It has become more and more apparent that sensory issues affect more and more children all the time. Evidence shows that children today can be over-stimulated or under-stimulated in early childhood environments. As an early childhood educator I have seen this issue become pre-dominant over the past few years, not only in the behavior of the children, but also in the increased number of staff trainings that focus on sensory issues and behavioral issues. At our recent staff in-service one of our workshops was focused on "The Impact of Sensory Integration on Behavior: Discovering Our Best Selves". Our purpose was to determine how we as early childhood teachers can help children discover their best selves.
During the last years, things like television, computers, video games and the Internet have bombarded us with more visual images than people in previous years have ever experienced. What all of this will mean to human development remains to be determined, but the evidence already shows that children who are overloaded with visual information either "shut down" and pay less attention to the world around them or "speed up" and show increasing negative changes in behavior.
There are several ways that we can help children to cope with the visual stimulation in today's world:
- Taking more care in the set up of classrooms and play spaces. Keeping them well-organized and free from clutter and filling them with more natural materials. Carefully choosing visual images (photographs, picture books, paintings) and encouraging them to look for patterns in images and find similarities in shapes, textures and colors.
- Becoming fellow investigators with children and keeping a sense of wonder about the world sparks imagination and stimulates activities.
- Spending more time outdoors and interacting with nature can alleviate some of the behavioral challenges that children experience. When schools cut back on recess time to spend more time on standardized testing all children suffer, but especially those with sensory integration challenges.
- Moving to learn (providing well planned movement experiences that happen regularly) to help children use their whole body will help especially the kinesthetic learner.
Continue to look for the miraculous in everyday experiences and help your child develop a sense of awe and wonder about the world around them. Your child will translate those experiences into calmer and more positive behaviors and a love for learning that will last a lifetime.
For more ideas on how you can encourage these experiences for your child go to the National Arbor Day Foundation and look for the Kids Explore Club. Plan some family outings in the "great outdoors", turn off the television and spend happy times enjoying God's gifts of nature...you will find that your children will calm down and learn to move at a slower pace. Children will also connect to something greater than themselves and learn that some of the world's best gifts don't come from a store.
Excerpts taken from an article by Nancy Rosenow, "The Impact of Sensory Integration on Behavior: Discovering Our Best Selves" from Childcare Information Exchange.
