Sensory Accommodations at School: What to Ask for in Your Child's IEP

Sarah didn't find out until February that her daughter was allowed to wear headphones in class. She'd spent the whole fall semester watching her daughter come home wrecked — meltdowns three days out of five, homework impossible, the kind of exhaustion that wasn't just tired but depleted. She thought it was just adjustment. She thought it would pass. It wasn't until a conversation with another autism parent at a school pickup that Sarah learned her daughter could have noise-canceling headphones during independent work. That she could have a movement break built into her schedule. That the sensory needs her daughter had been fighting through all day, alone and silently, were things the school was actually required to address — if she knew to ask for them in writing. "I thought accommodations were only for academic stuff," she told me later. "I didn't know sensory counted." Her daughter got headphones in March. A movement break at 10 AM and after lunch. By the end of the year, the afternoon meltdowns had mostly stopped. A whole semester of struggling could have been different. Here's what you can ask for in your child's IEP.