5 Signs Your Child Needs Help for Sensory Processing Issues
If your child has trouble with sensory processing, it may be difficult to tell because sensory processing disorders tend to manifest as clumsiness, high energy, or other usual childhood behaviors. My name is Alissa Nowack, and I'm an occupational therapist at Metro Therapy Special Children's Clinic in Fridley, Minnesota. Today, I'm going to talk to you about some signs you might notice if your child is having sensory processing difficulties.
What Is Proprioception?
Now, there are a lot of senses in the body, but the one we're going to talk about today is called proprioception. “Proprio” literally means “one's own” or “yourself,” and “-ception” is “awareness.” So, this sense is essentially your own body awareness.
The sensors for proprioception are located all over your body in your muscles and joints, and they travel up along your nerves to your brain to give information about where your body is in space, what's going on around you, and how you may or may not need to react.
Signs That Your Child May Struggle with Proprioception
If a child has issues with this sense, it could look like a lot of different things:
The child could look kind of like a bull in a China shop, and they're just bumping into things, into door frames or furniture, and they're not aware of it. In other words, they’re kind of clumsy.
They could also be really timid and kind of fearful of movement because their body's not getting enough information about what it needs to be doing.
They can seem to miss objects, like missing the chair when they go to sit down or randomly falling out of their chair.
They can have illegible handwriting if, when they're writing something, they hold their pencil too lightly or too firmly because they can't tell their force regulation.
We've all had the experience of giving a kid a high five and the kid goes wham, because they don't know how strong they are, or how hard they're using their body. You might also notice that they have loud footsteps because they’re a heavy walker.
Why Is Proprioception Needed?
Children need this body awareness sense for a lot of different things. They need it at school, at recess to play different sports and games with kids. They need it to stand in line at school and not be too close to someone. They need it at home to brush their teeth and get dressed. And they also need it to help regulate their own emotions too, because we feel our emotions in our body. If you can't feel what your body's telling you, then it might be hard to regulate your feelings.
How Can Physical Therapy Improve Proprioception?
There are a lot of things we can do to help promote and develop this proprioception sense better. And the main thing is heavy work. Just giving input to those muscles, those joints, so that a child can feel what their body's doing and their brain can communicate better with their muscles and joints.
For example, we might play tug of war, or have the child try to stay on a swing while we try to shake them off of it. We could have them carry a big object and pretend it’s a dinosaur egg, or all sorts of activities.
How to Help Your Child Develop Their Proprioception at Home
At home, some things you could do with your child are:
Give them some groceries to carry
Have them open their own car door or other heavy doors
Create a pillow mountain so they can jump off your couch and crash onto pillows
Have pillow fights or roughhouse on the ground (safely, of course!)
Have them help to shovel snow in the wintertime or pull weeds in the summertime
All these activities use the child's muscles and help give them that input that they need.
Call Metro Therapy for an Evaluation
If you feel like your child might have some sensory processing difficulties, please feel free give us a call at Metro Therapy for an evaluation at (763) 450-9400.
