Sensory processing is how your child uses their eight senses — sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, balance, body awareness, and internal signals — to understand what is happening both around them and within them.
In other words, when your child gathers sensory information from outside or inside their body, their brain instantaneously interprets each detail to help your child decide how to navigate daily experiences.
Exploring Your Child’s Sensory Systems
To understand how important sensory processing is for your child, here is how each sensory system plays a role in your child’s day-to-day life:
- Sight (visual): Seeing something or someone and figuring out the best action.
- Sound (auditory): Hearing sounds and determining how to respond to them.
- Touch (tactile): Touching surfaces or substances and deciding how to interact with them.
- Smell (olfactory): Smelling aromas and choosing whether to approach or avoid them.
- Taste (gustatory): Tasting flavors and deciding if they are pleasant or unpleasant.
- Balance (vestibular): Sensing movements and body positioning and adjusting posture to keep steady.
- Body Awareness (proprioception): Noticing where the body is in space and coordinating movements accordingly.
- Internal Signals (interoception): Detecting internal cues like hunger, thirst, or body temperature and taking action to meet those needs.
Sometimes, however, a child may need to use extra energy to understand and respond to sensory information. These experiences are known as sensory processing challenges.
Common Types and Signs of Sensory Processing Challenges
Sensory processing challenges, also called a sensory processing disorder, happen when a child experiences sights, sounds, textures, and other sensations in ways that lead to heightened or reduced reactions. This can shape how a child explores and responds to both the world around them and their inner feelings.
Here are different types of sensory processing challenges, along with common signs of each:
- Hypersensitivity: This is when a child is more aware of sensations and responds strongly to them. Common signs include avoiding bright lights, loud sounds, busy environments, or certain food textures.
- Hyposensitivity: This is when a child is less aware of sensations and responds more gradually. Common signs include having a high tolerance for sounds, lights, pain, or adrenaline-inducing activities.
- Sensory Craving: This is when a child actively searches for different sensations to experience. Common signs include seeking tight hugs, enjoying loud music, fearlessly using tall swing sets, or touching any objects or people around them.
- Sensory Discrimination Disorder: This is when a child struggles to notice differences in sensory information from their surroundings or body. Common signs include mixing up similar-sounding words (like saying they heard “dog” instead of “fog”), using too much or too little force for actions (shutting a door loudly or not pressing a button hard enough), or confusing similar noises (thinking a church bell is a car alarm).
- Postural Disorder: This is when a child faces challenges in staying balanced while holding resting postures or moving around. Common signs include slouching while sitting, tripping while walking, or leaning on surfaces for support.
- Childhood Dyspraxia: This is when a child encounters difficulties when planning and coordinating small and large movements (fine and gross motor skills). Common signs include struggling to tie shoes, zip jackets, crawl, walk up and down stairs, or write.
Ways Pediatric Occupational Therapy Can Treat Sensory Processing Challenges
Pediatric occupational therapy helps children learn and improve essential skills needed to navigate and enjoy everyday life. When working with a pediatric occupational therapist, a child can strengthen how they play, make coordinated movements, interact with others, study and learn, and manage self-care routines — building self-trust and independence for daily living.
To empower children with sensory processing challenges, pediatric occupational therapists teach each child techniques and strategies so they can confidently and comfortably experience the world around them.
For guided clinical sessions and assigned homework, a pediatric occupational therapist may use some of the following evidence-informed, play-based methods for treating sensory processing challenges in a child:
- Sensory Integration Therapy: Helps children interpret and respond to sights, sounds, touch, smells, tastes, movement, body position in space, and internal sensations.
- Proprioceptive (Sensing One’s Position and Movements) and Vestibular Activities: Improve body awareness, posture, balance, and movements.
- Motor Planning and Coordination Activities: Teach children how to plan step-by-step actions for tasks like dressing, writing, or playing — and how to carry them out successfully.
- Deep Pressure Therapy: Uses gentle, steady pressure, like hugs or weighted blankets, to help children feel calm and safe.
- Sensory Diet: Provides children personalized plans of daily sensory activities to help them strengthen their ability to focus, stay calm, and feel comfortable.
How Pediatric Occupational Therapy Improves Sensory Processing
While collaborating with a pediatric occupational therapist, your child may grow toward empowering achievements, such as:
- Learning how to control and regulate strong reactions to sounds, textures, and more
- Refining how they interpret and respond to sensory information
- Improving how they use their bodies to navigate activities and stay balanced
- Having better body and spatial awareness
- Discovering how to pay attention and feel secure anytime during the day
Schedule a Free Screening with Tender Ones
If any of these sensory processing challenges sound familiar, now is the perfect time to reach out to Tender Ones Therapy Services (TOTS) for a free developmental screening. Our screenings take just 15 to 30 minutes, are conducted in-clinic or online and are completely FREE. After the screening, you’ll receive valuable feedback about your child’s development and next steps.
To book your free screening appointment, call TOTS at (700) 904-6009 or reach out online.