Possible Causes

• Unstable Vestibular System

The vestibular system is responsible for balance and postural control. If a child’s vestibular development is insufficient, they may struggle to maintain a seated position for long periods, leading to constant fidgeting or getting out of their seat.
They might move their bodies to recalibrate their sense of balance, resulting in restlessness.

• Inadequate Proprioceptive Input

Proprioception helps a person sense their body’s position in space. If a child has poor proprioceptive awareness, they may not feel whether they are sitting “correctly,” and may constantly shift their body to seek more sensory feedback.

• Sensory Regulation Issues

Overresponsive: Children may be overly sensitive to environmental stimuli such as noise, lighting, or classmates’ movements, making it difficult to concentrate.
Underresponsive: Children may react slowly to stimulation and require more sensory input (e.g., movement, touch) to stay alert, leading to frequent movement or distraction.

• Difficulty Regulating Arousal and Attention

Children may struggle to maintain an optimal arousal level for learning—either too low or too high.
Low arousal: They may appear tired, dazed, or unfocused. High arousal: They may seem agitated, anxious, or hyperactive.

• Motor Planning and Execution Challenges

If a child has difficulty planning or executing movements, they may need extra time or movement to adjust their posture, which can appear as restlessness or distraction.

• Emotional Stress or Insecurity

Lack of emotional security or stress related to classroom tasks may make it hard for a child to concentrate, prompting them to fidget or become distracted as a coping mechanism.

What Can Parents Do?

• Incorporate Sensory Integration Activities to Strengthen Sensory Processing

Vestibular Activities:

Swinging, jumping on a trampoline, or balancing on a beam can help stabilize the vestibular system and improve postural control.

Include short spinning activities (like somersaults) for a few minutes daily, but monitor intensity to avoid overstimulation.

Proprioceptive Activities:

Heavy work: Have the child carry heavy objects (like a backpack) or push/pull a cart to build body awareness.

Dynamic movement: Activities like crawling or long jumps help children sense their body position better.

Tactile and Sensory Regulation Activities:

Deep pressure input: Hugs, massage, or using weighted blankets can calm the sensory system.

Provide rich tactile play (e.g., with clay or sand) to stimulate sensory processing and support emotional regulation.

• Help Children Adjust Their Arousal Levels

When Arousal is Too Low (e.g., sleepy or inattentive):

Offer energizing activities (e.g., jumping, running) or cold stimulation (e.g., washing face with cool water) to wake up the sensory system.

Use rhythmic, upbeat music to enhance alertness.

When Arousal is Too High (e.g., anxious or hyperactive):

Provide deep pressure input (e.g., hugs or weighted blankets) to reduce overexcitement.

Use slow-tempo music or gentle rocking to help calm the child.

• Provide Sensory Support in the Classroom

Seating Adjustments:

If possible, seat the child in the first few rows near the teacher to reduce distractions.

Provide a stable seat cushion (e.g., a sensory balance pad) or footrest to help maintain proper posture.

Fidget Tools:

Offer small sensory tools (e.g., stress balls or rubber bands) for the child to use discreetly to release excess energy.

Short Movement Breaks:

Encourage teachers to allow short standing or walking breaks to help the child refocus attention.

• Seek Professional Support

If these challenges persist and interfere with learning or daily life, consider consulting an occupational therapist for a sensory integration assessment and a personalized intervention plan.

Possible Causes

• Auditory reception/processing issues: It’s important to rule out any physical causes such as hearing loss, earwax blockage, or middle ear infections.

Auditory hypersensitivity: Children may be overly sensitive to sounds, making language input uncomfortable or stressful and reducing their willingness to speak.

Difficulties with auditory discrimination: Some children may struggle to distinguish or understand subtle differences in language (such as tone or volume), slowing down language acquisition.

• Poor proprioception and oral-motor coordination

Speaking requires fine oral-motor coordination (e.g., movements of the tongue, lips, and jaw). If proprioceptive development is insufficient, children may have difficulty controlling these movements, leading to speech challenges.

