Worth knowing
Seeking and avoiding can live in the same child
The same child who body-slams the sofa may cover their ears in a supermarket. Both are real at once.
Sensory seeking
Regulation tools for sensory seekers
Some children need more input than the day gives them. They crash, climb, chew, squeeze, spin, and press — not to be difficult, but because their body is looking for something.
This page is for the parent who just found the words for it. Start with the list below and see how much of it sounds like your kid.
Input type
Deep pressure and proprioception
For the child who crashes, climbs, squeezes into gaps, presses their feet into you, and leans their whole weight on whatever is nearest.
Calmee the Caterpillar
$34.99Stretch, squeeze, count, or hold. A hand action a child can repeat as long as they want, at their own pace.
- Good for
- Hands that need a job — homework, car seats, waiting rooms.
Flutter the Dragonfly
$49.99A three-pound weighted dragonfly for a lap, shoulders, or across the legs at bedtime. The child places it and takes it off.
- Specifications
- 3 lbs (about 1.4 kg) spread evenly across the body and four wings. Ages 4 to 12, adult supervision required.
Input type
Tactile and hand input
For the child who touches every surface they pass, picks at things, and needs something in their hands to be able to sit still.
Bloomie
$14.99A flower-and-candle tool to hold, turn over, and flip between two shapes. Something to do with the fingers that has an end and a beginning.
- Good for
- The breathing cue is optional. Plenty of children just like flipping it.
Not sure where to start
Answer one question instead.
Tell us what you notice most often and we will point at one tool, one alternative, and where each may not fit.
Find your toolNo product required
Let’s go sensory seeking.
None of this needs a product. It needs about ten minutes and permission to be loud. Pick the situation you are in, offer the idea, let your child change it, and stop when they are done — there is no number of repetitions to finish.
Heavy work and crashing at home
- Pile the sofa cushions into a crash pad and let them run at it. This is the whole activity; it does not need a rule.
- Give them the laundry basket to carry upstairs, or the shopping to haul in from the car.
- Push a loaded cardboard box across the carpet from one end of the room to the other.
Deep pressure without equipment
- Roll them up tight in a blanket like a burrito, head out, and let them wriggle free themselves.
- Stack the sofa cushions on top of them while they lie on the floor, then take them off on request.
- Wall push-ups: hands flat, lean in, push. Ten of them before something hard is a good deal.
Spinning, swinging, upside-down
- Office-chair spins they control — they stop it, you do not.
- Hang head-down off the edge of the sofa and look at the room upside-down.
- Somersaults on a mattress on the floor, or hanging from anything at the playground.
Outdoor and playground
- Monkey bars and climbing frames: hanging by the arms is the strongest input a playground offers.
- Digging, filling buckets with wet sand, and carrying rocks from one pile to another.
- Rolling down a hill until they are dizzy and grass-stained.
Bedtime wind-down
- Tuck the covers in tight down both sides so the bed holds them.
- Slow, firm squeezes from feet to knees, once up each leg, then stop.
- Let them push their feet hard against the wall or the footboard while lying down.
School day and homework breaks
- Chair push-ups: hands on the seat, lift, hold, down. Nobody in the room has to notice.
- Send them to carry something genuinely heavy to another room — books, a full water jug.
- A wall sit or ten wall pushes before sitting down to write anything.
Car rides and waiting rooms
- Press palms hard together, hold for a count, release. Repeat as long as it is interesting.
- A heavy bag or backpack across the lap for the length of the journey.
- Push both feet flat into the footwell as hard as they can, then let go.
From parents
Mostly they tell us it was a relief to have a word for it.
“I spent two years thinking I had a behavior problem. It turned out I had a kid who needed to crash into things.”
“We do the cushion pile before school now instead of arguing at the door. Same child, completely different morning.”
“Calmee lives in her pocket. She stretches it in the supermarket and we get to the end of the shop.”
Give the seeking somewhere to go.
Every tool lists the physical action it offers, whether it makes sound, whether it is weighted, and where it may not fit. Options, not a prescription.
Talk to us about your setting
Tell us what the hard moments look like and we will suggest a starting point, or quote a set of tools for a room.