“This Is the House That Jack Built”: Why behavior isn’t the root cause—and how we rebuild from the ground up.

“This is the house that Jack built.

This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built / This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built…”

The classic nursery rhyme builds verse by verse, layer by layer, into a chaotic structure. By the end, each new problem is tangled in the one before it. And that’s the metaphor we need when we talk about neurodivergent children—particularly those with autism, ADHD, ODD, PDA, auditory processing issues, and sensory integration challenges.

Because this?

This is the house that Jack built…

Only the foundation isn’t malt or bricks. It’s unpredictable sensory access.

Children build their understanding of the world through consistent, stable sensory input. When a child can rely on what they hear, feel, see, and sense inside their body, the brain creates patterns. Patterns become predictions. Predictions become regulation. And regulation becomes learning.

But when sensory input is distorted, fluctuating, or painful, the patterns fall apart.

A child who hears inconsistently—due to middle ear dysfunction, hypermobility, eustachian tube collapse, or environmental noise—does not get stable access to speech. The brain doesn’t process sound well, not because it is broken, but because the input is unreliable. That’s auditory processing disorder. And it’s not the beginning of the problem. It’s the result of auditory deprivation.

The same goes for interoception and proprioception. If a child can’t tell when they’re hungry, tired, or anxious, or if their joints don’t provide clear feedback about where their body is in space, they begin to lose connection with their own body. Many such children (diagnosed autistic or with sensory processing disorder) describe feeling like aliens—not out of imagination, but because their sensory systems make their own body feel foreign. Research by Trevisan, Parker, and McPartland (2021) highlights that autistic individuals often struggle with interpreting internal body signals like hunger, satiety, or emotional arousal—further validating how this disconnection is real and deeply felt.

Neurophysiological studies support this model of auditory instability. Ludlow et al. (2014) found that children with autism show atypical auditory change detection using mismatch negativity (MMN) measures—meaning their brains don’t consistently register subtle changes in sound the way neurotypical brains do. This reinforces the idea that unpredictable sensory input, not lack of attention or effort, underlies much of the apparent “behavior” we see.

And promising intervention research backs this up. A 2024 feasibility study by Kelly Mahler et al. demonstrated that an interoception-based intervention significantly improved emotional regulation in children within special education classrooms. These findings suggest that explicitly supporting internal sensory awareness—not just behavior management—can lead to meaningful improvements in how children respond to stress, interact socially, and participate in learning.

And when you can’t trust your own body or your own senses? You protect yourself.

Fight or flight.

Some kids control the environment. Some melt down. Some shut down. Some disappear. What looks like ODD or PDA is often a nervous system trying to shield itself from chaos. The behavior isn’t oppositional. It’s defensive.

This house—this body, this mind—is built on one unpredictable brick after another. Misophonia. Hyperacusis. Fluctuating hearing. Painful joints. Rigid routines. Auditory confusion. Overload. Shutdown.

And yet, when we evaluate these kids in quiet, controlled spaces, we say, “Everything looks normal.” Because the parts, in isolation, can pass. But try driving that car when all the parts work but none of them fit together. It rattles. It grinds. It doesn’t hold a straight line. And riding inside? That hurts. That jars your joints. That makes you seasick from the vestibular instability. That makes your ears ring from the unpredictable noise. That makes you distrust your surroundings and brace for impact.

This is the house that Jack built.

It isn’t broken. It’s mismatched.

It isn’t defiant. It’s overwhelmed.

And it doesn’t need to be disciplined. It needs to be understood.

So how do we rebuild?

We start by reducing the sensory load—especially on the systems that are hardest to escape: auditory, tactile, vestibular, and proprioceptive.

We support auditory access with low-gain hearing aids, personalized FM systems, auditory training, and pink noise to provide a stable sensory background. We allow children to control volume, use noise-canceling headphones, or earplugs when needed. We teach them to identify safe spaces for silence. We use visual language—we provide access and competent teaching of sign language, Cued Speech, gestures, and we encourage use of tools such as mindmapping, visual schedules, real-time captioning—to back up what is heard with what is seen.

