“Mud, sand, and water. All children should put their feet in these!” my dear neighbor astutely exclaimed the day her son ventured into our new, mammoth sandbox. All children should enjoy these simple pleasures. Why? It feeds their senses.
Some children (you know them as the biter, the hitter, the screamer) seek a lot of sensory input. Walking barefoot through a sandbox provides the strong sensation they often find soothing and balancing. Other children, who show tactile defensiveness, avoid hugs, messy things, certain fabrics, tags, sock seams, sand, etc. Gentle, non-threatening exposure to sand can be very therapeutic for them as well, but shouldn’t be forced.
For the child who avoids sand, it is because the sand feels like the equivalent of us rubbing the coarsest sandpaper all over our bodies. The child cannot be reasoned through this process. But, the child can be greatly supported with non-threatening opportunities to explore these stimulants.
A sandbox with a wooden bench on the edge, so that he can sit with most of his body not touching the sand, can be helpful. Or, a sand table where only his hands and arms touch the sand is also a potentially less frustrating experience. Surprisingly, the road to managing this preference or disorder is not just through exposure, but through feeding the senses in an alternative way, such as “heavy work”.
While we all have sensory preferences, it only becomes a disorder when it impacts one or more areas of functioning. If you think your child might have a leaning in one direction or the other, it may behoove you to do a little research and seek out a recommended occupational therapist, with a sensory integration approach. They can help you and your child learn to manage his needs through therapy and a sensory diet.
The Out-of-Sync Child is a phenomenal book and resource for parents and teachers learning about sensory processing disorder. Other resources include:
- Sensory Processing Disorder Checklist
- Signs, Symptoms, and Background on Sensory Processing
- Sensory Processing Disorder Foundation
Your comments on experiences managing sensory preferences help others reading this post, as well as steer future posts regarding other areas of sensory processing. Please take a moment to share your stories and thoughts.
My daughter is certainly in the category of seeking more sensory input. It is a combination it seems, of being insensitive-(loud, rambunctious, always moving, hitting is her first response to being upset) yet also extremely sensitive, too. Seemingly opposite qualities which I see at different times each day. We joke about the “hand massage” she gives us every night as she falls asleep, and the girl could suck the plastic right off a pacifier. I am only now learning about sensory stuff, (and have seen kids on the far end of the spectrum in my work as a therapist more recently). I am not worried about my daughter in any sense, but this information can certainly help me in understanding her often very intense responses to things and her thrill seeker type personality. (it is always “faster, Mama” or “louder” , or “more” ). I look forward to continuing to expand my knowledge base in this area, an area that the field of psychiatry will not yet acknowlege (no sensory processing codes are included in the DSM-IV) but that psychology on the other hand has been testing for, for some time now. Great post.