Sensory Integration Goes Back to School

By Gail Troussoff Marks, Silver Stars Gymnastics

While putting away the beach towels, think about the school year and how new situations and activities will affect your children. Even if you are not familiar with the concept of sensory integration, take a minute to imagine how your children react to sensory stimuli. The senses include those that we think of immediately: tactile (touch), visual (seeing), auditory (hearing), and olfactory (smelling) as well as the lesser-recognized vestibular and proprioceptive senses. The vestibular sense is our body’s response to gravity and our sense of balance and body position. The proprioceptive sense is the information coming through our joints and muscles about where our body is in space. Thinking about your children from a sensory profile may pave the way for a smoother school year.

Before you start to visualize your child at school, take a minute to think about yourself. All of us have some senses which are more acute. These senses can be strengths or can make us uncomfortable. We may avoid crowds or long, steep escalators, turn lights down low, or stay away from smelly places. Have you found yourself getting tense as noise increases or cutting scratchy tags out of clothes? By the time we are adults, most of us have developed strategies to minimize sensory overload, sometimes without realizing how we have adapted. Children need help recognizing when they are becoming overloaded and help learning how to manage their responses. Here are some ideas of how the senses come into play in the school environment.

Let’s start with touch. Do you have children who are only comfortable in certain clothes, find labels scratchy, and complain about socks with seams? If so, those brand new fall clothes may cause morning outbursts as your tactile sensitive child feels itchy and irritated. Even just the feel of hot, cold or sticky bus seats, and hard, cold school chairs can disrupt their sense of well being. Their sensitivity to touch may also show up in crowded places where other children can knock into them. Having to be close to groups of kids in lines or on buses may be difficult. Being at the front or very back of a line will generally work best. Sitting at the front or side of the room or edge of the circle is often preferable.

Classrooms ought to be a treat for the visual sense. Teachers put time and effort into making their rooms interesting. However, the kaleidoscope of colors and patterns that one child finds stimulating may be overwhelming for another. If your child ends up sitting next to a window, the bright light or varying degrees of light may be distracting. Can your child see the blackboard, white board, and overhead projector image well enough? A child overwhelmed by visual stimuli may do better seated at the front of the classroom so they can focus directly on the teacher.

Think about noise. School has lots of noisy places such as, the cafeteria, the school bus, and possibly the halls or playground. There will be the sounds of chalk being used to write on the board or markers on a white board or paper. The teacher or teachers may have loud, soft, high or low voices. They may use tones of voice differently than parents. Sitting next to a noisy child or in the middle of a group may make it difficult to listen to the teacher. These noise sensitive children may not be able to filter out unimportant sounds.

Even new smells at school can be distracting or make your child uneasy. There are food smells coming from the cafeteria and classrooms have different smells, especially the art or science room. The child next to them may have clothes that smell different. Eliminating smells may be difficult, but awareness can at least help you and your child understand what is adding to their discomfort. To the child sensitive to smell, even the good scents can become overwhelming.

Challenges to the vestibular and proproceptive senses may be a little subtler. The comfort or lack of comfort we have in moving our body through space is what these senses are all about. The playground or PE class may be where this is most apparent. For young children the playground is a hub of socialization as well as physical activity. Feeling at ease on the playground is an important part of feeling positive about school. For the child who is clumsy or unfamiliar with playground equipment, recess may be threatening. The school bus ride may also be unsettling. Instead of traveling securely buckled in, sitting on a bench seat and sliding when the bus turns may leave a child feeling out of control.

These are just a few examples of the school environment from a sensory viewpoint. Think about recent meltdowns your children have had. What caused them? Could there be a sensory component? What adjustments can be made at home, in preparing for school and after school that could smooth your child’s day? This preplanning requires effort and vigilance just as the onslaught of fall activities is overwhelming you. However, it may avert negative situations that could thwart a positive school year.

Now that you have reviewed your children’s sensory needs, what can be done to make their school environment more conducive to learning? Many assaults on the senses cannot be changed, so the goal is to eliminate sensory irritants where possible and help the child learn to manage what cannot be changed. It can be empowering for a child to understand and name what is bothering them. Those skills alone can aid in mastering situations and helping the child find ways to adapt rather than meltdown. You can help your child organize their schoolwork, listen to what problems they are encountering, and structure morning routines. Beyond doing your part at home, being an advocate for your child is often necessary for the best outcome.