I am writing both as an educator working with children and as someone with lived experience of long-term sensory and neurodevelopmental differences. My purpose is to encourage teachers to reconsider how certain classroom behaviours are interpreted, especially in relation to neurodivergent children whose ways of engaging with materials and learning may differ from what is traditionally expected.

From early childhood, I engaged with objects in ways that were highly tactile, imaginative, and repetitive. I would take simple classroom-like materials such as paper and cardboard and reshape them continuously – folding, pressing, stacking, and holding them for extended periods. These actions were not aimless. They were deeply connected to internal regulation and imagination.

Inspired by worlds such as Digimon Digital Monsters and Pokémon, I would mentally construct characters and creatures, but I did not only visualise them. I embedded them into physical interaction. By holding the edges of paper tightly, I could experience the sensation of ‘holding’ a Pokémon, a digital monster, or even a character within that imagined world.