How Can I Help a Child With Sensory Integrative Dysfunction?

If you notice that your child demonstrates exceptional difficulties with overstimulation, has difficulty processing information from her senses (touch, smell, taste, vision or hearing) or craves unusually vigorous stimulation, take the child for a Sensory Integrative Dysfunction evaluation. Children with Sensory Integrative Dysfunction (today termed Sensory Processing Disorder or SPD) over- or underreact to stimulation. The behaviors an SPD child displays can impair the child's social interactions and impede his education. An SPD diagnosis allows parents, teachers and therapists to identify a physiological cause of a child's problematical behavior and address the disorder through therapy.

Instructions

• 1

  Note unusual behaviors or sensitivities in your child, such as over- or undersensitivity to tactile stimulation, sounds or movement. SPD children may exhibit poor muscle tone and display sensory-seeking behaviors. Some SPD children distract easily, misjudge their own or others' movements and exhibit hypersensitivity or hyposensitivity to smells, sounds and lights. Watch to see whether the child displays normal emotional and social interactions and whether she seems to have a developmentally appropriate sense of her own body. Disturbances in any of these areas may signal SPD, though they can indicate other disorders as well.

• 2

  Ask your pediatrician for a referral to a professional occupational therapist who can assist you in diagnosing and treating SPD. Request a parallel appointment with a developmental specialist who can help determine whether, in addition to SPD, the child has other developmental impairments that you must deal with concurrently. Many autistic children have SPD. Other SPD children have an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnosis that may demand parallel treatment or should really, in fact, have been an SPD diagnosis from the beginning.

• 3

  Schedule a series of appointments with the occupational therapist to work with the child's SPD diagnosis. An occupational therapist will develop a therapeutic program to help the child balance the hyposensitivities and hypersensitivities that he displays. Some therapeutic activities may include working with a variety of textures to develop normal tactile processing; using weights, weighted products, bouncing, jumping, rocking, pushing and pulling and, swinging to regulate and modulate the child's nervous system; playing on swings, riding and rocking toys and therapy balls to regulate the child's vestibular movements.

• 4

  Recreate the occupational therapist's activities at home for followup. The therapist works with the child for short sessions. If you want your child to get the most out of the therapy and experience the maximum results, repeat the therapist's activities at home whenever possible, using whatever materials, toys and tools that you have. You also can proceed with other therapeutic activities at home that the therapist may not be able to do during the occupational therapy sessions, such as introducing aromatherapy into your home, using relaxation techniques at bedtime and offering the child foods with an increasing variety of textures and tastes.