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5 reasons sensory integration should be your lifestlye

At my workplace, we suggest parents to bring their kids to therapy twice a week. We do an individual evaluation so the frequency is not the same for all the kids, but in most cases it turns out to be twice a week. The sensory room is big, has many things and it can be a lot for certain kids to handle. But that’s therapy. And it’s great. But if you ask me, sensory integration should be looked at as lifestyle. No matter if your child is “healthy” (of a typical development), or has some developmental difficulties. Two hours a week is simply not enough. Just knowing a thing or two about what it is and how kids respond to the stimuli can give you a lot of insight into why kids do things the way they do. For instance, why do kids walk on the arm rests and frames of your living room couch, why they slide down 100 times and still want more, why they can spin around in the park for 5 minutes and you want to puke just by looking at them?

If parents knew just a little bit about the SI, it would not be such a mystery and I am sure parenting would be even a bigger joy. It is to me, anyway.
I love seeing my little boy exploring his body. I don’t get all first-time-nervous-mom on him, but I am a relaxed parent as I understand what my baby is going through.
SI is great for your child but is also good for you. Your brain is not as easy to “change” as the child’s, but is not impossible. When I started working in the sensory room I would get nauseas within three to four rounds on the swing and now I can do at least 10. I also couldn’t write texts or read messages on my phone while in the moving bus, and now I have no issues with that whatsoever.
Other than that, as a parent you get more creative because you need to find ways to offer your child the stimuli they need in different ways: e.g. Proprioceptive stimulus can be acquired by jumping, rolling, pressing, bouncing off of something such as a mat.
acquired from: kikisclinic.co.uk
Last, but definitely not the least is the fact that one or two hours a week is really not suffice. Can’t emphasize that enough.

And that old excuse “I don’t have so much time to play with my child because I have to ____________ (enter your reason why)” is not applicable any more if you make SI your lifestyle. Because if you live SI, then you do it all the time, becomes a way of living and communicating. But have in mind that even if you apply the SI concepts, you should still be the child’s parent and go for the hour or two of therapy with a professional. Doing it at home does not mean stopping it with the professionals by any means.

And remember, it should be fun!

Posted on July 25, 2014 by lina. 0 comments

Let’s get dirty: Top 5 sensory summer activities

I love summer for its practicality when it comes to sensory activities and the creativity at this time of the year is endless. Here’s my top 5 sensory activities for the summer season:

1. Water

Sea: if you are planning a trip to the coast, this might be a great sensory experience for your child. Not only swimming, but walking through the shallow water, touching the sand or pebbles with bare feet or just splashing it around is good.
Bathing in the tub: You can prepare baths for your child in the yard or the balcony like I did with my son. My 4 month old loves to bathe and splash water everywhere. During the hot days I take his tub out in the balcony and give him a coconut oil massage first (as per Indian tradition) and afterwards we dip. If your child is a bit bigger, fill the tub with some plastic balls for the kid to play with while bathing.
Color: You can use some food coloring and color the water for your child to play with. Throw in some cups and toys, too. Tea party? Sounds great!

2. Sand

Dry sand: put a lot of sand in a box, hide some small toys that your child loves inside and have him or her search for the toys. Take a cup and slowly sip the sand through your child’s hands, arms, hair, legs and feet. See if they like it in one place more than the other. I worked with a few kids who didn’t like to touch sand or seeds but they loved when I sipped it through their hair.
Wet sand: you can of course take molds and make different shapes and build it up to a castle or a road for your child’s favorite car.
You can bury your child’s feet or hands in the sand so they feel its heaviness (proprioceptive stimulaiton) or tie up some sand in a bag and around your child’s feet, on top of his shoulders or even around his waist.

3. Foam

if your child has a tendency to put their hands in mouth, perhaps you should use an edible version of a shaving foam such as whipped cream. Again, you can color it with food dye for more visual attraction, you can have your child put the foam all over the body, starting with foamy mustache or role play “how does mommy put her facial cream on her face?” or “how does daddy shave his beard?” and continue onto legs and arms. Add some natural scent (orange, lemon…) if you are using an edible version for the olfactory and gustative stimulation.
you can dip your plastic toys and give them a nice foamy bath and rinse them in water afterwards.
all of these can be done outdoors, while child sitting in a tub or on the pebbles.
if you don’t have pebbles around your house, consider using grass or other unstable surfaces such as a balance board.

