What´s Sensory Integration Therapy?

Occupational therapy is a profession that is currently growing faster than anyone would have expected. Because of the increase in demands for occupational therapy services, therapists are having larger caseloads, needing the help of more occupational therapists. Occupational therapy in the mental health setting is one environment that has grown in popularity over the last decade. Knowing the benefits of occupational therapy in this setting, and the expansion of clients needing occupational therapy services, more funding needs to be established in this setting.

Social skills - By playing independently of adults, children have the chance to practise their social skills. They might squabble or raise their voices at times, but most children from 3 years or so are able to work things out themselves. Learning to take turns and cooperate helps children’s social skills.

Children need to experiment outdoors as there is so much to learn. Children can learn in each of the areas and develop their skills. During play children are learning to socialise with each other, playing in small groups and taking turns which builds there confidence up. They also develop their motor skills through playing outdoors, running, jumping, walking and crawling. Children will learn to take risks

In dystopian literature, there are many universal storytelling elements and literary devices that builds onto the theme. This is apparent in Charlie Brooker’s TV show Black Mirror’s Nosedive, where your social media score determines your life. You’re rated out of 5 stars, the higher the rating you have the more successful you are. The lower your rating the less unsuccessful you are. Black Mirror uses universal storytelling elements such as social cohesion. Black Mirror also uses literary devices such as verbal irony, symbolism, and parable.

Children through play and leisure, children and young people explore their physical and social environment, test out ideas and concepts.

Play for a child is an opportunity to develop the skills needed to form relationships with

“Current theories about inclusive play revolve around the idea that play is important for life and that all play workers should be committed to creating play environments that are inclusive and that offer multi-sensory experiences for all children. Play environments should ensure children and young people can become involved in imaginary play and can help develop motor activity. They should also allow interaction in a safe environment. Play is seen as the language that can bring children of all different abilities together. All children and young people have the same basic needs and go through the same development stages, even though they may not all go through them at the same pace: some go through some stages more quickly than most, while others may become static in their development for a while. None of this should prevent access to any setting. Through play with other children they develop social skills and learn about behaviour, communication and friendship. Play is the tool for practical learning

Making relationships: children play co-operatively, taking turns with others. They take account of one another’s ideas about how to organise their activity. They show sensitivity to others’ needs and feelings, and form positive relationships with adults and other children.”

* They like playing and socialising with other children as this helps progress things more like speech, confidence and social skills.

Play contributes to children’s “physical, emotional and social well-being” (Else, 2009, p.8) and through play, the child’s holistic development and well-being is being constantly accounted for as is it led by the individual. The child decides what s/he wants to do and does it; it is

1 in 68 children suffer from autism according to www.autismspeaks.org. This disease targets children’s brains and makes them have trouble with communicating and forming relationships with people for the rest of their lives. It’s a terrible disease but can be treated through therapy, Sensory Integration Therapy to be exact. Sensory Integration Therapy opens the doors to new lives for children who suffer from autism because Sensory Integration Therapy is designed to target physical sensory and cognitive disorders in an act of play time according to www.kidshealth.org. SIT exposes children to sensory stimulation in a structured repetitive manner according to www.autsimspeaks.org. Within this therapy it has helped millions of children that suffer from autism but most experts don’t practice it or think it’s a waste of time. Not all experts think sensory integration works with learning and attention issues in kids, they think there’s more effective ways in improving sensory issues, and they think SIT is limited and inconclusive according to www.understood.org. The experts who do practice it though, see that it does improve learning and attention issues in kids, this is the most effective way, and that it is not limited or inconclusive. SIT isn’t just playtime, it improves learning and attention issues, its effective, and it’s not inconclusive.

In addition to play promoting pleasure as well as physical activity, play forms the holistic growth in children’s development, or to put it in another way using Brown (2003) acronym, acknowledged as ‘SPICE’; play represents the ‘social interaction’; ‘physical activity’; ‘intellectual stimulation’; creative achievement and emotional stability, (with the addition of “compound flexibility”) in a child’s development. Compound flexibility is the idea that a child’s psychological development occurs using the relationship between his/her environment with the adaptability of the child himself. Thus the flexibility of surroundings and his/her adaptableness can provide children the means to explore; experiment and investigate (Brown, 2003, pp. 53-4). On the contrary, the absence of social interaction and physical activity through the means of play can inhibit children’s overall development and without the consistency of play children suffer a “chronic lack of sensory interaction with the world, [which leads to] a form of sensory deprivation” (Hughes, 2001, p.217 in Lester and Maudsley 2006).

Four year olds are still very much learning through the use of their senses (Blaustein, 2005). As well, some children may have special needs concerning sensory processing and integration (Ayers, 1994). Children with sensory processing disorders range from over-responsive, under-responsive, to sensory craving (Ayers, 1994). Nonetheless, every person encounters a plethora of sensory stimuli each day and must take in information and integrate it with prior knowledge to make meaningful responses (Ayers, 1994). Multisensory centers provide young children with and without special needs with the opportunity to seek out sensory stimulation, acquire sensory integration and motor skills, learn coping skills, and understand basic scientific concepts (Blaustein, 2005).

Some of the children were identified as autistic, so reinforcing social skills was especially important. Children who self-isolated in a corner were asked to join in play groups of other children. I noticed with the autistic children,

Madness lurks in even the most “normal” people. During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year… (Poe). This is an appropriate setting given Usher’s overly-acute senses; he can’t handle bright lights or sounds, and so the story’s setting is dull and soundless. …. with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. (Poe). The Usher estate is made to seem as though it is its own isolated world, different and separate from normal reality. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that