The Fidget Project CIC

The Fidget Project: ‘Sensing to Learn; Learning to make sense’.

The motivation for this pilot project came about in recognition that children’s Sensory Processing Needs,

when left unmet, result in many of the behaviours that get in the way of their learning.

Children with Sensory Processing Differences have Vestibular, introception and /or Proprioception needs

that are often not recognised or met in learning situations.

This includes the children who have difficulty being able to focus, concentrate, settle, be still, be part of a

group, stand in line, answer questions or get involved in discussions that are truly collaborative and

exploratory. They might shout out, make noises, push others, need to run, be overly clingy, not understand

instructions, play about, or take themselves off to a quieter corner to do repetitive actions. They might be

very controlling in an attempt to feel safe. They might need to lie on the floor or be under a desk: in other

words, the very behaviours that are their attempts to regulate themselves are the behaviours that prevent

them from accessing learning in the usual ways in which learning situations are organised.

Their behaviours, which can be attempts to regulate the swirl of emotions and multi-sensory information

that is overwhelming their nervous systems, often also interrupt the learning of others in the class.

Children with SPD1 may already have (or be on a pathway towards) a diagnosis of autism or Attention

Deficit Disorder AND they can also be children who have not been recognised as neurodiverse in any way

but rather labelled, lazy, anti-social, clowns, overly sensitive, highly anxious, a nuisance in class, impossible

to teach, badly behaved and /or out of control.

These children often make up a disproportionate number of the children who either get excluded from

schools or whose parents, sometimes in desperation, remove them from schools to be home-schooled. In

some cases, this works well; in others unschooled and uneducated children and adolescents become

disadvantaged and more vulnerable in society at large.