We reduce tactile overload with clothing that doesn’t hurt. Seamless socks. Natural fibers. Tagless shirts. We let kids choose what goes on their skin. We stop forcing touch, and we make room for consent.

We stabilize the body by giving movement—rocking, heavy work, slow vestibular input. We work on body awareness, spatial hearing, use of visual input, orientation and mobility. We support posture and joint integrity. We stop expecting stillness from a child whose body is screaming for grounding.

We support the other senses, allowing for ease of consistent access, predictability, trust, and feelings of self-control. We encourage exploration and experimentation under safe conditions.

And we rebuild trust through consistency, co-regulation, and predictability. We give them choice. We give them visuals. We slow down our language. We back off the demands when their system says, “Not yet.”

Because this house? It can be repaired.

Not with punishment. Not with pressure.

But with access.

With integration.

With understanding.

This is the house that Jack built.

And we have the blueprint to rebuild it—piece by piece, sense by sense, with the child at the center of the plan.

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Visual Description

This image is a detailed, textured illustration with a warm, hand-drawn feel—resembling colored pencil or watercolor on parchment-toned paper.

At the center of the image is a crumbling house: a two-story structure built from mismatched bricks and wooden planks. The house is visibly unstable—its roof is slanted, windows are skewed, and pieces of the structure are breaking apart and falling. Though each component of the house appears intact individually, they don’t fit together properly, emphasizing a theme of disintegration despite seemingly functional parts.

Beneath the house are two children, a boy and a girl, crouching under its weight. Their bodies are low to the ground, eyes shut tightly, and their hands are pressed over their ears in distress. The boy, on the left, wears a blue long-sleeve shirt and jeans. The girl, on the right, wears an orange shirt and blue pants. Both look overwhelmed—burdened not just physically but emotionally by the collapsing structure above them.

The image captures the metaphor from the essay: children bearing the weight of a sensory world that doesn’t fit together. It’s a powerful visualization of how unseen internal chaos and structural mismatch—when ignored or misunderstood—can create unbearable pressure on a child who outwardly “looks fine.”

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References

Brady, A. F., Demirdas, S., & Tinkle, B. T. (2022). Hypermobile spectrum disorders symptoms in patients with autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13, 943098.

Casanova, E. L., Baeza-Velasco, C., Buchanan, C. B., & Casanova, M. F. (2020). The relationship between autism and Ehlers-Danlos syndromes/hypermobility spectrum disorders. Journal of Personalized Medicine, 10(4), 260.

Kelly, M., Hample, K., Ensor, C., Ludwig, M., Palanzo-Sholly, L., & Stang, A. (2024). An interoception-based intervention for improving emotional regulation in children in a special education classroom: Feasibility study. Occupational Therapy in Health Care, 38(3), 636–650.

Kuk, F., Keenan, D., & Lau, C. (2009). Low-gain hearing aid use improves functional performance in children with auditory deficits. Hearing Review, 16(7), 28–34.

Kuk, F. K., & Picirrillo, J. (2014). The use of mild-gain hearing aids in children with minimal or mild hearing loss. Trends in Amplification, 18(3), 111–120.

Ludlow, A. K., Heaton, P., Rosset, D., & Hills, P. J. (2014). Auditory processing and sensory behaviours in children with autism spectrum disorders as revealed by mismatch negativity. Brain and Cognition, 86, 55–63.

Mahler, K. (2023). Interoception and self-regulation: Understanding internal signals for behavior change. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 16, 45–60.

Simner, J., & Carmichael, D. A. (2022). Autistic traits, emotion regulation, and sensory sensitivities in children with misophonia. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 52(5), 2301–2312.

Trevisan, D. A., Parker, T., & McPartland, J. C. (2021). First-hand accounts of interoceptive difficulties in autistic adults. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 51(10), 3483–3491.

Williams, Z. J., & He, J. (2021). Hyperacusis in autism spectrum disorders. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 15, 854423.