Child Sensory Integration: Proprioception

Sensory integration refers to the brain’s ability to process sensory input from multiple sensory modalities, the five senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste), vestibular sense (balance and movement) and proprioception (knowing one’s position in space).

The proprioceptive sense receives input from the muscles and joints about body position, weight, pressure, stretch, movement, and changes in position in space.

A child may have sensory seeking behaviors. The child may:

– seek out jumping, bumping, and crashing activities, stomp feet when walking and/or crack knuckles

– frequently bite/suck on fingers, chew on pens, straws, cloths

– prefer tight clothes, belts, shoelaces and hoods

– love to be tightly wrapped in many blankets

– grind teeth

– jump on trampoline for hours, jump off furniture/high places

– love to give and get bear hugs

– play rough often tackling/wrestling, hitting, bumping or pushing other children

A child may have difficulty with grading of movement. The child may:

– hurt animals by playing too forceful with them

– have too light pressure (hard to see) or too hard pressure (break tips of pencils) when writing/drawing

– often rip paper when erasing and written work is messy

– often break objects and toys

– uses excessive force with door slamming, putting objects down

– not understand the idea of heavy or light weight

Sensory integration continued next week.