1.What is sensory integration disorder in children?
Some children’s attention is particularly difficult to focus, poor memory, do things to lose three or four, poor academic performance, do homework procrastination, mischievous and capricious, impulsive behavior, risk-taking, but poor fine motor such as tying shoelaces button difficulties, stuttering speech is not fluent, words do not reach the meaning; some and easy to nervous, timid, withdrawal, paranoia, cry, do not get along, picky eaters or binge eating.
In the past, some people diagnosed these problems as ADHD, giving children medication, injections, etc., but with little success, but also may cause children’s stunted development; other parents believe that children are character problems, intentionally disobedient, and beat and scold the child, resulting in physical and psychological trauma.
In 1970, the American psychologist Iris first discovered that among children aged 3-13, 10-30% of them had the above syndrome and were prone to learning difficulties, and the study found that it was not an intelligence
It was found that it was not a problem of development or education, but rather an inconsistency in the development of brain functions of children, which is related to the imperfect integration of brain functions and needs to be corrected by psychological training.
Normally, the human cerebral cortex summarizes and analyzes the information received, past memories, experiences, and emotions before making appropriate responses, a process known as integration. The integrity of the integrative function depends on the coordination of the entire cortical function.
In normal people, the integration function is normal when they are awake, but in some children, due to the different excitability of different areas of the cerebral cortex, some areas or nuclei are relatively active, which causes the coordination of the cerebral cortex to become poor and the integration function to become disordered, leading to the appearance of the above symptoms. With the increase in the number of only children, the incidence of children with sensory integration disorder has been increasing year by year.
2.What are the manifestations of children with sensory integration disorder?
① Vestibular balance disorders: they are characterized by hyperactivity, walking and falling, circling in place, dizziness, inattention, inattentiveness in class, acting out, mischievousness, excitement, easily violating classroom discipline, conflict with others, being fussy, difficulty in sharing toys and food with others, and inability to consider the needs of others. Some children may also have delayed language development, poor speech and difficulty in expressing themselves verbally.
(2) Poor visual sense: Although children can watch cartoons and play with electric toys for a long time, they cannot read fluently, often skip or miss reading, or have more or less words; when writing, they reverses the radicals, even do not know the words, forget them after learning them, cannot do calculations, and often copy the wrong questions and miss them.
③ Poor auditory perception: manifesting as deafness to other people’s words, losing three or four, often forgetting what the teacher said and the homework left, etc.
④Haptic over-sensitivity or over-retardation: manifested as fear of unfamiliar environment, hand sucking, nail biting, crying, playing with genitals, over-attachment to parents, easy separation anxiety, or excessive tension, love to provoke others, partial eating or overeating, irritability.
⑤ Excessive sensitivity or dullness of pain sensation: risk-taking behavior, self-injury and self-harm, not knowing the lessons learned. Or less active, withdrawn, not getting along, shrinking, lack of curiosity, lack of exploratory behavior.
(6) proprioceptive disorders: poor sense of direction, easily lost, easily wandering, unable to play hide-and-seek, easily falling down with eyes closed, standing without standing, sitting without sitting, easily hunching, nearsighted, and excessively afraid of the dark.
(7) Poor motor coordination: Poor motor coordination, easy to fall down when walking, unable to roll, ride a bike, jump rope and shoot a ball like their children.
(8) Poor fine motor skills: they cannot tie shoelaces, button buttons, use chopsticks, have clumsy hands and feet, and have poor manual skills.
These problems will undoubtedly cause obstacles to children’s learning and interaction, although such children have a normal or extraordinary IQ, but because of poor brain coordination affects attention and memory, affects verbal expression, affects interpersonal communication, and therefore directly affects children’s learning, life, motor movement, but also affects interpersonal relationships, preventing the normal growth and development.
3.What are the causes of children’s sensory integration disorder?
The biggest difference between the human brain and other animals is that the human brain development phenomenon of the continuation of the young state, at birth the human brain only developed 23%, the remaining 77% in the later development, this huge plasticity for human adaptation to the environment provides a very wide world, of course, the development of the brain itself also needs the guidance of external sources of stimulation, but most Chinese families today are only children, not only less partners, and Most parents are overprotective of their children’s paws, and children should be touching, crawling, rolling, playing, jumping and other behaviors that are artificially destroyed in the natural course of development.
Children who do not crawl when they should, may later develop poor coordination, poor balance, not allowed to cry when they should, lack of exercise for oral muscles, weak heart and lung function, and even poor language expression. The main reasons for sensory integration disorders in only children are: lack of exercise, lack of games, and lack of nature. Of course, miscarriage, pregnancy medication or emotional stress, premature birth, caesarean section, etc. are also the main causes of sensory integration disorder in children.
4. What are the consequences of sensory integration disorder in children?
These children with problems may not show them in their early years, but by the time they reach school age, they will show one or another disorder in their learning ability and personality. Compared to other normal children, they may appear to be very clumsy in their academic abilities, interpersonally sensitive or socially withdrawn, and psychologically poor, causing great concern to parents and teachers.
Parents and teachers should detect these behavioral problems early and provide timely treatment and training, otherwise, it will affect the child’s intellectual development and learning ability development, resulting in poor learning foundation, delayed psychological development and interpersonal relationship disorders, which will lead to anorexia, truancy, lying and other behavioral problems.
5.How to conduct sensory integration training for children? How does it work?
Sensory integration training for children starts with measuring and diagnosing the child’s level of sensory integration disorder and intellectual development, and then formulates a training curriculum.
The child’s academic performance, logical reasoning ability, memory ability, motor coordination, interpersonal relationship, diet and sleep, and emotion will be enhanced and improved, among which, the child’s intelligence level can also be improved to different degrees.
The United States, European countries, Japan, Taiwan and other developed countries and regions from the 1970s the rise of children’s sensory integration training, has developed into each elementary school has a sensory integration training room, and achieved very good results.
In recent years, this training theory and technology has been introduced and developed in China, and has also achieved obvious efficacy in clinical practice. Clinical practice shows that all children who participated in the training had different degrees of improvement, and 85% of the trained children received significant results.
The clinical practice shows that children who participated in the training had different degrees of improvement, and 85% of them received significant results. In combination with pharmacological treatment, the apparent rate can reach more than 95%. Sensory Integration Training for Children is suitable for children aged 3-13 with learning difficulties or behavioral problems.