• Sensory regulation issues

Low arousal level: Children may be in a low state of alertness (e.g., tired, lethargic), which results in sluggish responses to external stimuli and decreased motivation to speak.

High arousal level: Children may be too tense or anxious to relax, affecting the natural flow of speech.

• Social and emotional challenges

Children may feel insecure or uncomfortable in social interactions, choosing to limit their verbal expression.
If they’ve had negative social experiences (e.g., being ignored or criticized), they may be reluctant to speak.

• Sensory-seeking or avoidance behaviors

Some children may use silence as a way to avoid overwhelming sensory input (such as complex social interactions).
Others may be more focused on meeting other sensory needs (e.g., tactile or visual stimulation), reducing their drive to speak.

• Delayed language development

Sensory integration difficulties may affect the brain’s ability to process language, leading to delays compared to peers.

What Can Parents Do?

• Create a rich sensory environment

Tactile input: Let children touch objects with different textures (e.g., soft fabrics, rough sandpaper, smooth stones) to build environmental awareness and reduce tactile defensiveness.

Vestibular input: Encourage activities involving swinging, spinning, or jumping—like using a swing, trampoline, or rolling on a yoga ball—to help stabilize balance and body awareness.

Proprioceptive input: Activities like pushing, hugging, or using a weighted blanket help children feel the boundaries and position of their body.

• Promote oral sensory development

Chewing activities: Offer foods with varying textures (like carrot sticks or crackers) to strengthen oral muscles and support speech mechanisms.

Blowing activities: Let children blow bubbles, paper pieces, or musical instruments (like a harmonica or whistle) to enhance control over oral muscles and airflow regulation.

Oral massage: Use fingers or a soft brush to gently massage the child’s lips, cheeks, and chin to improve sensory awareness of the mouth area.

• Use play to encourage interaction

Imitation games: Engage in simple mimicry games like singing, clapping, or making facial expressions to help children learn language in a fun, stress-free setting.

Rhythm games: Clapping, drumming, or singing nursery rhymes can strengthen auditory processing and help children understand language rhythm and cadence.

• Create a safe language environment

Simple and clear language: Use short, clear sentences when speaking to children and talk slowly to make it easier for them to understand.

Multisensory teaching: Combine visual, auditory, and motor cues—for example, pointing to an object while speaking or using gestures to reinforce meaning.

Don’t force speech: Respect the child’s pace of expression. Avoid pressuring them to speak and instead guide them through playful, engaging interactions.

• Seek professional help

If the challenges persist and affect the child’s learning and daily life, consult an occupational therapist for a sensory integration assessment and a personalized therapy plan.

Possible Reasons

• Tactile Defensiveness

Children may feel uncomfortable or anxious when touched or approached by others—for example, pulling hands or hugging may cause them to retreat. They might fear crowded environments and avoid games that involve physical contact.

• Underdeveloped Vestibular or Proprioceptive Senses

If a child’s balance (vestibular sense) or body awareness (proprioception) is underdeveloped, they may feel uneasy about participating in dynamic games (like running or chasing). They might also have trouble accurately perceiving their own body in relation to others, resulting in clumsiness or uncoordinated social interactions.

• Poor Social Communication Skills

Sensory integration issues may affect a child’s language development, expression, or comprehension, making it difficult for them to communicate or cooperate with peers. The child may not know how to initiate or join games, or how to take turns or follow rules.

• Difficulties with Self-Regulation

Children may feel overstimulated by environmental sounds, lighting, or crowds, causing them to withdraw or avoid interacting with others. They might also struggle to regulate their emotions or behavior, leading to conflicts during social activities.

• Lack of Social Experience

If children have fewer opportunities to interact with peers, they may lack the necessary social skills and therefore not know how to play with others.

• Autism

The three most common symptoms of autism include a severe lack of social skills, poor communication, and repetitive behaviors. Two of these symptoms directly affect social interaction.

What Can Parents Do?

• Provide Sensory Integration Activities to Help Stabilize Body Awareness

Tactile stimulation: Let your child play with playdough, sand, water, and other sensory activities to gradually reduce sensitivity to touch.

