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Chapter eight
All Things Sensory
Using our senses is an unconscious action that most of us take for granted, and we only ever spend time considering them when something upsets the equilibrium. I know this to be true when I am confronted with blaring music from the car next to me at traffic lights, or the high-pitched whine coming from the dentist's drill. If you can imagine, for a moment, what would challenge your senses, and then try to picture this happening on a consistent basis, day in, day out, then you would be in a better position to put yourself in the shoes of a child with autism who has difficulty in interpreting or modulating their senses.
When I speak of the senses, I don't just mean the five senses that we all know, but the other two senses that perhaps you may not know: the vestibular sense (concerned with our balance) and proprioception (the sense that tells us our body position in space). So, in total, there are seven senses that will be discussed within this chapter: visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory (taste), olfactory (smell), vestibular and proprioception.
Many children with autism may exhibit heightened responses from their senses and these responses can, in turn, lead to anxiety, fear, nausea, upset and physical pain. What is quite striking though, is that where we have learned to cope with and rationalise our senses being bombarded or challenged, children with autism may find this difficult to do.
Our job as educators, is to provide a safe, stimulating and enriching environment that is conducive to learning. But often, due to their sensory differences, children with autism, in these very stimulating classroom environments, can find this difficult, and may positively struggle to interpret their senses, make sense of them or, in the worst-case scenario, experience a sensory 'meltdown' (very often mistaken, incorrectly, for a 'tantrum').
One of the most practical things you can do, is to provide a sensory box for the child with autism in your class. This would be as big, or as little as appropriate for the age and stage of the child. I would have their picture on it (or name if this is more age appropriate), and I would ask the child to decorate it with their favourite characters or pictures of items that they enjoy. Inside, I would have items that you know they will enjoy, and that will give them the sensory feedback that they are seeking, examples could include the following:
- 'Chewy tube' for biting (I have previously used this as a good substitute for another child's arm)
- Mini lava lamp
- Fidget toys
- 'Koosh' (squeezy) ball
- Different pieces of textured materials - this is dependent on what the child likes - some may like soft fur, others may like rougher textures
- Light-up toys
- Spinning toys
you could timetable the sensory box into their daily programme or use it as a motivator to engage the child, using the 'first and then' approach discussed earlier - I have used this to great effect. You could also use it as a distraction if you suspect that the child may be approaching a sensory 'meltdown', by intervening prior to that occurring.
So how can you tell when this would be likely to happen? The clues are in the behaviours that they exhibit when their senses are challenged, and this largely depends on whether they are seeking to stimulate their senses or are reacting to their senses being stimulated. This is referred to as being hyposensitive or hypersensitive.
Hypersensitive or hyposensitive?
You will often have heard of someone who is described as being 'hyper' - meaning excessive, but usually in terms of energy or enthusiasm. This term can be used to describe how we interpret sensory signals, so, for example, someone can be described as being hypersensitive to sounds (that would be me with the blaring music). This can also be referred to as 'high sensitivity'.
Hyposensitive, on the other hand, is maybe not so commonly used, and describes the opposite to hypersensitivity. This is also called 'low sensitivity'. So, using the same example, someone who is hyposensitive to sounds would really enjoy that blaring music, and would press their ear right up against it, to gain sensory feedback.
It is important that you establish early on if the child with autism in your class has any hyper or hyposensitivites and, again, the best people to ask are the parents. It may be helpful to have them fill in a questionnaire at the start of the session to determine this, but I find th...
