Children with sensory processing difficulties often have issues with their arousal level, which in sensory terms means their continually fluctuating state of awareness and alertness when completing daily demanding tasks with a changing environment. In other words, the brain’s ability and willingness to take in information, process it and react accordingly. Sometimes it’s difficult to determine as a caregiver if a child is acting a certain way because they are having difficulties with regulating their arousal level. There is a different way that these children process sensory input causing them to over-respond to some things and under respond to other input.
What is Sensory Arousal Level in Children?
Arousal refers to a person’s state of alertness or awareness. As the body processes sensory input from the environment such as sounds, movement, or smells, the brain takes it in, which causes the person to respond to that input. Some people may over respond or under respond to this input or not register the input at all. When a person is in a high state of arousal, they may over respond or over react to that input that most people’s nervous systems would typically be able to cope with. However, when a person is in a low state of arousal, they may under respond to input such as spinning without ever getting dizzy or not responding to pain. Sometimes children and adults have difficulty regulating their arousal level because their sensory systems do not register input or over register the input.
What Determines My Child’s Sensory Arousal Level?
Everyone has nerves and receptors throughout their body and there are some that process senses such as touch, smell, and sound. When a person is in a low state of arousal, it is usually due to their vestibular system which processes movement sense. However, children with low registration or low responsivity often need A LOT of movement in order to activate or change their state of arousal. That being said, you can help them as a caregiver by providing them with the input they need and teaching them how to regulate their body and emotions.
Arousal & Under Responsivity Analogy
Think of it in terms of a grocery store check out. The checkout person has to make sure every item passes through the scanner, and goes into the bag in the correct order otherwise all the groceries would get squished. It’s an efficient process if all goes as planned. If the checkout belt speeds up, the grocery items start coming to the checkout person too quickly and they become bombarded by too many groceries with some slipping through potentially, not getting scanned or being placed in the wrong bagging order. There may be a jam in the bagging area or pile up causing short-term chaos. Some check out people may be able to hand this while others may not.
Think of the checkout person as the brain processing and the groceries as the sensory input coming in from the environment. If a child or adult has a “checkout belt” that frequently speeds up sending the information to the brain too quickly to process efficiently, the system becomes overwhelmed and the person will over-respond to input. On the other hand, think of the groceries coming through the checkout too slow, the checkout person may become bored waiting for the next grocery item and it takes a longer time for the grocery bags to fill up. This is representative of a person with low arousal and under responsivity. They may take longer than others to respond to input in their environment or not register that there is input coming in.
What is a Sensory Threshold?
This has to do with something called a threshold. You can consider this a “breaking point”. Have you ever been in a new environment and someone said to you, “Eck, what is that smell?” or “I can’t concentrate with that tapping” however, you didn’t hear or smell anything until you became aware. Everyone has a threshold or level of sensory input that they register and react to. For me, when there are sounds in my environment, I often don’t hear them until someone calls my attention to it. This means that I often have a high threshold of sound input that can occur before I register it. When children are under responsive to sensory input such as sounds or movement, it takes much more of that input for their brain to recognize that it’s occurring.
What is Self-Regulation?
Self-regulation is a person’s ability to change or sustain their current level of arousal to meet the needs of the environment or situation. This is a critical skill to have as a child and adult due to the environment continually changing and having to adjust requiring the individual to control their emotions and behaviors and not succumb to impulses. A person with good self-regulation is able to focus their attention, manage thoughts, and control emotions and feelings. For children, this is a skills that can be difficult to learn as they are often controlled by their impulses. However, it is our job to teach them how to exercise self-regulation by teaching them strategies to do so.
How Do I Know If My Child Has a Low Arousal Level or Under Responsivity?
Children who have low arousal or are under responsive to input the environment often don’t respond to stimuli in their environment that other people may have a difficult time processing such as spinning without becoming dizzy, falling frequently and not responding to pain. They may also appear to be quiet, passive, withdrawn, or difficult to engage. This may also lead to poor body awareness or clumsiness. Children who are under responsive also may not perceive pain if they get hurt and fall or cannot distinguish hot/cold temperatures easily.
Another reason for low arousal may occur due to sensory defensiveness. The child may feel bombarded by all the noise, smells, bright lights, and movement around them, especially in a place like school. I have know children with low arousal who will appear to shut down when this occurs versus other children who might run and hide or yell and cover their ears.
Movement and intensity are what can help children with under responsivity and low arousal regulate their alertness level. This can be provided to them in a variety of ways, through each one of the senses.
Movement Activities:
- Spin in an office chair or sit and spin
- Somersaults
- Playing on or sitting on a therapy ball
- Swinging
Oral Intensity & Input
Foods to Increase Input:
- Sour foods: Warheads, sour straws, starbursts, and pop rocks
- Crunchy foods: carrots, chips, apples, pretzels, and popcorn
- Frozen foods: frozen peas, fruit or popsicles
- Bubbly drinks: soda, seltzer
Oral Motor Tools:
- Bubbles
- Whistles/kazoos
- Balloons
- Straws
- Breathing strategies (LINK)
Touch Activities:
- Stress ball/fidgets
- Orbees
- Paint/shaving cream
- Rough textures such as sandpaper
- Touching different foods such as celery, pudding, jello
- Play in the sand
Smell Strategy:
- Strong smells such as peppermint
Sound & Rhythm Strategy:
- High energy songs with energetic, rhythm
- Movement songs such as “If you’re happy and you know it”
- Using a metronome with a fast rhythm
How to I Make Sure My Child Does Not Become Overstimulated?
Even if your child is usually under responsive to movement input, they can over respond to it. Think about it for a minute. You spin your child 20x in a chair and they report that they are not dizzy, you spin them the other way and they continue to say the same. However, you see them becoming paler, their eyes are darting around, or there are signs that the movement is becoming too much for them. You think, oh no, now what do I do? That was too much for them. The answer that all occupational therapists love to tell you is do HEAVY WORK. This will counteract the stimulation of the input on the body. For heavy work ideas to complete with your child, read my article about overstimulated children.
What If My Child Seeks Out Movement Input?
Does your child seek out movement every chance they get through spinning, crashing, turning upside down, rocking themselves, or swinging. These children are said to have “high arousal” or be “sensory seekers.” Often, movement activities helps activate a child’s alertness or arousal level. For children with high arousal, they often seek movement constantly because their bodies needs a lot of input than others in order to feel comfortable and regulated. Sometimes this may appear to be unsafe such as climbing high places, spinning until they fall to the ground, and crashing from the couch.
If you become concerned that your child is under-responsive or over-responsive to sensory input, please consult your child’s pediatrician to receive an occupational therapy referral. Please email me with questions or comment below to stay in touch with Sarah at the Therapy Sandbox.
Best,
Sarah