Girl and a boy playing with shaving foam. Permission acquired from their parents.

4. Barefoot

summer is a great time to be barefoot. There is very less chance your child will get a cold due to walking barefoot in the summer season. Exactly the opposite, walking barefoot could do a lot of good to your child so use at least this season for that. If your home heating system is good enough, you can have your child barefoot even during the winter inside your home.
opportunities are endless: walking on the sand, pebbles, small stones and if you are brave enough, you can have the child walk on the pine tree needles (be careful, some insects like to hide in there!), shallow part of the sea or lake and through the grass!

you can have your child be barefoot in a park too, if you find that socially acceptable.

5. Indulge

Flavors: seasonal fruit, Popsicles
Smells: woods, fruits, flowers, Mediterranean herbs
Hot & Cold: You can give your child some ice (be careful!) to play with, see it melt or spread it on his body. You can also dye it with some food colors for more visual fun. To make it even better, use some fruits to color it and you ask the child to lick it as Popsicle. On the other extreme, no, I am not suggesting you should have your child play with fire, but let them feel the warmth by walking barefoot in the sun (don’t let them burn their feet though! Concrete floor and stone can get pretty hot so be careful. Try it yourself before letting your kids do it). Let them put some ice on a hot surface (again, be careful and always around your child for safety measures!) and see it melt. Let them see you cook and try putting their hand high above the cooking pot so they feel the vapor but can’t get hurt. Can’t emphasize the safety measures enough for these ideas!

Summer is great because even if your child spills something, it will get fried quickly. Oops! Lapsus calami. I meant, dried! This just tells you what temperatures we’re currently having in Croatia. Kids can spend most of their time outdoors and enjoy the natural sensory play. I’ll keep adding activities as I do them myself with my niece, nephew and son.

Until then… stay hydrated!

Posted on June 26, 2014 by lina. 0 comments

What’s the point?

A mother of a boy with autism asked me once right there in the middle of a session: “What’s the point of him swinging so much, I can do that with him in the park?” As I went deeper and deeper into explaining the concepts of sensory integration and why her son needed the vestibular input and how swinging would help him in school, a parallel train of thought started unwinding in my head. Does this lady see the big picture here? There she was, a gorgeous, polished and relatively young mother of this boy. She was always very polite and in the mood for at least a small talk. She rarely stayed in the sensory room but when she had questions, she would stay inside and I would take some time from the session to talk to her and make these concepts a little bit more close to her. So, after many years of explanations from my boss, and a couple of extra years of explanations from me, she kept asking the same question: “Why are you letting him swing so much, I can go to the park and let him swing there for free.” Now, let me just be clear about this, she was definitely not a stingy lady, just the opposite. So, for all those who can’t see the forest for the trees… What’s the point of sensory integration therapy?

Sensory integration has practically one ultimate goal, with small goals in between. The ultimate goal is to help children with any kind of developmental disorder or delay learn. When a child has sensory deficits, they find learning to be very tiring, tough, uninteresting etc. One very important goal that helps us getting to the learning process is the (self)regulation. This is a very tricky one. It is the one that is very individual and rarely you will find a nice and simple equation to get to the regulation and self-regulation point in a child. One day jumping and rolling on the floor will be a bingo, but tomorrow that might cause a tantrum.

Piaget nicely indicated that play is the work of children. They learn a lot better when actively participating as oppose to being told what to do. So, what’s a better way of helping children in their journey to the land of knowledge than the sensory smart play. I follow the child’s interests, observe their sensory appetite and I try using that to help them learn new things; whether a skill, or a word. Some children can only function and learn while getting their stimuli whereas some children are ok with being stimulated first and then afterwards successfully getting the task done. So, in order to get the cognitive tasks done which are on a higher level, we need to sort the basics that our body needs first.

http://www.zoneintraining.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/pyramid.jpg

I’ll try making this even more clear. In order to successfully learn, you need to be ok with your sensory self. You don’t need to be perfect and rarely somebody is. But people and children with a more substantial sensory disorder will find learning very tough. However, we can learn to compensate our sensory deficits to be able to function normally with every day challenges (taking a shower, putting clothes on and getting out of the house, getting a haircut, sitting in a class, having coffee in a crowded mall, cooking a spicy dish, reading a book, writing a paper, etc.). So, this is the big picture: settling the sensory basics for the higher cognitive tasks such as learning.

