Your child’s sensory world and why you must understand it

The sensory system comprises of 6 main systems namely auditory (which is hearing), tactile (which is your touch system), gustatory (taste system), olfactory (smell system), vision (enables you to see) and proprioception (the knowledge of where your body is in space). All these systems work together to give you information about the environment you find yourself in. We have 2 different types of system thresholds which determine the uninfluenced behavior. Some people have high thresholds and others have low thresholds. The behavior you exhibit divides the 2 thresholds again resulting in 4 quadrants.

It is possible for a person to have a high threshold in certain systems and a low threshold in other systems. Children tend to act out in relation to the stimulation they experience and their thresholds. As adults we learn to modulate ourselves in order to regulate our behavior. If I am stuck in traffic, I enjoy turning the music up as this help me to stay calm and therefore modulates me and I do not get agitated. For my husband, the complete opposite is true; he is auditory sensitive and dislikes the radio being loud if he is stuck in traffic. As adults, we learn the skill to habituate. This is to decrease sensitivity to a stimulation which is repeated, for example, if the washing machine is running, we eventually do not hear the noise any longer and thus we do not react to it. We also learn how to modulate, which is using stimulation that is calming to reorganize ourselves. Children sometimes struggle to know what modulates them and need more practice to learn how to habituate. They therefor hear the washing machine and the television and the microwave and the birds outside and with all the noise they cannot concentrate on something specific for long or become fussy quickly. When they become overstimulated, they do not know how to use self-calming strategies effectively.

It is so important to know how your child experiences his/her sensory world, because it will govern your behavior towards the child. If you know that your child has a high threshold for auditory stimulation, it will be better for you to walk over to her and touch her to gain attention, rather than trying to call her across the room for attention. If you are not aware of this, you might feel that your child is stubborn and is ignoring you on purpose. If your child is overall a sensory seeking child, you need to provide the correct amount of stimulation to feed the system so the child would be able to concentrate on table-top activities better in the end. If the child is a sensory sensitive child, the stimulation that he is exposed to must be monitored in order to ensure that the child is not pushed over the edge and end up being tearful and fussy during the day. The amount of stimulation your child receives coupled with their thresholds influence their arousal levels. These levels are what enable us to focus and concentrate on a certain activity in order for optimal learning to take place. If a child struggles to concentrate in class, it might be because he is going into shutdown after too much stimulation. If he is fidgety in the chair and can’t sit still it might mean that he needs some sensory input to gain optimal arousal again.

The big problem in households is the mismatch of sensory systems between the individuals occupying the same space. For instance, if we have a mommy who is auditory sensitive, and a child who is auditory seeking, he will be making noise and mommy will get more irritated as time goes by. That’s why we need to know our thresholds and the people in our houses’ thresholds as well.

Happy parenting!

Jeanè Kolbé

Occupational Therapist

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