 2Ep. 50
Today, we’re tackling a phrase many parents and professionals hear — “This child is not sensory.” As awareness of sensory processing grows, more families and caregivers are trying sensory strategies to help children with regulation and participation. But when these strategies don't work as expected, it's often too quickly concluded that the child doesn’t have sensory needs. The truth? Sensory processing is complex, highly individualized, and often misunderstood. We’ll explore why general sensory...
May 21, 2025•25 min•Season 2Ep. 49
In this episode, we explore the concept of Sensory Emotional Engagement and its role in personality development. Our research team is examining how Sensory Emotional Engagement bridges gaps between sensory integration, mental health, and early relational health. The central idea is that personality forms through repeated patterns of behavior in response to sensory and social stimuli. The way we take in sensations and move our body impacts the way we feel. The way we sense, move, and feel impacts...
May 15, 2025•22 min•Season 2Ep. 48
In today’s episode, we’re diving into a common theme many families bring up: kids who need to be in control and have things “just so.” Parents often describe their child getting upset when daily routines aren’t followed exactly—like needing to get dressed in a specific order, wanting food served on certain plates, or insisting the bedtime routine goes the same way every single night. We also hear stories about children needing things in a specific order or setup—whether it’s where they place the...
Apr 24, 2025•29 min•Season 2Ep. 47
In today’s episode, we’re focusing on the Anxious Yet Deeply Feeling Sensory Emotional Personality map. We'll explore the specific sensory and emotional behaviors—essentially the landmarks —that you can expect to encounter on this SEP map. By recognizing these key traits, you’ll be better equipped to understand and navigate your child's world with connection, empathy, and insight. Just as a map offers guidance through unfamiliar landscapes, understanding your child's Sensory Emotional Personalit...
Apr 08, 2025•27 min•Season 2Ep. 46
In today’s episode, we’re focusing on the Needy Yet Compassionate Sensory Emotional Personality map. We'll explore the specific sensory and emotional behaviors—essentially the landmarks —that you can expect to encounter on this SEP map. By recognizing these key traits, you’ll be better equipped to understand and navigate your child's world with connection, empathy, and insight. Just as a map offers guidance through unfamiliar landscapes, understanding your child's Sensory Emotional Personality (...
Mar 28, 2025•33 min•Season 2Ep. 45
In today’s episode, we’re focusing on the Confused Yet Full of Wonder Sensory Emotional Personality map. We'll explore the specific sensory and emotional behaviors—essentially the landmarks —that you can expect to encounter on this SEP map. By recognizing these key traits, you’ll be better equipped to understand and navigate your child's world with connection, empathy and insight. Just as a map offers guidance through unfamiliar landscapes, understanding your child's Sensory Emotional Personalit...
Mar 18, 2025•39 min•Season 2Ep. 44
In today’s bonus episode, we invite you to join our Take Time to PLAY campaign and experience the transformative power of play! At Great Kids Place (and beyond), we’re encouraging families to engage in Sensory Emotional PLAY for just 15 minutes a day. Whether through creative games, hands-on activities, or sensory motor experiences, play has the power to strengthen emotional connections and boost overall well-being. Why play? When we observe the play of children, we are invited into their world ...
Feb 20, 2025•5 min•Season 2Ep. 43
In today’s episode, we’re focusing on the Scattered Yet Intentional and Passionate Sensory Emotional Personality map. We'll explore the specific sensory and emotional behaviors—essentially the landmarks —that you can expect to encounter on this SEP map. By recognizing these key traits, you’ll be better equipped to understand and navigate your child's world with connection, empathy, and insight. Just as a map offers guidance through unfamiliar landscapes, understanding your child's Sensory Emotio...
Feb 11, 2025•37 min•Season 2Ep. 42
Sometimes navigating parenthood seems like exploring uncharted territory. Just as a map offers guidance through unfamiliar landscapes, understanding your child's Sensory Emotional Personality (SEP) can provide clear guidance through your child’s behaviors and interactions. Each SEP serves as a guide, revealing how children process sensations and navigate their emotional world, and unveiling their unique characteristics and behavioral tendencies, shedding light on why they act the way they do. As...
Jan 15, 2025•36 min•Season 2Ep. 41
In today’s episode, I share a personal story about the importance of play in our busy lives. Between running Great Kids Place and A Sensory Emotional Lens, and managing the hectic schedules of my kids—who are now almost 13 and 14—it's easy to forget the joy of play. We spend plenty of time together, like sharing meals, chatting during car rides, and reflecting at bedtime, but these moments aren’t the same as unstructured play. A few weeks ago, I decided to intentionally carve out time to play wi...
Dec 23, 2024•7 min•Season 1Ep. 40
Recently, I have been reflecting on gratitude, influenced by my own experiences with my Sensory Emotional kids during some challenging parenting moments. I’m trying to “practice what I preach” by applying a Sensory Emotional perspective to better understand situations where there may be a lack of gratitude. This approach helps me respond to such behaviors with greater understanding. As we find ourselves in the holiday season, I believe it’s a great opportunity for many of us to pause and use a s...
Dec 20, 2024•28 min•Season 1Ep. 39
The holidays can be stressful for our sensory-emotional children and their caregivers. That’s why we want to revisit an earlier episode and share resources that may be helpful as we navigate the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. You may have noticed some behaviors resurfacing in recent weeks. The period leading up to the holidays and major events can be challenging for our sensory-emotional kids and their families. At Great Kids, several of our families have reported that their children a...
Dec 12, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Personality is a set of qualities that make up a person's character - their way of being. When we talk about someone's personality, we often describe the way they act and interact. For example, "he is the outgoing one who likes to talk a lot and try new things." Sensory Emotional Personalities describe the characteristics - the way an individual acts and interacts - based on the way they are processing and moving in their world. Therefore, Sensory Emotional Personalities provide us with a way to...
