A Peek Into Our World-Sensory Issues 101

WARNING! Technical Mumbo Jumbo Ahead! But you might learn something too. Enter at your own risk.

Son #2 had a meltdown a few weeks back & "chinned" the teachers desk at school, breaking off parts of his two front teeth. He has a nice upside V for a hole there now. I call him Bunnicula now. But with this injury & discomfort has come many, many meltdowns with son#2 lately. He's unpredictable and it's not pretty. There have been many, many time outs in his room. So with meltdowns come people who stare. And many people who don't understand. The world is filled with plenty of people who don't want to understand. But for those of you that do, and are curious what a little part of Autism FEELS like--I wrote this.

I attended a Sensory Integration seminar at the therapy place my kids go to. Some of it was stuff I knew, other parts were eye opening. I figured if they were illuminating to me, some of you in contact with anyone like my children, might benefit from my interruption so why not share some of the internal processing that goes on with kids on the Autism spectrum.

You have your five basic senses that we all learn in school. Then there are three HIDDEN senses. Kind of like your Spidey senses. However kids on the AS (Autism spectrum), don't have an easy time FEELING these things that are second nature to us. This is where we need Sensory Integration for them. And SI (sensory integration) are different therapies that help them register the sense or feeling.

Tactile discrimination is the first & the most primitive sense. Your hair on your body is able to help discriminate some things with this sense. Like when you get that tingle on the back of your neck? Another example is your ability to determine what is in your hand without looking. If you're blindfolded & someone puts a feather in your hand and a rock in the other hand. You're able to differentiate between the two & tell what they are by tactile discrimination. And you don't really remember anyone teaching you how to do that do you? That's why theses senses are considered hidden or innate.

Then there's vestibular sense which has a lot to do with your posture and balance. It's like having a protective system within you. It tells you which way is up, how your body is oriented in relation to up, how your body is moving in space and when to throw up. When you start to fall you put your hands out in front of you. We say it's instinct but really it's called vestibular sense.

The last hidden sense is called proprioception and has a lot to do with muscles and joints & the nerve endings in them that send the messages to the brain. This sense lets you know how heavy something is, how far down it is when you take a step and it is stimulated by gravity. When you get up all groggy in the morning & go to the cupboard to reach in for your coffee cup, you know how much force to use for picking up the weight of that cup. If you close your eyes and extend an arm out to the side and then to the front, there is a sensing of where the hand is located in space in relation to the body itself. Especially when the muscles of the hand are flexed. Try it. You sense/feel the arm more (eyes closed!) when your hand is in a fist. That's because you're stimulating nerves by making that fist.

The reason these senses are important is because SI (sensory integration) is the foundation of emotional regulation & learning. You want to know about Autism? Non-Verbal Autism? It's hard to get in their heads & tell you what's going on or how they feel, but this might enlighten you. We knew what it was, but now we know WHAT causes these meltdowns to happen to son#2.
Autism is a neurological problem in the brain. It's essentially roadblocks that don't allow communication & other basic fundamentals, things we don't even remember learning, to happen in a normal way. Because of this neuro/nerve problem, things are wired a tad differently inside of them. Where it's easy for us to use our hidden senses, theirs are either too heightened or to dull for them to get the messages their nerves are sensing. Therefore we have to stimulate them to FEEL & SENSE these things. These basic skills help our "neuro makeup" & underlying learning process to progress and react in a developed way.

Here is the best example of this I can use. When son#2 can't figure out how to communicate what he's wanting to one of us, or can't figure out how to tell us how he feels, he melts down. A meltdown is just the new word for tantrum. But you can imagine at 96lbs and 7 years old, there's more heft behind the kicking & screaming. Remember my post about the terrible two's? Those are manageable tantrums...when it goes to the extreme, we call it a meltdown. Scratching, flailing around, wailing and much gnashing of teeth. The severity of this is determined by several things. How badly he wants or needs "it" whatever it is at that moment. How tired he is, how hungry he is, how many times he has to take us to the place or item to get his point across, if we've said no and if he is due for his meds.
The medicine allows son#2 to reel back in the emotions and fervor and get it back together enough to function again. Sometimes he's too far gone & it takes an hour or more to get himself back together. Part of this is maturity. All kids learn this when transitioning from baby to child. Other parts are where an Autistic brain is different than our own. (thought I'd forgotten my point didn't you?) Son #2's brain, isn't processing the same information as ours when we're doing the exact same task. Because of his deficits in that area, it will interfere with the creation of ideas or connecting them together, and analytical thinking. Hence the non-verbal part.

When people say the Autism spectrum is wide ranged, they aren't kidding. No kid is exactly like another in the world, and Autistic kids get even more unique and personalized in their way of learning, communicating and finding their way in the world.
The perfect example of this uniqueness is son#1 is getting over stimulation to his sensory system. Whereas son#2 is not getting enough. Now this isn't true with EVERYTHING, but with most things, this is how they are integrating. Over & under. Yet, both are Autistic.
So son#2 feels better when he swings. This goes back to the point of vestibular sensing. It calms him because he isn't processing what he's sensing correctly. He isn't sure of what he's feeling. He's not sure of his body in the world. Sort of like an astronaut in space? So swinging stimulates the inner ear where gravity & our body are centered & gives son#2 extra stimulation to FEEL himself there. Other ways are weighted vests and blankets sort of like the x-ray apron they give you at the doctor's office. It's weighted & feels good to them. Like yoga, they feel centered & that allows them to feel calm. We like calm. You can learn better when you're calm.
Jumping is the best thing though. All those endorphins released by jumping & bouncing up against things. You feel alive & very happy. Or that's what their faces say to me.

So maybe I've given you a little peek into what it's like to be Autistic. Maybe you see now where some of the frustration comes from in those kids you see melting down. Doesn't always make it easy to deal with, but that kid at the store, may need more than that spankin you're thinking of. Would you feel that way if he was blind? Without certain senses I think there's an adjustment period where your body & your brain have to come to terms with each others abilities. This takes time and patience. And more importantly, there's a learning curve. Whether this Autistic Spectrum child is in your classroom, your church or is in your family--you are his classmate. His learning curve will effect you. Why not help him out? It'll help YOU out in the long run.