Why Your Children Need Sensory Integration Toys

What is Sensory Integration?

Sensory play has an important role in development. Sensory Integration training focuses on individual’s senses such as sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. These 5 senses are working all the time to help us to connect, interpret and unify information we get in the environment.

Sensory integration organizes and integrates different sensations conducted within the neurons pathway in the brain. Our central nervous system works together so we can integrate fully into the surroundings. This is how we learn how to perceive things through our senses. How we walk, climb, hold things, recognize what is painful or not come from sensory integration.

Parents should give sensory training for children. It has an important role in a child’s health and development. Through it, your child builds cognitive skills and learns about their world.

Sensory training comes with plenty of benefits that last a lifetime. It covers more than the 5 senses. The training provides full-body movement with stimuli such as vestibular (gravity and movement) and proprioception (muscles and sensation).

Reasons Why Children Have Poor Motor Skills/ Sensory Processing

Clumsiness, lack of awareness to the environment, poor motor skills may not be caused by genetics but nurturing. Take notes on how children can have poor motor skills that is caused by the environment and nurturing factors:

1. Over-protective parents, spoiling the child can cause lack on sensory ability
2. Lack of physical activities since birth such as exercise, sports and even playing outdoors.
3. Grow up in confined and small spaces.
4. Used baby walkers too early. It can cause insufficient stimulation on children.
5. Parents are too strict and demanding, may cause emotional issues in children to express themselves.
6. Delay in correcting children’s lack of confidence, body postures and their bad habits.

3 Types of Sensory Integration Training

Parents must understand that it takes more than education, high grades in school and good memory for a child to explore their higher potential. These 3 types of sensory Integration training involves the interrelationship between the mind, brain and body, not just a physical functional training. Children gain a sense of proficiency in the training process, it enhances their self-confidence and self-control ability. 

1. Tactile Training:
   Strengthen the nerves, muscles and joints. Enhances gross motor skills and body efficiency in performing day to day activities.
2. Vestibular (Balance) Training:
   Adjust the vestibular information in the brain and balance the automatic response function of the nervous system. It also trains better audiovisual ability.
3. Proprioceptive Training:
   It provides us with a sense of body awareness and detects/controls force and pressure. It helps build fine motor skills and help children to regulate their emotional and behavioural responses to sensory stimulation.

When we talk about the importance of play and in this case, educational toys or sensory training tools, we have to start early. Sensory toys are beneficial to all ages and abilities and not limited in use. They can be really great to give a child a healthy, productive, and educational way to organize and process the world around them. These are some of our favorite sensory toys for kids, as recommended by an occupational therapist at ITSSB.  

https://itssb.com/product-category/alat-integrasi-sensori/
https://itssb.com/product-category/manipulative-games/
https://itssb.com/product-category/educational-toy-puzzle/