Watch this video to learn about possible signs of sensory integration issues. This video shows an expert panel of health professionals, Susanne Smith Roley, Clare Giuffrida, Stefanie Bodison, and Shay McAtee discussing how sensory integration or sensory processing affects children and the real-life stories of parents of children with sensory issues. For more information, resources and videos about sensory motor issues and other topics please visit www.Pathways.org or call 1 800 955CHILD
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For some children, their senses may not be sending the information to the brain correctly. Their behavior can look under or over reactive. They may seem fearful or disorganized. they may have problems reaching physical milestones, socializing or learning.
If this sounds like your child he or she may have a Sensory Issue
There's an explosion in the number of children who have sensory differences affecting their learning behavior. The earlier you can get help for these issues, the better everybody is. It does not make sense to wait and the research is very clear on this, that they'll grow out of it is a fallacy. We usually think of 5 senses: Sight, Sound, Touch, Smell, Taste but there are actually 2 more senses that are very important. One of them is the sense that tells us about our body position. If you put your hand behind your back and spread your fingers apart you would know that your hand is in that position because of the information from your muscles and joints. This sense is called proprioception. And we have another sense that gives us information about movement. It helps us to move in a smooth coordinated way. To maintain our balance and to adjust our eyes while we are moving. This is called the vestibular sense. We're all constantly taking in sensory information and using that sensory information that we're getting from the world around us. And some of us might be better in some areas than others like some people might have really good hearing or better vision while other people might have better body position sense or movement sense but we're all pretty much able to hopefully be functional. And that's what we're looking for the children we're treating. Sometimes it's hard to tell what a Sensory Issue looks like because no two children with a sensory issue act exactly the same way. Parents are typically the first to notice that their child might be doing things differently.
Every day, our brains effortlessly take in millions of pieces of information from the outside world to help us learn, play and work
For most of us, these messages enter the body through our senses, and speed like a fast train to the right places in the brain to help us react
For some children these messages don't have a smooth trip. The train gets stuck, follows the wrong signals, or moves slowly along the tracks
There are times when others are interpreting these behaviors as being malicious. Often they're accused of purposefully breaking toys or being too aggressive, and not being invited on play dates or to birthday parties or even wanting to interact on the playground
You can have a child that is very sensitive to say auditory or sounds. And it might look to people around them that they're not really paying attention. When actually what they are doing is that they are paying attention too much
It was more frustrating, definitely, before we knew, because then we were like, why is he behaving like that, and why is he, you know, why is he acting up like that?
He didn't like the unexpectedness of being splashed, really stayed away from sprinklers, swimming pools. Taking a shower was just something that we couldn't even think about doing for him
One of the ways I describe sensory difficulties to parents is by talking about getting glasses. You know because everybody goes to an optometrist for an eye check and if you don't see 20/20 the optometrist will give you glasses. And that's a wonderful way to uh change your visual perception you know the way you see. Um, but we don't have glasses for the other senses. That's were sensory integration intervention comes in because we try to provide activities that will enhance the way the child perceives those kind of sensory inputs
Watch this video to learn possible signs of sensory integration issues.