Teaching Kids to Advocate for Their Sensory Needs: 3 Simple Strategies

Toddlers are generally really excellent self-advocates for their own sensory needs. Of course, that’s to the detriment of several other things.

Toddlers have a complete disregard for social norms, a lack of basic dignity, and an inability to understand that their actions are impacting others.

The end result is that their advocacy for their own sensory needs might look an awful lot like “eating a random thing off the ground,” “screaming and falling to the floor,” or “yelling NO at you when you try to sing along with the radio,” or a hundred other things ranging from slightly inconvenient to astonishingly off-putting.

And yet… And yet! These little baby seeds of self-advocacy are still self-advocacy.

It is essential not to crush them. We all want to create a better world for our kids than the one we had for ourselves, and this is one of the ways that we do that: by honoring, nurturing, and guiding our kids in self-advocacy rather than trying to squash it out of them when they’re three and then teach it back to them when they’re twelve.

Here are some key principles for teaching your children to self-advocate for their own sensory needs.

1. Let them hear you commenting on your sensory needs.

This is so easy to embed into your everyday life and so basic when it’s described that it almost sounds comical. What I’m suggesting here is that you literally say out loud the sensory reasons why you’re doing tons of things you usually do…and believe me, you do a surprising amount of stuff for a surprising amount of sensory reasons!

• “I’m going to sit down on the couch because my legs are tired.”
• “I’m thirsty. I’ll drink some water.”
• “Ooh, that sound hurts my ears. Could you play it a bit more quietly? If not, I’ll pop my earplugs in.”

You get the idea. Humans do quite a lot of what we do for sensory reasons (even if we don’t realize that’s why we’re doing the things).

A bonus here is that this might help you be more mindful of your actual sensory needs. As a subcomponent to this, when you have to say no to your child regarding any personal boundaries you have, try explaining the underlying reason.

Again, you’ll often find that it’s sensory:

• “No, I don’t want to play that…my energy feels too low for jumping around.”
• “No, I don’t want you to sit on my lap right now. My skin is feeling really crawly, and I don’t want anyone to touch me right now.”
• “No thanks, I don’t want to play with the sand. I don’t like the way it feels to me.”

If these all sound like a little bit of a bummer—good news! The next step is figuring out how to counter-offer with even more of your own sensory self-advocacy!

• “My energy feels just right for snuggling and watching a movie, though, if you want to join me!”
• “I think I’ll put a blanket all over myself, and then we could read a book if you’d like.”
• “I like to sit and watch you play with the sand, though. I like watching the way it falls in a little cascade.”

Remember—sometimes we sacrifice things for our kids, but you shouldn’t be feeling resentful or like you’re having to martyr yourself and your own sensory needs for them.

Watching you self-advocate gives them the foundation they need to be able to confidently self-advocate for themselves when they get older.

2. Teach them how to identify their own sensory needs.

Children must first be able to identify their sensory needs if they’re going to effectively advocate for themselves with their words (as opposed to their behavior). (This requires self-awareness.)

They cannot advocate with words for something they don’t have the language to explain. Some people really resonate with unusual vocabulary to describe their sensory needs. This is great, too.

If your child tells you that they’re feeling “wibbly,” “buzzy,” or “a little bit pink,” try to immediately validate whatever they’ve shared and, if appropriate, ask them curiously for more information.

“A little bit pink? Wow, I bet you do feel that! What else makes you feel a little bit pink?” Don’t feel like you have to immediately steer it into societally accepted emotional words or put a label on it that makes sense to you.

If it makes sense to your child and they feel like sharing it with you, that’s huge! Protect that, even as you grow it. And before your kid can advocate to you with their words—when they’re still relying mainly on their behavior—that’s the time for you to observe aloud things you see them doing.

Some kids are OK with you labeling; some kids would really prefer that you didn’t.

So, this could look a lot of ways:

• Observing what action you see—”I notice your fists are clenching…“
• Naming the emotion—”I wonder if you’re getting mad.”
• Speculating or giving choices about what would help—”Do you want to punch this pillow or squeeze this stress ball?“
• Explaining what’s behind these feelings—”When bodies get mad, they look for ways to get energy out. It makes sense that you want to hit things.“

Ensuring that you have a solid foundation in a sensory processing “lens” for viewing your child will help you pass it along to them, as it affects the way you truly see them.

Can you see a child squeezing their fists and growling and recognize the sensory reasons underlying their behavior? If not, it would be helpful to learn more about sensory processing.

You probably know about the five basic senses—hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch. Do you know about the bonus senses? Read more about it here.

Do you know what to do when one family member has one need and another family member has an opposing need? For example, what if one child loves and needs a lot of loud, rambunctious play, but their sibling is sensitive to noise? This is known as sensory mismatch— learn more about it here.

There’s a lot to learn about this topic, especially if you’re finding it interesting or helpful. It can be a fun thing to learn about alongside your child!

3. Treat the whole thing like a growth process.

What I mean by that is this: When your child is learning to walk for the first time, you don’t get annoyed the first time they fall down.

You’d never say: “That’s not how you walk, kid. You only took what, three steps before flopping? You will need thousands more than that, or at least hundreds. Come on, get it together!”

When your child is learning how to read for the first time, you don’t snap corrections at them as they sound the words out.

