Lalitha Sridhar is conducting a series of workshops on sensory related disorders in children. It would be best to check the following blog out on the content of these series- thoroughly documented by Karthikeyan-
whatautismtaughtus.com/2019/08/14/sensory-integration-in-adlactivities-of-daily-living-activities-by-scan/
Lalitha Sridhar, a rehabilitation professional trained from Madras Medical College, who has worked in the field of special needs for three decades, came to Mitr to share a vast knowledge on Sensory Integration (SI) for Activities of Daily Living (ADL).
A few points from her talk:-
- Senses help in performing our ADLs.
- For any development or learning to happen SI has to happen.
- All senses have to work together for complete information.
- There three types of senses-
- Exterior- such as visual, olfactory, auditory and tactile
- Interior- Receptors in our body that tell us information for eg- are we hungry or full, do we need to go to the toilet, is our bladder full and so on.
- Proprioceptive-information that our joints and muscles give us and Vestibular- information connected to balance and stability.
Mostly we all do understand what is meant by Exterior and Interior senses, but Proprioceptive and Vestibular are not properly understood.
- Proprioceptive sense can be further elaborated as-
- Maintaining alignment of body parts- for eg to pick p a fallen object we need or eyes, head, arms and back to work together in alignment. If we cannot control this alignment we cannot pick up the object. This sense is proprioceptive.
- Control of movement- for eg in picking up this fallen object we need to control how far our arm moves.
- Precision
- State of Alertness.
- In short, Proprioceptive deals with how much control and sense we have of our joints and muscles.
- Vestibular sense can be further elaborated as-
- Emotional Security via gravity- feeling like one is floating. Some children jump a lot, perhaps this helps them overcome this 'floating' feeling.
- Feeling of Unsteadiness.
- Fear of Falling, lack of control.
- Balance and protective reaction.
- Stable Visual fields.
- Understanding space.
- In short Vestibular deals with how we perceive ourselves in space.
Regulating Sensory inputs is a life long activity. If our senses are acting well, and giving us accurate input, we function normally. If we hear something too loud, or find lights too bright or are feeling unstable while standing, or finding that a t shirt we wear is feeling too rough on our skin, all of which are sensory inputs gone out of whack, we will find it hard to do our activities of daily living.
Hence getting accurate sensory information, processed properly thru our body is a must for normalisation.
Every ADL has three components-
- Motor
- Sensory
- Emotional
Lets take the ADL of eating for example-
-the Motor component would be the ability to move one's hand and take it to the mouth.
- the Sensory component would be the proprioceptive sense of adjusting one's arms in the appropriate angle to reach the food, the adequate movement of the mouth/jaw muscles to chew the food, and the throat to swallow.
-the emotional component would be the desire to eat the food as a comfort, as a comforting group activity.
Children crave certain textures like crunchy because they enjoy the sensory input given by their jaws to the body, perhaps it makes them feel more grounded, so maybe eating chips is not just a joy for the taste buds but is also giving the child a vestibular stability in space. Some children do not like to touch sticky food items like rice- why is that? they enjoy chewy foods, perhaps these are the reasons.
So food can give us many clues on what is going on in other senses.
In conclusion it would be safe to say Lalitha Sridhar has a lot more to teach us and share with us and in the weeks to come, we hope she continues to shed more light on this baffling subject. Obviously so far we have put a lot these things in the category of 'behaviour' or 'stimming' but they all have real reasons why the child acts in a certain way. In order to really help a child progress in learning and development, understanding SI is crucial.
