Does Your Child Have Sensory Overload?

The Value of the Senses in Childhood Development

We use our senses every day to experience the world, and children especially are influenced by tasting, touching, smelling, hearing, and seeing the environments around them. Sometimes, because of illness, disability, or life circumstances, our kids’ senses are unbalanced, overstimulated, or under-stimulated. The results can be kids who struggle with daily behaviors, or on the extreme end, are diagnosed with Dysfunction in Sensory Integration (DSI), which is also called Sensory Integration Dysfunction.

None of my children have been diagnosed with DSI – Dysfunction in Sensory Integration – but I am finding so many wonderful benefits of the tools one particular author offers to parents on the subject. Carol Stock Kranowitz, M.A., has written The Out-of-Sync Child and The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun.

The Stress of Unbalanced Senses

For years I have recognized that in particular one of my children has stronger sensory needs than my other children. When he struggled with severe ear pain, infections, surgery, and temporary hearing reduction as a toddler, his other senses overcompensated for these issues and the results have been a child who prefers tactile sensations, lower sounds, and more particular food textures. At a period of time in his life when his development should have included all of his senses, it was limited in some, creating an imbalance that he is slowly rebuilding into a level playing field.

These needs might be seen by some as enough reason to diagnose with DSI. I take them as just more characteristics of my child that can be addressed through opportunities and play. Kranowitz’s work has given me great tools with which to meet the needs of my kids. More importantly, these activities are valuable for all children. Integrating sensory development opportunities helps kids to bridge their awareness of the world. The second book, The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun includes numerous activities to address the senses. These go beyond the 5 senses we think of typically:

• Sight
• Smell
• Hearing
• Touch
• Taste

The Real Sensory System

Kranowitz describes the more integral and basic fundamentals of the sensory system:

Tactile Sense – Information is provided to the brain mainly through the skin. It includes actively touching things and passively touching things, like the differences between petting a dog and feeling the breeze blow across your arm. These differences also help us distinguish between threatening and non-threatening touches.

Vestibular Sense – Sensation is provided through the inner ear. This affects balance, movement, and awareness of our body positions in relation to our environment. This is the one that my child experienced the most challenges with, rendering his other senses more heightened.

Proprioceptive Sense – This sense provides us with the awareness of our body parts and how they are moving, specifically the joints, muscles, and ligaments.

These three foundations of the sensory system are sometimes known as the hidden senses, and develop in utero before the other 5 commonly known senses, but they all work closely together to provide a person with information about and interpretations of the world.

All Kids Benefit from Sensory Rich Activities

Kranowitz is quick to remind parents that kids haven’t changed in all of the ways that count and in all of the important aspects for parents. They still thrive on hands-on activities that require hard work and tangible experiences. In a world filled with so many passive activities for kids (computers, video games, etc.), sensory stimulation can be lost.

The Seven Drops

The author also has a great technique for parents to use with their kids, especially when sensory overload or under-load is causing stress. While this is targeted for children with DSI, it is really applicable for all for parents to consider using with their children. It is called the “Seven Drops” and doesn’t require medication, classes, or enormous amounts of time.

1. Drop your voice. Whispers will sometime get way more attention from your kids than yelling.
2. Drop your body. Children are less intimated and stressed when their caregivers are at their body levels.
3. Drop your TV remote. Get engaged with your child, whether it is by putting down the remote, the newspaper, or the cell phone.
4. Drop your guard. Let your child take risks, as it is the only way they will truly experience success.
5. Drop your defenses. If your child is having a meltdown, don’t ignore the reactions of your in-laws or other parents, or get defensive. Acknowledge the situation and it is easier to move forward with it.
6. Drop your batteries. Toys and video games that are passive don’t require the energy of the kids. When kids plays with toys that require kid power, the kids get so much more out of them.
7. Drop your misconception that fun is frivolous. Enough said!

Sensory needs are extremely vital to the healthy development of children, and I have experienced first-hand how imbalances in the senses can create stress for children. Through exercises like the ones provided by Kranowitz we are moving from a place where my toddler insisted on wearing shirts with silky tags so he had something soft with which to reassure himself at all times, to just preferring to snuggle with special blankets at bedtime.

If your child is showing any signs of special sensory needs (even things like agitation, fidgety movements, clumsiness, frustration with change, and heightened sensitivity), reading Kranowitz’s works can provide you with some clues to these behaviors and tools for integrating all of the senses in balanced ways. Even if your child does not have any of these issues, the activities provided are wonderful ways for children to experience play and learning to the fullest extent possible.

Related posts:

1. Do You Like Your Child?
2. Does Your Child Hate Math?
3. Is your child overscheduled? Signs your child is too busy to be a kid.

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