It’s important to learn how a child indicates distress.

In your homework, we asked you to tell us how your child demonstrated distress.

We got really great information from Shubata, thank-you Shubata. She said here are some tell-tale signs for her son. So some happy behaviors he displays: smiling, relaxed arms and body, singing, chuckling, and following directions. For unhappy behaviors she has: a long face, looking agitated, frowning, shrieking, suddenly dashing back and forth and then crying, thumb and pointer fingers clenched, attempting to peel skin on his thumb, pushing someone away, and falling to the ground.

That’s quite a range, and many of these are familiar to me too, Shabata. But he starts of with his facial expression and then ends off with stress indicators there.

Let’s talk about facial expressions.

My son Douglas had a highly sophisticated and carefully calibrated set of facial and body movements to indicate distress. His facial communication is as follows:

• Concerned looks
• Furrowed brow
• Sad looks
• Angry looks,
• Sucked in cheeks
• Heavy breathing
• Scrunched up eyes or face

When a child has the scrunched up eyes or face, and is experiencing sensory overload, that’s a warning sign too. It’s time to stop and wait. Again, this is an opportunity to provide support. As soon as the child comes out of it, tag and reinforce!

Also, my son has the furrowed brow look. In another child, that first flash of discomfort could be a wrinkled nose, the tongue pushing against the cheek, a sigh, or another indicator. Observe your child or your student to figure out what his or her first facial distress signal.

If the facial communication didn’t get attention my son accelerated to full body communication:

• One foot stamp
• Pawing the ground with one foot
• Heavy two-footed stomp
• Raspy breathing

And if I failed to take action at the earlier facial or full body warning signals, it was too late and guess what happened, we had the:

• Screaming
• Running
• Head banging, hand biting
• Escape
• Tantrum
• Anger, resentment

You have a horrible, painful situation to deal with.

Well, I’m happy to report that while we had a lot of these episodes in the early years now they are rare. And why? Because it rarely goes further than points one or two. As soon as I see the furrowed brow or sad looks, I stop, look, and listen, we work out what the problem is and try to address it.