Signs of Sensory Processing Difficulties
The short answer
Sensory processing differences affect how a child's brain interprets sensory information from their environment and body. Signs include over-sensitivity (avoiding sounds, textures, or lights), under-sensitivity (seeking intense sensory input), or a combination. If sensory differences significantly affect your child's daily life, eating, playing, or social participation, an occupational therapy evaluation can help.
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By Age
What to expect by age
Some babies show early sensory sensitivities like startle responses, feeding difficulties, or discomfort with certain textures. These may resolve or become clearer as the child develops.
Sensory preferences and sensitivities become more apparent. Toddlers may refuse certain foods, dislike having their hair washed, or seek intense physical play. Some variation is normal.
Sensory processing differences become more identifiable. If your child has significant difficulty with multiple sensory experiences that affect daily functioning, an occupational therapy evaluation is recommended.
Sensory processing difficulties can affect preschool participation, peer interaction, and self-care tasks. An OT can create a sensory diet with activities designed to help your child regulate their sensory system.
Before school entry, addressing sensory processing needs helps with classroom participation, attention, and behavior. Many children make significant progress with occupational therapy support.
What Should You Do?
When to take action
- Your toddler has some sensory preferences but can function well in daily activities
- Your toddler avoids some textures or sounds but is not significantly limited
- Your toddler is active and seeks physical play as part of normal development
- Your toddler has mild sensory sensitivities that are manageable
- Sensory differences significantly affect your child's eating, sleeping, playing, or social participation
- Your child has both extreme avoidance of some sensory inputs and intense seeking of others
- Sensory processing concerns are combined with other developmental differences
- Your child's sensory difficulties are worsening and increasingly limiting their daily life
- Severe sensory processing differences are causing distress, self-injury, or complete avoidance of necessary activities
Sources
Related Resources
Trust your instincts. If something feels wrong, reach out to your pediatrician.
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Related Behavior Concerns
Toddler Shows Sensory Seeking Patterns
Sensory seeking means a child actively craves extra sensory input through activities like spinning, crashing, mouthing objects, touching everything, or making loud sounds. Some sensory seeking is normal in active toddlers. It becomes a concern when it is so intense that it interferes with daily activities, safety, or learning. An occupational therapist can evaluate sensory processing and recommend strategies.
Toddler Avoids Certain Sensory Experiences
Sensory avoiding means a child is overly sensitive to certain sensory inputs and actively avoids them. This may include refusing to touch certain textures, covering ears at sounds others tolerate, avoiding bright lights, or refusing messy play. Some sensitivity is normal in toddlers, but when avoidance significantly limits participation in daily activities, an occupational therapy evaluation can help.
Toddler Both Seeks and Avoids Sensory Input
Many children with sensory processing differences show a mixed profile, seeking intense input in some senses while avoiding input in others. A child might crave spinning and crashing (vestibular and proprioceptive seeking) while being extremely sensitive to sounds and textures (auditory and tactile avoiding). This mixed profile is common and an occupational therapist can create a comprehensive sensory plan.
Aggressive Play vs Normal Play
Rough-and-tumble play — wrestling, chasing, play-fighting, and superhero battles — is a normal and important part of child development, particularly for toddlers and preschoolers. It helps children develop physical coordination, social skills, self-regulation, and an understanding of boundaries. The key distinction between normal rough play and concerning aggression is whether both children are having fun, there is turn-taking in roles, and no one is intentionally trying to hurt the other.
My Toddler Is Aggressive Toward Pets
Toddlers being rough with pets is extremely common and almost never reflects true aggression or cruelty. Young children lack the motor control to be consistently gentle and do not yet understand that animals feel pain the way they do. With patient, consistent teaching about gentle touch and close supervision, most toddlers learn to interact safely with pets by age 3-4.
My Baby Doesn't Seem Attached to Anyone
By 7-9 months, most babies show clear preferences for their primary caregivers and some wariness of unfamiliar people. If your baby seems equally comfortable with everyone and shows no distress when separated from caregivers, it may simply reflect an easy-going temperament. However, if combined with other social differences, it can occasionally warrant further discussion with your pediatrician.