Dec 06, 2024•24 min•Season 1Ep. 37
We know that the way we take in sensation impacts how we feel and, in turn, how we act and interact. We've discussed the global emotional expressions of body-based experiences - emotions like anxiety, embarrassment, surprise, confusion, needy, etc. Today, we are going to dive into social situations and a topic that's been coming up lately - kids saying things to others that are unkind or saying seemingly purposefully hurtful or mean things to others. Well, at least, the things being said were in...
Nov 18, 2024•29 min•Season 1Ep. 36
Potty training can be a rollercoaster of emotions for both caregivers and kids. The pressure and stress surrounding this milestone can feel overwhelming at times. Whether it's the comments from other caregivers or grandparents about it being "time" or the need to meet deadlines for preschool transitions, the pressure to help our kids achieve this goal can be intense. As we chatted about in a recent episode, our stress levels can affect our kids, and stress can make it really hard for them to go ...
Oct 23, 2024•24 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Believe it or not, Halloween can sometimes seem more of a trick than a treat for our sensory emotional kids. On the surface we can see or sense the different sensory experiences that Halloween brings - lights and sounds of decorations, smells of candy and even decorations sometimes, and costumes of unfamiliar fabrics and textures. When we consider movement experiences, we can anticipate navigation through crowds and navigating places in the dark with lots of people and lots of different uneven s...
Oct 14, 2024•24 min•Season 1Ep. 34
During any big transition or change in routine for our children, we spend a lot of time talking about how to support our kids, and we, as parents and caregivers, put all our effort into this. We focus on understanding the tricky behaviors of our children and preventing and responding to them. What we don't spend time on is what supports us as caregivers during busy, tricky, crazy seasons in life. In fact, we often completely put our needs aside at times like these. Then what happens? You guessed...
Oct 02, 2024•29 min•Season 1Ep. 33
In this episode, we're looking at sensory diets and sensory breaks through a sensory emotional lens. Sensory diets provide opportunities throughout the day for a child to engage in sensory input to support regulation. In the Sensory Emotional Engagement Model, we know that the way we move our bodies and take in sensation impacts the way that we feel. We also know that children with sensory processing differences tend to experience specific emotional expressions - specific ways of feeling. When u...
Sep 10, 2024•40 min
Michele and Amanda are back to continue their conversation about supporting our sensory emotional kids in the classroom as we head back to school this year. Getting to know a new school, a new teacher, new routines, and expectations that are different from last year can be really overwhelming. We recognize that we all process sensory information differently and choose different ways of being according to our capacities to process information from the world and our bodies. In school, these ways o...
Aug 27, 2024•38 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Getting to know a new school, a new teacher, new routines, and expectations that are different from last year can be really overwhelming for some. We recognize that we all process sensory information differently and choose different ways of being according to our capacities to process information from the world and our bodies. In school, these ways of being can significantly impact performance and participation in school-based activities. Join Michele and special guest Amanda Newchok for this sp...
Aug 14, 2024•35 min•Season 1Ep. 30
Like many common “go to” strategies, tangible rewards do not always work for all kids - particularly for individuals who process sensation differently than yourself and others. In fact, an offering of a reward for an expected behavior often has the opposite effect for some kids – again, particularly our sensory kids – and results in further dysregulation and lack of participation. In this episode, we’ll take a sensory emotional lens on reward, focusing on the feeling of reward and the sense of r...
Jul 30, 2024•23 min•Season 1Ep. 29
Social interactions with peers and/or siblings is a common area of challenge for children (and all individuals) with sensory emotional differences. There is often a mismatch in how we think the social experience will go and how it actually goes. This mismatch leads to decreased success in social interactions and accompanying tricky behaviors when our kids are in social scenarios. This mismatch is caused by underlying sensory motor differences and the emotional expression of them. To better under...
Jul 24, 2024•29 min•Season 1Ep. 28
This week’s episode of a Sensory Emotional Lens builds off of last week’s show on the explorations of new experiences, but this time, we’re putting an emphasis on the benefits of taking risks. Taking risks when done in play is a rich sensory-emotional opportunity and brings several benefits. In addition to sensory-emotional exploration, taking risks brings novelty, ignites problem-solving abilities, builds regulation strategies, tests and learns boundaries, and allows the reformation of a sense ...
Jul 01, 2024•30 min•Season 1Ep. 27
While most of us thrive on and enjoy routines, individuals with sensory processing and sensory-motor difficulties tend to rely on them more so than most of us. Learn why routines are beneficial and why changes in routines can lead to significant challenges in emotion regulation and social participation. When we understand the body-based differences that occur as routines change, we can better understand the social-emotional reactions that are popping up and what to do about them through a sensor...
Jun 12, 2024•32 min•Season 1Ep. 26
We all process sensory information and move our bodies differently. Sometimes, this happens in functional ways. Sometimes, this happens in dysfunctional ways. How we process sensation and move our bodies can lead to weaknesses AND strengths. These continuums of function to dysfunction and strengths to weaknesses fluctuate throughout development and the lifespan based on our relationships, environments, habits, and routines. Learn how this continuum applies to you and your family. In this episode...
Jun 04, 2024•42 min•Season 1Ep. 25
In the last episode, we met Amelia and heard about her perspective on her sensory-emotional journey and lifestyle. As she spoke, I found myself reflecting on her journey through the therapist’s lens—thinking through the clinical reasoning that we used as therapists to support each piece of her sensory-emotional personalities through her early childhood and now pre-teen experiences. Welcome to Behind the Scenes of Amelia’s Journey! In this episode you’ll discover: The whole body experiences that ...
May 20, 2024•40 min•Season 1Ep. 24
