This blog has been written by guest contributor Laura Cothay, who specialises in therapeutic work with fostering families. We are pleased to share her expertise with our fostering community through The Fostering Network’s blog.
Have you noticed children in your care who…
Need constant reminders to sit up at the table, slow down when eating, or use their cutlery properly?
- Struggle to get dressed or put on a coat, even when it’s freezing outside?
- Seem to need to control everything and find it hard to let others take the lead?
- React to everyday sensations – like hand dryers or loud noises – as if they were overwhelming or threatening?
- Break toys, chew clothes, or have frequent bumps and falls, despite your best supervision?
If any of these sound familiar, you may be caring for a child with underdeveloped foundation sensorimotor systems.
BUSS® Model therapist Laura Cothay has over 15 years’ experience working therapeutically with fostering families. The BUSS® model helps carers understand the link between movement, touch, and emotional wellbeing, and how these underpin children’s ability to regulate their bodies and emotions.
In this blog, Laura explains how early trauma can affect bodily regulation and explores why understanding the link between movement, touch, and emotional wellbeing is so crucial when caring for children and young people in care.
Why Bodily Regulation Matters
Don’t be surprised if thinking about bodily regulation feels new. Usually, when we try to understand the impact of trauma on development, we turn first to attachment theory and emotional regulation. We focus on therapeutic parenting, or traditional therapies such as play and art therapy. But despite our best efforts, sometimes these approaches don’t quite explain or shift what we see in our children day to day – at home or in school.
For children whose early lives were disrupted – often from conception – it can help to also consider the impact of trauma on bodily regulation. This is the foundation from which emotional regulation, relating, a sense of felt safety, and learning grow. To achieve good bodily regulation, a child’s core sensorimotor systems need to work well together.
In this blog, we’ll consider how the vestibular, proprioceptive and tactile systems develop, and how to recognise when they’re not working well.
The Vestibular System
The vestibular system concerns core strength, stability, and gravitational security – that feeling of well-being when our feet leave the ground.
Typically developing babies build this strength as they’re held and rocked, spend time on their tummies, and crawl. These experiences build head, neck, shoulder and trunk control and help them develop good core strength – the foundation for all later movement.
When a child’s body isn’t getting the stability it needs, they’ll find clever ways to compensate for the gaps in their core strength and gravitational security. These children might seem cautious on stairs or escalators or might race around at top speed in risky ways.
For children who aren’t yet getting the support and stability they need from their body (core strength), just sitting on a chair on their bottom can feel tricky. These children are constantly moving or fidgeting, endlessly trying to find a comfortable sitting position; they wriggle, sprawl across the floor during carpet time at school, or lean into the table or on the person sitting next to them.
It’s hard to be still (in order to write neatly, or read a book) and to concentrate and focus when you’re working so hard to sit without falling off your chair. Many children get into trouble at school for being “disruptive” or refusing to write, when in fact, without that foundation of core strength, holding and using a pencil is like trying to control a dog on a long, extendable lead. The same applies to using cutlery, fastening shoelaces, buttons and zips.
The Proprioceptive System
The proprioceptive system builds on core strength. It’s all about:
- Having a strong internal sense of where your body is in space
- Judging how much pressure or force to use in a movement
- Your body working as an integrated unit to create smooth, well-coordinated movement
Children with underdeveloped proprioception are often described as clumsy or unaware of personal space. They may need to look at their hands or feet to know where they are, which makes riding a bike or scooter difficult. They might be told to use “kind hands,” but their intention isn’t unkind – their body just isn’t sending clear messages about how much pressure or force to use.
The Tactile System
This system helps us make sense of sensations from the skin – our largest organ. It includes oral motor strength, which affects chewing, swallowing, and speech.
Children with underdeveloped tactile systems might be described as fussy eaters, excessively dribbly, or struggle to chew or keep food in their mouths. Children who have gaps in their tactile system can also over- or under-respond (or both) to touch and often function in a defensive state – as if still primed for survival, despite living in safe, loving environments.
These children are often hypervigilant, struggle with transitions and change, and use control to manage overwhelming feelings.
How These Systems Develop – and What Happens When They Don’t
To build a good foundation of bodily regulation, typically developing children experience repeated loving touch, nurture, and movement in relationship with a caregiver.
These babies are engaged in lots of movement experiences, along with gentle, attuned, loving touch and care throughout their early years and beyond, which continues to build a good foundation of bodily regulation. As a result, these children develop the capacity to effortlessly explore and investigate the world, learn, play and build good relationships.
For many children in care, their early experiences have been the opposite. Stress in utero – through exposure to drugs, alcohol or domestic violence – can depress a baby’s movement. This marks the start of a disruption to sensorimotor development, which can then be compounded later by a lack of movement experience and the absence of a safe, responsive and loving relationship.
Where a baby’s efforts to signal a need might be missed, misinterpreted or ignored, their ability to make sense of bodily sensations becomes confused. As a result, children may not recognise pain, hunger or temperature, and can be triggered into emotional overwhelm in the blink of an eye.
Having Hope: Rebuilding the System
The good news is that the brain and central nervous system have the capacity to change, as evidenced by Livewired (Eagleman, 2021). Where there has been developmental disruption, we can rebuild these systems.
The BUSS® Model works with children and caregivers to fill in the gaps through graded, playful activities that replicate the touch, movement and relational experiences the child missed in early life.
Central to the model is recognising the carer as the key agent of change – the magic happens at home, not just in therapy – with trained practitioners supporting and guiding carers to really notice movement.
Practice Tips for Foster Carers
Notice movement: Observe not just what your child does, but how they move.
- Stretch your window of tolerance: A mindset shift can reduce frustration and help your child feel more supported.
- Build in movement breaks: Offer regular, playful opportunities for movement.
- Manage expectations: Help others – especially school staff – understand how much energy your child needs just to “pass as typical.”
- Try BUSS®-style activities: For example, “Bubble Mountain,” a playful oral motor game using bubbles blown through a straw.
To find out more about the BUSS® Model and how it supports children with underdeveloped sensorimotor systems, visit the BUSS® website.