You’d never say: “It’s ‘love,’ not ‘lovee,’ you don’t pronounce the E. It’s silent, obviously!“

But when your child is learning to explain the sensations inside their body for the first time, a lot of adults are quick to swoop in, tell them they’re wrong, tell them they’re actually feeling something different, and overall narrate the entire experience of a body the adult literally does not live inside of and can not feel.

Like,

• “You’re not hungry, you just ate.”
• “That didn’t hurt, you’re fine.”
• “Oh, you don’t have anything to be mad about. You’re just tired.”

This is taking those little baby seeds of self-advocacy and ripping them up by the roots before they’ve ever had a chance to deepen and grow.

Of course, your child will sometimes name the “wrong” emotion. Of course, your child will sometimes think they don’t need to use the toilet when, in fact, they actually do. Of course, your child will sometimes say, “I’m hungry,” and actually mean, “Ice cream tastes amazing; I want more of that.”

There will be times when your child self-advocates “wrong” in the sense that they are probably not the most reliable reporter of objective truth that there’s ever been. However, the truly important thing here is that feelings aren’t entirely objective. They’re very subjective. Not in the way that means “they’re false,” “they’re untrustworthy,” or “they’re unknowable,” but in the way that means “they’re intensely personal and nobody is going to be able to disprove a feeling.”

You don’t live inside your child’s body.
You don’t feel with their nerves.
You don’t know what pain feels like to them.
You don’t know what specific frequencies their sensory systems are dialed to.

They do.

They might still be learning.
They might be reporting to you on all of that imperfectly.
But they are the ones living inside of themselves.

When you repeatedly discount their reports, you end up either making them angry and dig down harder into their (potentially shallow and immature) self-reporting capability or making them doubt themselves and lose touch with their self-reporting capability as they start to rely on just believing whatever you tell them instead. And whether they become angry or self-doubtful, either way, they are not improving at practicing their fledgling skill.

Remember: You can always add more input, more words, and more corrections later. But you can’t ever put words back into your mouth once they’re out.

So, if your kid says, “I’m still thirsty,” as they reach for their third juice box, it’s okay to stop them; it’s okay to offer them water; it’s okay to make any parenting choices you need to make. But if you can try not to say, “You’re not thirsty!” you’ll be setting your kid up for more success in their own confident self-advocacy.

And you can always circle back later and muse, “Do you think you were actually thirsty, or do you think the juice just tasted soooo good?”

Sensory Self-Advocacy Ladder

This diagram of the Sensory Self-Advocacy Ladder is a visual representation of how kids can self-advocate for their sensory needs across different stages of development or regulation.

It begins with instinctive, sensory-driven reactions—things that often get labeled as “behavior” (which is itself a euphemism for “misbehavior”). These responses, like crying, fleeing, or covering ears, are not the child making a decision, but rather acting to intuitively defend themselves. We can interpret the actions as communication telling us that something in the setting is intolerable from a sensory perspective, which helps us shift our focus from controlling their behavior to understanding what it is they need.

The ladder then moves through gestures, simple words, and expressive language. Along the way, kids may use language that sounds disrespectful or abrupt—like “shut up!” or “I hate that!”—especially when they’re overwhelmed and the logic and language centers in the brain have begun shutting down.

These moments are still self-advocacy!

They represent the child reaching for words, even when reaching for words is incredibly difficult, and accessing the best words they have available at the moment. When they’re not in a moment of such distress, they’ll have access to better, more polished words.

It’s important to remember that words don’t have to be spoken by mouth. Sign language, spelling to communicate, pushing buttons on a device, and other forms of AAC use are other ways that children may express their needs. These have a similar growing process, too. Kids might use a simple “help!” sign or repeatedly push a button for “loud loud loud loud” before they get to a stage where they can interpret their body’s signals and communicate self-advocacy in a more mature way.

This ladder visual was created to help caregivers recognize the different stages and styles of self-advocacy and see how all ways of communicating and self-advocating are meaningful. It isn’t designed to rank communication methods as better or worse, but to show how communication can progress—and that every form along the way is valid.

If you love this infographic, you can also download the full-sized PDF to print for free!

Looking for More Support?

If your child is really struggling with self-advocacy—especially if sensory needs are hard for them to recognize or communicate—occupational therapy may be a helpful next step.

A lot of people don’t realize that self-advocacy is actually a skill that OTs can help kids develop. From building body awareness to learning how to express needs clearly, this falls well within their wheelhouse.

You can learn more about that here:  How Can an OT Help Your Child Develop Self-Advocacy Skills?

Or, if your child is a little older and ready to learn what self-advocacy actually means and why it matters, this printable is a great way to start that conversation. It’s a four-page, child-friendly resource you can read through together. It explains what self-advocacy is, why it’s important, and offers simple examples of how kids can practice speaking up for themselves—at home, at school, or with friends.

The thing about self-advocacy is that sometimes, it looks like an inconvenience. Sometimes, it looks like noncompliance. Sometimes, it looks like “bad behavior”. Because when a kid is really listening to their own body and trying to advocate to you for what they need, that might be at odds with what you expect them to do right then.

Really, that might be the most important thing to know about self-advocacy at all. If you want your child to learn to self-advocate for their own sensory needs, you have to be willing to see them as a whole entire person who can experience needs that are different than yours, maybe don’t align with yours, and maybe need different solutions than yours…and be willing to work that out with them anyway.

It’s tricky. It’s an ongoing learning process. And I absolutely believe you can do it.

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