The Red Zone [1] (sympathetic nervous system) stress response prompts fight or flight and is well represented by children with ADHD and Explosive Disorder. With ADHD, novel sensory stimuli is one cause for regulation difficulties, making the child restless and unable to be still. This restlessness is at one end of the Red Zone spectrum, while exploding in rage is at the other.

  

The most extreme response to sensory stimuli is Blue [1], represented by the Autism diagnosis. Too much novel stimuli makes the autistic child retreat into an inner world. This recoiling from stimuli dramatically reduces the child's exposure to speech patterns, social cues and body awareness [2], delaying related skills such as talking, relating to others, and fine and gross motor skills, respectively [3].

 

The third toxic stress response is the Combo Zone (simultaneous Red and Blue Zone responses). [1] A diagnosis of Oppositional Defiance Disorder characterizes this type of response when relationship distress is added to already-present sensory distress. When adults respond to stressed children using a top-down approach to discipline, children either subdue their Red Zone behaviors by adding Blue parasympathetic pressure, or they animate their shut-down Blue Zone state using a Red, fight or flight response. These Combo Zone responses are anxiety or fear driven, and occur both when adults are permissive and the child is put into the top position in the relationship where they feel insecure [4] and when adults assume the top authoritarian position. (April's post and May's Free Alta Class will address top-down versus egalitarian relationships and how they create and remove stress, respectively.)

 

There is a difference between sensory processing, or understanding sensory information coming in, and sensory modulation, the ability to filter out or dampen the information in order to tolerate it or to be able to focus on just one thing. Sensory defensiveness is mainly caused by the inability to modulate stimuli to the degree that it can be tolerated [5]. When children cannot modulate information, it becomes overwhelming. Their attention recoils away from it, making learning about it difficult. When novel stimuli is avoided, it does not get processed, and so it remains novel. 

 

Stephen Porges, author of the polyvagal theory [6], identified a breakthrough cause of sensory system challenges in modulating stimuli. He found that when the stapedius, or middle inner ear muscle, is weak, it fails to dampen sounds, keeping them amplified. The stapedius muscle is #7 in the photo above. The smallest human muscle, the stapedius pulls on the stapes (also called the stirrup bone shown as #3 above, this is the lightest named human bone), preventing it from moving too much. Limiting the stapes' movement dampens its vibrations [7]. 

 

A weak stapedius not only fails to dampen sounds, it also causes the brain to pick up lower tones that cue the threat response system in the brain. (Think of thunder, a predator's roar, and stampedes.) Having sensory defensiveness from a weak stapedius might lower tolerance in other senses as well; in other words, having too much coming in through the audial sense might make vision, touch, taste and everything else feel like too much, too.

 

Strengthening the stapedius muscle both dampens sounds and enables the brain to hear higher pitched sounds, which cue a safety response in the brain. (Think of bird chatter, which signals to other animals that all is well. When a bird calls out a warning, a flock becomes silent [8].) Low sounds take less of a center stage in terms of attention, and sounds in general become more tolerable.

 

To strengthen this muscle, Porges developed the Safe and Sound Protocol, an iLs listening system available through Alta that takes an hour a day, for five days, to complete. After use, people are found to have a marked reduction in anxiety  [9].

 

In addition to irritating the nervous system, sensory stimuli can also soothe it. In a preschool recently, I watched a child many consider to be defiant at times (I will call her Danielle). At clean-up time, she began to clear a table of its contents but noticed an easel set up with paper and paints.

 

"I'm going to paint a fast picture!" she said abruptly, picked up a paintbrush, and spread the color green over the white paper.

 

"Hmm. You are painting a picture at clean-up time," I say with as 

little judgement and as much curiosity as I can manage.

 

"Yes," she answered decidedly.

 

Children instinctively seek out the approval of their caregivers. Disapproval is potentially deadly for children from a survival perspective. To the reptilian brain, defiance means that they must risk potential neglect. Only significant stress can prompt a child to put their developmental needs above adult approval.

 

I thought back to Danielle's experiences over the last hour. Bradley had told her that she was not his friend. "Dennis is my friend. You are not." Later, when Teacher Jody passed out the clean-up assignments, Danielle was heartbroken. "But I wanted to clean up with Clementine!" Teacher Jody had told her that you get what you get. Danielle threw a fit.

​

"Danielle, are you painting to help yourself feel better after not 

getting to clean up with Clementine?" (Children at 4 do not usually answer a question like this. They tend to need silence to process the connection between how they feel and what they do. Danielle is precocious.)

 

"Yes." ​

​

"Is it helping?"

"A little!" She put the brush back in its paint container and ran off to clean her section.

Play and art therapists use a sensory activity like painting to help children and adults access their subconscious. Perhaps Danielle knew instinctively that a little cognitive rest and the pleasure of