Play as a pre-requisite for writing

One of the earliest stages that children go through, when learning to play and interact with their environment is the sensory explorative stage, in which the body itself is the child’s toy. They learn how to move their body parts, to reach and grasp, and to coordinate those skills with vision, such as banging objects together. Then their interest turns towards how toys work. Children develop specific cause and effect relationships such as pushing objects, pulling them apart and rolling them over. They then enter a constructive stage of play by building, stacking and putting objects together. When prewriting activities (crayons) are presented earlier than this stage the child can become frustrated.

Sensory Experiences
Through various sensory and motor experiences, children learn to handle a variety of materials. They refine the movement of their hands and fingers by manipulating puzzles and toys. They learn to pull toys, play with large and small objects, use both hands together, use a spoon at meals, and feel a variety of objects of different sizes, shapes, and textures. They play in water, sand, and powder, and they feel pebbles and feathers. They learn how to throw accurately. These indirect preparations for writing are achieved by the development and refinement of the senses of touch and sight and are experiences needed in preparation for holding and using a pencil.

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Effect of SPD on development, learning and behaviour

Activity level that is unusually high or low

The child may be constantly on the move or may be slow to activate and fatigue easily. Again, some children may fluctuate from one extreme to the other.

Coordination problems

This can be seen in gross or fine motor activities. Some children may have unusually poor balance, while others have great difficulty learning to do a new task that requires motor coordination such as speech, writing etc.

Poor organization of behavior

The child may be impulsive or distractible and show a lack of planning in approach to tasks. Some children have difficulty adjusting to a new situation. Others may react with frustration, aggression, or withdrawal when they encounter pressure and/or failure.

Poor self concept

Sometimes, a child with the above mentioned problems may know that some tasks are more difficult for him than for other children, but may not know why. This child may appear lazy, bored, or unmotivated. They soon figure out ways to avoid these tasks that are hard or embarrassing.

Delays in speech development, poor social language, inadequate motor skills, or academic underachievement are often manifestations of SPD. When a problem is difficult to see or understand, anxiety builds among parents, teachers and even the child.

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Effect of SPD on Reading Skills

Reading is a visual symbol superimposed on previously acquired auditory language. Before a child learns to read, language learning depends almost exclusively on the auditory channel. The three aspects of the auditory processes that are most significant for reading are
1. Discrimination of particular phonemes within words.
2. Auditory discrimination of words.
3. Auditory synthesis: the ability to combine smoothly all the sounds of syllables of words to make them a whole, or the ability to analyze a word into its separate sounds.

Auditory processing problems may affect reading in the following ways:

• Inability to hear the similarities in the initial of final sounds of words
• Cannot perceive the similarities in words, e.g., “fat” and “pat”
• Unable to hear the double consonant sounds in consonant blends
• Lack in discrimination of short vowel sounds: “ten, tin, ton”
• Cannot break words into syllables
• Cannot break words into individual sounds
• Inability to combine parts of words to form a whole
• Cannot remember the sounds for the printed symbols or the names for the printed word
• Inability to detect rhyming elements of words
• Difficulty in distinguishing similarities and differences in sounds
• Lack of retention of sounds or syllables long enough to make matches or blends
• Inability to relate the visual components of words to their auditory counterparts
• Does not relate a part of a word to the whole word
• Inability to synthesize or analyze unfamiliar words

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Neuromotor disorder vs Motor planning disorder

Motor planning is the ability of the brain to conceive of, organize and carry out a sequence of unfamiliar actions as necessary when learning new skills. Differentiating motor planning deficits from signs of neuromotor disorders depends whether there is absence of movement components or is it the inability of the child to use these movement components in a variety of novel situations.

Motor planning correlates to sensory processing in that in requires the ability to use feedback and feedforward loops when performing a novel motor act. Sensory processing deficits decrease the child’s ability to use the sensory input to create and develop accurate motor programs that can be later used as representations for their actions. When a child is learning a new movement, therapists who understand sensory integrative principles can identify the child’s sensory needs and provide meaningful sensory feedback.

An example of a child with Sensory Processing disorder

‘A’ is an exceptionally intelligent student, with many good ideas that he shares with his classmates. However, when he sits down to write something, he struggles to write even one paragraph and his writing is smeared with many erasures. In class, he is always fiddling with something in his hands, chewing on a pencil or paper clip, or tapping on his desk. Although ‘A’ has excellent thinking skills and can express himself verbally, he has difficulty with his motor skills. He does not have a good sense of where his body is in space and is always seeking out more information for his sensory system by fiddling, chewing, and tapping. Due to his lack of good sensory feedback from his body, he has always had difficulty with the fine motor aspects of handwriting. His speed of writing can never keep up with the speed and flow of his ideas and he becomes quite frustrated.

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Bad behavior or Sensory Processing disorder?

A child who does not respond to name call, who seems more interested in objects rather than people or a child who is always in motion can be seen as having behavior problems. Underlying these behaviors is most often Sensory Processing Deficits. This means that the child may be having difficulty processing all of the sensory information coming in from their eyes, ears, nose, sense of touch, and even their sense of balance and relationship to gravity. There is a strong relationship between poor sensory processing and behavior. Sensory processing affects how children relate to the world and whether they are alert and ready for learning or not. Understanding how a child processes sensory information can be extremely helpful to understanding why he acts the way he does.

click here to know about SPD training in India

SPD is something real for your child!

