HOW IS SENSORY INTEGRATION DEVELOPMENT IMPORTANT FOR LEARNING?
If you have come here and reading this blog, I assume you know a child struggling with sensory issues. As a professional working with children with varying degrees of learning, language, and sensory integration problems, I see clearly that critical to the progress of any child is helping the parents understand the underlying neurological problems. And to be able to understand the problems, we first need to understand how our senses work together typically. So to define it simply,
“Sensory integration is the ability to take in, sort, and organize sensory information for functional use.”
Most people know about five of our senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. . For example, Touch helps us to know the difference between the feel of a fly and the feel of your friend tapping your shoulder.
There are also two other senses that are very important. One is our sense of balance and movement, which comes from our Vestibular system. This sense helps us move our body without falling, so we can do activities like walking, riding a bicycle or even sitting correctly at a desk. It is also that sense that lets you know that you are moving very fast on a roller coaster even if your eyes are closed.
We also get important information from our body position sense, or Proprioception. This sense gives us information about our body parts without having to look at them. It helps you do activities like walking upstairs without having to look down at your feet. This sense also tells you about how much force to use when doing activities like writing on a piece of paper without tearing it.
Children learn best when they are active and using all of their senses to the fullest. But the foundation of all the learning comes majorly from three systems – balance (vestibular), touch (tactile) and movement (proprioceptive) systems. The other two building blocks for learning are your child’s Visual and Auditory systems. Each of these senses brings us important information
When we put together information from all of these senses, we are able to participate in our day-to-day activities. By integrating or combining all the information we get from our senses, we can make sense of the world around us and successfully move through and interact in our world.
Most tasks involve most of our senses working together. Lets learn this by an example. Imagine a boy playing cricket and batting. When doing so, he needs to use his sense of body position (proprioception) to know how he is standing and also the position of his arm holding the bat. He needs his sense of touch to grip and move the bat correctly in his hands. He also uses his sense of vision to follow the ball with his eyes, which then helps his body know when to get ready to swing the bat. Also, his balance and movement sense (vestibular) helps him to stay upright, hit the ball and run between the wickets.
To understand more, think about a four-year-old child who has problems sitting in circle time at school, is always moving in the class, does not pay attention to the teacher’s instruction, and pushes other children on the playground. This child still does not identify basic shapes, colors, numbers, and alphabets because he is not able to sit and focus. Underlying all these issues (which might be considered as behavior problems) lies the problem with the integration of our different sensory systems.
"We all need to integrate our senses to engage in everyday activities."
When everyday activities become frustrating for a child - that means that they are having trouble organizing this information from their senses. Sensory Integration issues might show up in many different ways. Your child might seem to be –
Over or under reactive to different types of sensory experiences, such as textures, sound or movement,
Clumsy or disorganized, or
Have difficulty learning new motor skills.
"Every child is unique, both in their abilities and their possible areas of concern."
The good news is that there is help for children with sensory and motor challenges. Through occupational therapy using a sensory integrative approach, a child can improve their ability to use sensory information or participate in a variety of fun sensory motor activities. Occupational therapy using this approach often takes place in a large gym that’s have lots of fun opportunities for children to experience movement and use their senses to play, learn, and develop.
Thanks for learning about sensory integration with me. If you think your child has sensory integration issues, consult an Occupational Therapist certified in Sensory Integration Therapy.
