Learning readiness and sensory integration

If your child is everywhere at once and has the concentration span of a goldfish, how can you teach him anything? Our special needs children frequently have difficulty processing sensory information. What this means is that they have difficulties learning from their senses. They are not learning ready.

Learning readiness was a very confusing term to Val and I. For my part, I was curious why our boys always ran everywhere, on their tippy toes. They never, ever walked. They were energizer bunnies and completely unpredictable, disappearing in opposite directions. At school they were known as the runners and had ‘escaped’ from their class on a number of occasions. Then we met Sara Field, a brilliant occupational therapist who had trained with Jean Ayres who pioneered sensory integration therapy.

After several chats about sensory integration with her, I still didn’t get it. So she brought me into her clinic and put me on a spinner and spun me around. After about two revolutions I fell off totally dizzy. Then she put Eoin on the spinner and spun him around. No matter how many times she spun him he never got dizzy, ever. And he loved the spinning sensation, so much so she had to drag him off. Both boys loved any kind of motion but particularly trampolines, swings, slides, climbing and would kill for roller coasters. After spending time in Sara’s clinic the boys were always calm and without a doubt, learning readiness was not an issue.

And then it started to come to me. I couldn’t sit for long before I would need to get up and walk around. I found it really hard to sit and read, but loved audio books while I walked. I started to think about how uncomfortable I felt sitting through long meetings at work and how I was a perennial fidgeter in these situations. This insight was one of the earliest to connect my general approach to communication and that of the boys. It also convinced me that occupational therapy (sensory integration) and later sport would be a vital component to the boys development.

I learned over time from Sara, that the more I could challenge the boys physically and mentally through sport, the more comfortable they would be in their own skins. Once they learned how to bounce on a trampoline, we moved on to forward rolls, backward rolls, ball pools, structured exercises and so forth. What was also particularly positive, was that the boys were collaborating with their peers, taking turns, lining up, learning from each other at Gym class.

The key, as Sara put is, was to keep pushing the boys. Once a skill was learned it was important that the boys were moved on to the next challenge. Over time the boys and I played gymnastics, tennis, swimming, horse riding and sailing. Sports which they ultimately excelled in. And the occupational therapy or sensory integration therapy that we engaged in with Sara was the precursor to all of this. And to bring us back to where we started today, the physical development of the boys fed through to their learning readiness in a most necessary and effect way.

If you would like to learn more about this, click here or watch below!