Sensory

SENSORY

Our children’s brains are constantly taking in information to make sense of the world. Most of us know the FIVE senses that we learned back in primary school-: sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch. However, there are actually EIGHT senses. We also have three internal senses: proprioception (allows you to know where your body parts are and what they are doing), vestibular (helps to tell you whether you are sitting, standing, lying down, spinning etc; and interoception (which tells you whether you are hungry, thirsty, hot, cold etc).

Some children have difficulty processing the sensory information from all of these senses and can become over sensitive (e.g. cover their ears with the sound of a vacuum cleaner or fears movements like swings) or under sensitive (e.g. constantly bump into things or hardly notice pain)  .

Some children who experience these difficulties may exhibit unusual behaviour, or behave in ways that are not age appropriate, whilst others may avoid activities and situations. It is not unusual for children to occasionally struggle with sensory information, however when these responses are happening regularly or for extended periods of time, they can affect a child’s social interactions, behaviour, ability to learn and overall development.