Sensory integration

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I went to an excellent all day seminar last week put on by the author of The Out-of-Sync Child. It gave me many great ideas.

My son is turned 1 yesterday! He obviously doesn't have the hunger yet, but I am looking for any possible explanation or way to mitigate the hunger. Of course, the obvious answer is that it is a biochemical switch and you just can't do anything about it. I acknowledge that, but it is not a particularly useful explanation to me, so I always look for other explanations or other possible confounding issues.

One possibility is the area of sensory integration. It has been demonstrated that our children have diminished peripheral nerves. So, it is likely that their sense of touch is not as developed. They tend to be low tone and so they don't move as much, particularly as infants. So, what if they crave sensory input? They have trouble getting it through touch and motion, but they can easily achieve it through taste. They tend to lack the ability to integrate their senses and consequently are not as good at self-regulating. When you combine this with the poor sensation of fullness, you can get overeating/hyperphagia.

I think that the most interesting thing about this hypothesis is that the treatment is something that is good for any kid anyway. Give them lots of multisensorial stimulus. Don't let them sit and watch tv. Make them move in different ways (even if on a hammock). Give them different things to smell and different things to touch. Take them to petting zoos and roll with them in the grass and show them how to tell the difference between the smell of the spring flowers.

Great Resource

Read more about sensory integration here: Healing Thresholds