What is Sensory Processing?

Sensory processing refers to the way the nervous system receives, organizes, and responds to sensory stimuli from the environment.

What is the impact for my child?

Does your child have difficulty with emotional regulation? Attention? Inclusion? Participation?

The way we process sensory information influences how we perceive and interact with the world around us. When there are differences in sensory processing, it can affect various aspects of daily functioning including:

• Self-care

• Eating

• Social Interactions

• Academic Performance

• Motor skills and coordination

• Emotional Regulation

• Sleep

• Attention and Focus

• Behaviour

• Mental Health

• Participation in Community and Recreational Activities

• Quality of Life

Why is understanding my child’s sensory profile important?

As adults, most of us tend to understand our sensory selves. We are aware that loud noises may make us feel uncomfortable or crowds may make us feel tense or nervous. So we do our shopping in quiet hours to reduce our exposure to the noise and big groups of people, or we host guests at out home instead of noisy, busy pubs when we are organising a social event.

We may love massages and know they are really calming and relaxing for us so book ourselves in for a professional massage or ask (or bribe!) a loved one to do this for us. But also know there are times that we absolutely DO NOT want to be touched and actively avoid or immediately withdraw from, or stop the sensation or input.

When our sensory needs are not met the response elicited within our nervous system may be minor, causing some discomfort - for example you might prefer to be under a doona to sleep even if that means you have the air conditioner blasting and the fan maxed out to cool the room enough to be able to use it. So if you can’t use your doona because it is a hot night, and the air conditioner is broken – you would likely have a very difficult time getting to sleep and staying asleep. That is because your sensory system (proprioception) is seeking deep pressure to calm your nervous system. Without the proprioceptive input (doona), your nervous system is taking longer to downregulate for sleep.

Or the response can be visceral - The loud noise you can’t stop, the taste that makes you gag, the crowd you can’t get out of or away from. Most people will have experienced this sensation from time to time throughout their lives. Think back to those times. The feelings you had in those moments –anxious, overwhelmed, panicked, enraged. How in control of your actions and emotions were you? How clearly were you able to think and reason and communicate? This experience is dysregulation.

As adults we have three key things to help us avoid overstimulating or under stimulating our sensory systems (as thus our nervous systems) that our kids do not:

• Experience: Either as direct previous experience, or transferrable experience (we know what being burnt feels like, so we don’t need to touch glowing hot coal to know to avoid that sensation). This allows us to avoid uncomfortable or triggering input and make informed decisions.

• Control: For the most part, we decide when to leave the house, what activities we will participate in, what we will have for dinner etc.

• Awareness: Awareness of our needs, of our sensory likes and dislikes, of our triggers and of our emotions. We know when we need to take a minute to calm down and we likely know what helps us to do that. And we can seek help or reassurance or even just understanding from others because we can communicate our feelings and why we are feeling them.

Sometimes we can’t avoid exposure to unpleasant sensory input, but having experience, control and awareness allows us to make accommodations in order to participate. And certainly, reduce the frequency in which we experience dysregulation.

Understanding your child’s sensory profile is important because with this information you can help them to achieve optimal nervous system arousal levels more consistently – thus reducing the impact to daily functioning and developmental progression.

What can I do to support my child?

As adults we can usually control our exposure to sensory experiences - allowing us to maintain optimal function within our nervous system most of the time. This enables us to regulate emotions effectively, learn, engage, socially participate, maintain safety and essentially function at our best.

Our kids, on the other hand, do not have the same level of experience, awareness or control as we their caregivers do. So how can we support them?

This is where an Occupational Therapist can help by doing a Sensory Profile. A Sensory Profile will help to identify how your child processes sensory information. Allowing you to better understand your child’s sensory needs and triggers. With this information you can help them to maintain their nervous system arousal levels in the same way you do for yourself, by:

• Altering tasks

• Modifying the environment

• Changing routines or expectations

• Communicating with educators, family members, siblings etc to explain your child’s needs

• Advocating for your child - facilitate adaptations to allow their participation

• Lean into their sensory super powers – an auditory sensitivity might just be the reason why your child has an ear for music and is so talented with instruments.

• Know what sensory input to increase or what sensory activities to direct your child to do to help them to calm.

• Know what input is heightening (over-exciting) so you can manage exposure while continuing to allow your child to enjoy and participate in the activity.

There is no one size fits all when it comes to sensory supports. You need to understand your child’s sensory profile first. Kids need to be regulated in order to participate and engage, and they need to participate and engage in order to learn and progress within all aspects of development. Understanding your child’s sensory profile is an important step in supporting their emotional regulation and allowing them to flourish.