And just an FYI… If you ask me, sensory integration, yes, it can be a therapy, but I would rather if parents and adults used it as a lifestyle. Think, breathe and live (and play!) in a sensory way. Don’t wait for those one or two hours a week for your OT to work with your child and help them regulate. Talk to your child’s therapists, learn from them about your child’s sensory needs and implement them all the time: while the child is eating, when the child needs to brush his teeth and go to bed, on your way to the preschool, etc. I don’t think a parent should necessarily acquire a role of a therapist, actually better if not, if possible. But, hopefully you play with your child anyway, why not making it sensory friendly in your own home or a park. So, to answer the question that a patient’s mother asked: if I let your child swing as much as his brain needs, that will regulate him and thus he will learn better. And yes, I would love it if you would take him to the park to swing more, whenever the boy wants and needs (I only assume his biggest need would be before and after his classes).

Posted on June 14, 2014 by lina. 5 comments

Activities in the park

Parks are an endless source of sensory input, sometimes easily over stimulating the child, but also a possible endless source of fun, too!

If I asked you what does your park have, what would you say? Would you say: a swing, a slide and a sand box? If your park has all that, that’s awesome. If your park doesn’t have that, if you don’t have a park at all, that’s ok, too! You as a person are more than enough what is not so obvious is that parks or some green areas in your neighborhood have tree leaves that are especially in the Fall season colorful (visual), they make noise (audio), if taken in hand they can be a great source of tactile input. Some are dry and make a crisp sound, others are wet and usually not well appreciated among both kids and adults. Who wants dirty hands, right? If your child doesn’t speak, you can help him/her imitate the shhhh sounds of those leaves, too. If you take a few beautiful and colorful leaves home, you can make some creative art. From unusual decorations on a gift box, or sorting them by color or size to making them into powder (the dried ones) and using it to form new shapes (gluing the powder on paper in a shape, mixing it with water etc). I tried making an Indian coloring art called rangoli out of different colors of fallen leaves. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo to share with you. So, all this is just from leaves, and we didn’t even enter a park!
Let’s go inside and hit the swings, the most popular thing in the park. Or at least sharing the first place with the slide. Since there’s a high demand for a swing, sometimes kids have to wait for their turn, right? That mostly means either shout: “I wanna goooo!” Or cry until the child on the swing leaves. Older parks, at least here in Croatia, have those kinds of swings that swing you only forward-backward.

More modern parks nowadays have those disks made out if rope which one can swing in any direction including rotations (in some cases).

Swinging a child (also applicable for putting a baby to sleep) in different directions gives their brains different information or better to say, different sensory input. Forward-backward swinging mostly affects the frontal cortex whose primary task is thinking while left-right swinging mostly affects the balance part of the brain.
Aside from actual swinging, you may practice planning and sequencing with your child. Especially if you have more children. Let them wait their turn starting from short period of waiting to progressively longer. Ask your child to list you the order of children in which they will go on a swing. This you can also do on a slide, but in addition, you can ask your child to verbally describe how they want to slide down – on their backs / tummies, upside down etc. Once they are up there on a slide, you can have the child count one, two, threeee… and then go down.Then change the rhythm. Oneeee, two, threeee… Another popular item in the park is the sand box. Sand gives a very strong sensory input. It has no obvious boundaries so childrens’ reactions to sand are similar to those of the shaving foam: fear, disgust, vomiting, etc. depending on your child’s sensory profile. You may make this game intriguing to a child who doesn’t like sand on their hands by putting some small objects or toys into the sand pit and ask the child to take it out. Digg deep! It can be anything from small balls to small rubber animals or blocks. Another suggestion is to make the sand wet by adding some water. Do it progressively and observe your child’s reactions. Does your child like it better when the sand was dry or when it was a cookie dough or perhaps when it is completely muddy? After you are done squeezing the sand through your fingers, you may take some shapes and create imprints in sand.

You may also use equipment in the park to make a polygon. Give your child a toy and specific instructions on how to overcome all the obstacles and have them put the toy in the basket in the end of the polygon. That will give a meaning to this string of activities and obstacles a child has to go through.

Posted on November 20, 2013 by lina. 5 comments