Vestibular activities: Participate in activities like swinging, sliding, or jumping on a trampoline to improve balance and spatial awareness.

Proprioceptive activities: Engage in pushing, pulling, climbing, or hugging games to enhance the child’s awareness of body boundaries.

• Create a Safe Social Environment

Start with small groups: Begin by letting the child play with one or two familiar peers to reduce pressure and gradually adapt to social settings.

Structured games: Choose games with clear rules (such as puzzles, blocks, or board games) to help the child understand how to participate and reduce confusion.

Observation and imitation: Let the child observe other children playing and then encourage them to imitate and join in.

• Provide Appropriate Playmates and Activities

Choose peers of similar age: Encourage interactions with peers of the same or slightly older age to avoid frustration caused by large skill gaps.

Organize activities with shared interests: For example, drawing, building blocks, or playing with toy cars—activities that help children find common ground.

• Encourage Parent-Child Interactive Play

Role-playing games: Pretend scenarios like “grocery shopping” or “doctor and patient” simulate social situations and help children become familiar with interacting with others.

Cooperative games: Activities like completing puzzles or building block towers together teach children collaboration and communication skills.

• Seek Professional Help

If the child’s difficulties persist and affect their learning or daily life, it is advisable to consult an occupational therapist for a sensory integration assessment and the development of a personalized treatment plan.

Possible Reasons

• Lack of confidence: Children may give up because they fear failure or are uncertain about their abilities.
• Culture of instant gratification: Children who are used to immediate feedback—such as from phones, mobile games, or social media—may have difficulty developing patience.
• High expectations: Some children may feel overwhelmed by the high expectations of those around them, which increases anxiety and leads them to avoid challenges.
• Learning style: Children who rely more on visual or auditory learning may find tasks that require prolonged concentration difficult or boring.
• Emotional factors: Anxiety or other emotional issues can affect performance and coping abilities, making it easier for children to feel frustrated or impatient.
• Lack of appropriate skills: If a child lacks basic skills in certain areas, they may feel incompetent and choose to give up.
• Lack of a growth mindset environment: In environments that lack support and encouragement, children may not be motivated to overcome challenges.
• Lack of successful experiences: Past experiences of failure can make children hesitant to try again.
• Poor problem-solving skills: Children may not know what to do after failure and therefore choose not to try at all.

What Can Parents Do?

• Start with tasks that are slightly below the child’s current ability to build a foundation of success.
• Set small goals: Break big tasks into smaller steps so that the child feels a sense of accomplishment with each one, boosting confidence.
• Offer support: Be present and encouraging when your child faces challenges to show them they are not alone and that you believe in their abilities.
• Develop patience: Engage in proprioceptive activities that promote serotonin production in the brain. Serotonin enhances cognitive flexibility, emotional regulation, and neurological balance. Examples include monkey bars, children’s yoga, and “plowing the field” exercises.
• Talk with your child: For children with strong-willed personalities, head-on confrontation may trigger emotional outbursts and increased rigidity. Instead, start by empathizing and acknowledging their feelings. Once the child feels respected and understood, they’re more receptive to discussions about how to better handle similar situations in the future and manage their emotions. This approach also discourages using stubbornness as a tool to achieve their goals.
• Seek professional help: If the issue persists and affects learning or daily life, consult an occupational therapist for a sensory integration assessment and a personalized treatment plan.

Underlying Reasons

These issues often stem from difficulties in how a child receives, interprets, or processes sensory input. Some children are overly sensitive to certain sensations—for example, they may feel scared by the sound of a hairdryer (auditory defensiveness) or become anxious when a toothbrush is placed in their mouth (oral defensiveness). Even minor stimuli can trigger strong emotional reactions, reducing their willingness to explore the environment and leading to avoidant behaviors.

What Can Parents Do?