Because of his/her difficulties in processing sensory information, the world may be a frightening place for your child. Children with SPD often respond by trying to control what’s happening. They can be very controlling in home environments and very demanding. The balance between managing behavior, which is often difficult for any parent, now coupled with a child who’s having more difficulty with the environment, can be very difficult on a family unit as a whole. So most often what you might see as a behavior problem could be a sensory problem instead.

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My child is fine outside but uncontrollable inside the house!

A lot of children are aware of location and what is expected of them there. For e.g. they might really hold it together at school, where they know their freedom is limited and may not manifest many of their sensory integration problems at school. They will, however, fall apart when they get home. They know they’re in a safe environment and the impact and stress of their day may come out.

My child hates to sit for dinner!

SPD causes adjustment issues among children and hence alters their response to even simple tasks. For e.g. they may have difficulty sitting quietly to eat at dinner. Children with SPD have a very difficult time sitting still, often due to low muscle tone and also needing to move to provide sensory input to their brain.  Also, they may have clumsiness in using utensils, or picking up their cups. So just getting through meal time can be very stressful for most parents who feel like their child is beyond the age where she should be spilling things. Children with SPD may also be very sensitive to taste and smells and have a very limited range of what they’ll eat. This becomes another stress point, particularly when you go to relatives’ homes or a restaurant.

Even bathing, dressing and other simple activities of daily living can be a nightmare!

These may seem simple to you. But for a child with SPD, taking bath involves touch, smell, temperature and balance. He may be very bothered by taking his clothes off, touching water, smell of the soap, closing his eyes to wash face, tilting his head backward for washing hair because he feels very insecure in space.

He does not interact with people around him and prefers to stay away!

Because the sensory world does not make sense to them, children with SPD would much prefer an environment that’s very predictable and the same from day to day. People (including family) and the environment often tend to change rapidly e.g. our voices, body odor, and facial expressions. When suddenly the environment changes, the child becomes flustered, frustrated and upset.

He won’t hug me!

When a child pulls away from being touched, hugged or cuddled, it can be very emotionally difficult for parents. For the child, what counts here is the feel of your clothes, smell of your hair, pressure of your hug and your voice. If any of these do not appeal to him and you insist on hugging or holding him, then he might cry and even hit you to get away from the bad sensory experience which for a parent is a bad emotional experience.

International training for therapists in India

SPD is one of the most researched area in the field of developmental disorders in children today. This September, FiVE has the unique honor of hosting Carol Stock Kranowitz for a two day long International training on “SENSORY PROCESSING DISORDER (SPD) – the questions and the answers”.

It is conducted in September 2009 at Chennai India for therapists involved in Pediatrics. The participants are from India and neighboring countries.

for details click here or email to spdtraining@childsupport.in

About Carol

CAROL STOCK KRANOWITZ has been a music, movement and drama teacher for 25 years. She received her B.A. from Barnard College and M.A. in Education & Human Development from The George Washington University. She went to study Sensory Integration Disorder now known as Sensory Processing Disorder, to better understand and help those children who seemed “Out-of-Sync”. Her books on the same issue are treated as bible by therapists, teachers and parents alike.

For more information about her books go to www.out-of-sync-child.com

Since 1981 she has been a speaker at approximately 400 workshops at national and international conventions, on Sensory Processing Disorder, music and movement, parenting, child development etc addressing parents, educators, and professionals about sensory issues and suggesting activities for addressing them at home and school. She is a Board Member of SPD Foundation and Editor-in-Chief of S.I. Focus, the magazine devoted to sensory processing issues.

For more information about Carol go to http://www.out-of-sync-child.com/author.htm

Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) – an International training program in India by Carol Stock Kranowitz;  click here

About SPD

Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), formerly known as “Sensory Integration Dysfunction” is a condition that exists when sensory signals don’t get organized into appropriate responses.

Pioneering occupational therapist and neuroscientist A. Jean Ayres, PhD, compared SPD to a neurological “traffic jam” that prevents certain parts of the brain from receiving the information needed to interpret sensory information correctly. An individual with SPD will find it difficult to process and act upon information received through the senses, which creates challenges in performing even simple everyday tasks. SPD may present itself in the form of motor clumsiness, behavioral problems, anxiety, school failure, and other learning and behavioral issues causing disruption in development and social adjustment.

Most children with sensory processing difficulties are healthy and bright but seem to struggle to tolerate ordinary sensations, to plan, organize, and predict their actions, and to regulate their attention and activity levels. They are too young to understand their own behavior, and they cannot learn to manage it well. Such difficulties put children with SPD at high risk for many emotional, social, and schooling problems, including the inability to make friends or be a part of a group, poor self-concept, academic failure, being clumsy, uncooperative and even seem disruptive, or “out of control.” Research by the SPD Foundation indicates that 1 in every 20 children experience symptoms of Sensory Processing Disorder.

http://www.spdfoundation.net

Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) – an International training program in India by Carol Stock Kranowitz; author of the famous book ‘The Out-of-Sync Child’ …. click here