Meeting Sensory Needs

What are sensory needs?

This refers to the ability to process, organize and synthesize auditory, vestibular, proprioceptive, tactile and visual information.  In other words, to take in, understand, and use touch, tastes, smells, and movement.  For adequate living and learning skills to occur, the nervous system must correctly interpret this data.  If any part of this process is not working correctly, the child will respond inappropriately to the information in the environment.  A light touch may be painful or the child might seek tactile information by crashing into the objects around him.

While sensory integrative therapy may not be effective for every child, sensory strategies work for everyone.  Think about what you do to help regulate yourself.  Do you listen to music to help you concentrate while you drive?  Do you chew gum?  Tap your pen?  Or how about snack during long meetings or times of stress?  You are regulating and meeting your sensory needs without thinking about it.

Children with sensory deficits do not know how to do this in an appropriate manner.  They may misread whether they need to increase their alertness or calm themselves down.  They may not know which activity or exercise would help them. 

How to make Sensory Work

Observe, listen, and carry a big bag of tricks.  What works one day may not work the next.  What works with one child may not work with another.  Be prepared to go with the flow and tune in.  Keep an open dialogue with the child.  Using language from the Alert Program can be beneficial.  How is your engine running - high, low or just right?  If the child is unable to correctly identify their sensory state, try saying “It seems like your engine is running very high, you are bouncing in your seat.”  Use very specific examples.

Getting the Wiggles Out

Before getting started, spend a few minutes moving to get the wiggles and giggles out. Take a quick water break, pretend to be a bowl of Jell-O, or use Brain Gym® activities.  It can also be very beneficial to move to music that speeds up and down, gets louder and softer. 

Reducing Distraction

Tying exercise tubing around the legs of chairs can give swinging legs a quiet way to kick without disturbing their neighbor.  Cutting tennis balls for chair legs can reduce the scraping sound of sliding chairs.  Tri-fold presentation boards can offer an isolated area from visual distraction during writing and testing times.  A quiet area of home and classroom can be a great place for a little nook with a bean bag, some head phones, a weighted blanket and a good book.

Heavy Work

Proprioceptive input is sensory information that comes to the brain from nerve fibers in the muscles and joints.  Suggestions for heavy work in the classroom include moving books or heavy boxes, stacking chairs, polishing counters, cleaning the white board, or sweeping the floor.  At home, carrying the laundry, washing the table and washing windows can work well as heavy activities.

Cushions

Due to a variety of sensory deficits, children often have difficulty sitting still or sitting quietly on their bottoms in a chair.  Cushions help calm, increase focus and increase attention.  Inflatable objects such as a cushion or a ball provide a little “give”, a natural calming movement similar to floating on water.  Cushions are especially effective for kids that are always on the move.  Cushions can also be effective for children who can’t seem to get moving and/or who melt into their chairs.

Fidgets for the Classroom

During meetings or group times, use fidgets in a quiet area or for specific lessons. Fidgets help children regulate their nervous system. They give proprioceptive feedback allowing children to settle and are alerting to help children listen and focus.  Examples of fidgets are stress balls, putty, water tubes, wire puzzles, magic springs, etc.

Who?
Fidgets can be for everyone - even you! Invite your whole class to use a fidget. If you set up rules and the students view them as part of your classroom, you will discover how helpful they can be.

How?
Have a basket of fidgets in your meeting area. Introduce them with a lesson explaining why you will be using the fidgets and have the children create rules for using them. You may want to add one if needed. Also, decide what will happen if a rule is broken. In this way, you set up exactly what is expected and can welcome everyone to use them. Rules could include that the fidget must stay in the lap or that fidgets must be used as tools vs. toys.

Some Considerations:

•Do you want them all to be the same to avoid arguments or different to invite variety?

•How durable are they? Can they be picked, pulled or otherwise destroyed?

•Make sure they are quiet to avoid distraction.

•How will you store them?

Gum

Chewing provides a rhythm and a pattern to help children stay on-task.  Thick hard to chew gum is especially recommended.  For the type of child that loves lots of firm pressure, loves crashing into objects and is always on the move, it can be beneficial to let the gum go stale first.

Music

Playing quiet background music or environmental sounds can help regulate a child’s alertness level.

Not Just a Desk

Completing work on a vertical surface is a great way to get wiggly kids out of a desk.  Some children need boundaries such as a carpet square or a corner spot.  Working on a vertical surface helps develop the muscles of the shoulder, which are needed for fine motor skills.

Occupational Therapy Recommendations:

The recommendations that follow in this report are pro-active suggestions for improving skills, increasing attention, increasing coping skills, and decreasing emotional outbursts: 

Jennifer Stylianos, OTR/L
Pediatric Occupational Therapist

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