The first step in addressing sensory defensiveness is to reduce stress. If a child is afraid to brush their teeth, using sensory integration techniques such as massage, deep pressure touch therapy, and proprioceptive activities can help reduce tactile hypersensitivity and activate the parasympathetic nervous system. This can significantly improve sensory regulation. Some caregivers or teachers may believe that “just practicing more will make it better” or “repetition will build tolerance.” However, for this type of difficulty, repeated exposure that causes fear is not recommended. Doing so can reinforce the sympathetic nervous system response and further weaken the parasympathetic system’s ability to balance it, resulting in the opposite of the intended effect.

Seek Professional Help

If the issue persists and affects your child’s learning and daily life, it is recommended to consult an occupational therapist for a sensory integration evaluation and to develop an individualized treatment plan.

Possible Reasons

There are many possible reasons why a child may talk a lot—curiosity, excitement about a specific topic, or even anxiety. The concept of “talking too much” is often subjective. What one person sees as “excessive,” another may see as “outgoing.” That said, excessive talking is usually considered a behavior that does not align with social norms or appropriateness, such as:

• Interrupting others
• Not letting others speak
• Talking at inappropriate times or places
• Oversharing information
• Speaking impulsively
• Talking more than listening

Clinically, excessive talking can sometimes be a sign of the following conditions:

• Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): People with this neurodevelopmental condition vary widely in their communication styles. Some may be nonverbal or struggle to express their thoughts, while others may talk at length about topics they are intensely interested in—without realizing or caring if others are interested or able to follow. They often find reciprocal conversation challenging.
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): Characterized by constant talking, speaking at length, talking excessively, and frequently interrupting or cutting others off.

What Can Parents Do?

Role-playing: Pretend to be a friend, teacher, or stranger and engage your child in conversation. Set rules in advance such as taking turns and not interrupting. Turn it into a game where they can earn points or rewards.

Play catch: Another way to teach conversation pacing is by playing a game of catch. The child speaks when they catch the ball and listens when throwing. You can add more players to make it a 3- to 5-person group game.

Teach active listening: Ask your child about their day, then repeat what they just said to show listening. Then share about your own day and ask them to repeat it back.

Use positive reinforcement: Instead of scolding a child for talking too much, gently remind them of the rules and ask them to repeat them. More importantly, praise and reinforce good communication behavior when you see it.

Train non-verbal communication skills: Teach children to observe facial expressions, body language, and other non-verbal cues as part of developing quality communication.

Use a “microphone”: Use a pretend microphone (a gesture or object) to help children practice taking turns, listening to others, waiting until someone is finished speaking, or raising their hand before speaking.

Seek Professional Help

If your child’s talking habits continue to affect their learning and daily life, consider consulting a professional occupational therapist for a sensory integration assessment and a customized treatment plan.

Possible Causes

• Insufficient language skills: Limited vocabulary or poor understanding of sentences and grammar can affect comprehension.
• Attention issues: Lack of attention may cause the child to be unable to focus on the reading material, affecting understanding.
• Eye control problems: Skipping words or lines while reading, having strabismus, tilting the head to one side, or covering one eye can affect the understanding of context.
• Lack of background knowledge: A lack of prior knowledge on related topics makes it difficult for them to understand new information.
• Learning style: Every child has a different learning style; some need more concrete, visual learning methods to understand topics. Some children require diverse sensory inputs to help grasp meaning.
• Poor memory: Inability to remember context affects the child’s auditory and visual comprehension.
• Intellectual issues: Some children’s comprehension may be affected due to intellectual challenges.
• Learning disabilities: Some children experience learning disabilities that impact their understanding and output in listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

What Can Parents Do?

• Do not wait; seek reading support for your child as early as possible.
• Try reading to your child for a few minutes every day.
• Help your child choose books suitable for their reading level.
• Consider using audiobooks. Find learning methods that facilitate absorption.
• Create a reading-friendly home environment by limiting screen time.
• Seek professional help. If your child’s problems persist and affect learning and daily life, it is recommended to consult an occupational therapist for a sensory integration assessment and develop an individualized treatment plan.

Possible Reasons

Children with high sensitivity traits usually have four characteristics:

• Highly aware of subtle stimuli, such as changes in sounds, colors, eye contact, situations, and atmosphere.
• Easily overwhelmed by stimuli: They pay more attention and think more about new things than others. Outwardly, they may seem resistant to change and prefer routines. In daily life, these children may be very sensitive to clothing textures, picky eaters, afraid of noisy environments, dislike being touched which can trigger emotional reactions, and have a strong fear of dirt or getting mud, sand, or water on their bodies.
• Emotionally sensitive and responsive, with strong empathy.
• Good at deep processing, receiving external information, and making more complex interpretations.

These behaviors are actually very similar to sensory integration disorder. It is recommended that parents seek assistance and consultation from occupational therapists to provide support.

What Can Parents Do?

• For highly sensitive children:

Gradually give the child time to adapt and adjust to changes.

Help the child observe and recognize their emotions.

Parent with an accepting and guiding attitude.

Encourage the child to appreciate their own traits and practice relaxation.

Complete a high sensitivity questionnaire to assist with assessment.

• For children with sensory integration disorder: Since each child’s condition is diverse and heterogeneous, it is recommended to seek professional help to identify the root causes and support the child. KickStart uses sensory integration methods and various advanced programs, packaging therapy techniques into games, designing individualized courses to improve children’s daily functioning and enhance family quality of life.

Learning disabilities can manifest very differently in each child—for example, some children struggle with reading and spelling; some love reading but find math incomprehensible; others may have difficulty understanding spoken language and communicating verbally. Although these problems are quite different, they all fall under the category of learning disabilities. Clinically, common difficulties are seen in listening, speaking, reading, writing, and math.

Below are warning signs that may appear at different age groups:

Preschool Age

• Speech articulation problems.
• Inability to recognize simple words.
• Difficulty grasping rhymes.
• Challenges learning phonics (e.g., ㄅㄆㄇ), numbers, colors, shapes, or days of the week; takes longer than peers and difficulty retaining knowledge, as if starting over each time.
• Difficulty following instructions or learning daily routines.
• Difficulty controlling a pencil, using scissors, or staying within the lines when coloring.
• Difficulty buttoning clothes, zipping zippers, or tying shoelaces.

Ages 5-9

• Unable to connect sounds and letters, for example: unable to learn the pronunciation of ㄅ.
• Cannot blend two or more sounds to read words, e.g., ㄈㄢˋ → “飯” (rice).
• Often confuses words during reading, e.g., reading “你” (you) as “他” (he).
• Sees letters not as a whole, often drawing the characters rather than writing them.
• Slow to learn new things.
• Frequent spelling mistakes and recurring errors.
• Difficulty understanding basic math concepts.
• Has trouble reading clocks and remembering number sequences.

Ages 10-13

• Weak skills in reading comprehension or math problem solving.
• Difficulty handling open-ended test questions.
• Dislikes reading and writing, avoids reading aloud.
• Poor handwriting.
• Poor organizational skills, e.g., not making the bed, unable to organize schoolbag or desk.
• Struggles to keep up with class discussions and cannot express thoughts verbally.

Please remember that children without learning disabilities may also show similar symptoms. Do not worry excessively. Attention is needed only if the child’s performance in certain subjects shows persistent fluctuations. Once parents have concerns, early intervention and treatment are recommended for better outcomes.

What can parents do?

• Learn about different types of learning disabilities
• Create individualized learning plans
• Provide a learning environment suited to the child’s needs
• Seek professional help: therapists use sensory stimulation to help children better understand learning materials, with multi-sensory input such as clay letter formation and learning through movement.
• Break tasks into smaller steps
• Boost self-confidence
• Use assistive tools such as charts, digital apps, or software to help the child learn more effectively
• Maintain regular communication with teachers and therapists
• Train learning strategies and compensatory methods, including component teaching, using highlighters, reading along with a ruler or finger to avoid skipping words, and teaching reading order from top left to bottom right.
• Conduct visual perception assessments and rule out intellectual disabilities.