The brain is a plastitic, growing organ, connected to the five base senses, upon all initial knowledge is gained. Sensory integration is vital, in order for the more complicated life skills to develop. Proprioceptive senses (or place in space), Vestibular senses (movement knowledge), and tactile, auditory, visual, and olfactory input, must all integrate successfully as a base of a pyramidal-shaped base, with top point being cognitive development. Through sensory integration, the body-brain connection builds the life-long knowledge it will need to form lasting reasoning, social, emotional, and endurance skills. However, some educators believe conclusive evidence of mind-brain connections must exist in order to institute educational changes for the good of the elementary children they were trained to teach. However, with the IDEA mandates, they must accept new approaches to individualized, effective approaches that incorporate whole-brain education. To the policy-makers who have the power to change the curriculum and approve funding, the case for sensory integration for whole-brain education for all students remains illusive to those who look but cannot see, hear but cannot listen, or have studied, but not engaged a child. These concrete thinkers believe scientific evidence must exist to prove an academic point. Science emphasizes proving something exists. Hypotheses are formed, research completed, and theory proven wrong. Any benefits resulting from research are only anecdotal in nature, and thus are limitless. Children have limitless potential, from the time of conception, onward. Culture limits this potential by its expectations, its economics, and its overall standards. Opportunities limited by society, economics, education, and parental behavior all affect this culture phenomena. All of us are equipped with an ability to use our brain to learn great things. From infancy forward, its limitless plasticity must be capitalized on. Sensory integration techniques, usually incorporated in programs helping developmentally delayed children, are key for all children to optimize their potential. Sensory integration education is essential for creating equal accessibility for all children. Many programs currently available recognize the need for such stimulation. Unfortunately, most are cost- and time- prohibitive, both to families and to school districts. The education about such instruments is not widely disbursed. This funding and benefit disparity needs recognition and correction. All children, educated to their potential, increase population productivity and standard of living within society. This, in turn, decreases crime rates, increases living standards and increases educational standards and expectations. Cooperation among community stake holders, government, and humanity thereby improves. However, that idea is very hard to sell to the current population. It must start parent by parent, child by child. If every mother and father believes in the ability to maximize their child's potential through sensory integration, it is their right and their obligation to do so. Methods of Learning Our vestibular, proprioceptive, and tactile senses are the bases of all learning. Stacked on top of these are the senses of sight, sound, touch, and smell. On top of these senses come all types of learning. Learning to walk, seemingly an easy enough milestone, is based on the milestones of raising one's head, rolling over, building trunk and neck strength, as well as visual perception, and a sense of space and self. Learning to walk uses both sides of the brain in crossing the midline, a skill which requires the development of the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum, located between the left and right brain hemispheres, is a small, flat organ at birth. Integrated sensory stimulation to all the body's senses develops the connections across the brain and within the brain halves. Corpus callosum development includes billions of fibrous connections. These connections continue to grow and strengthen well into the fourth decade of life and beyond. Connections strengthened with repetition replace connections pared off by disuse. Lifelong skills are mastered. Childhood games, such as jump rope, running, red-light/green-light, catch, hopscotch, and tag are games that emphasize small and large muscle use, muscle coordination, and visual and auditory control. Using building blocks, playing with pretend grown-up tools, and caring for baby dolls, form building blocks. These underlying connections form the basis for understanding the more complex directions and coordination needed to play games of baseball, basketball, volleyball, soccer, and tennis. Somersaults, cartwheels, swinging, tumbling, climbing playground equipment or trees, skateboarding, and bicycling, teaches brain-body coordination and balance. Acclimating the body’s place in space in the mind (proprioception) is learned through various positions. Vestibular motion gives input to joints and muscles, strengthening motor balance as well as increasing brain connections required for building intelligence Stimulation of these simple senses does not take any type of formal program. Brain input is the same whether input is from a home or a playground area. Teaching with simple items, a child feels what hard, soft, squishy, and stiff is, can identify textures of plants, trees, wood, vinyl, and glass. Educating through a multi-sensory approach reinforces a child's comprehension. For example, cubes, circles, squares, cylinders, houses, and hot dogs manipulated from Play-Doh transforms play into a tactile learning experience coupled with auditory input as these shapes are labeled. Auditory labeling and identifying items a child can see, hear, taste, and smell enhances the brain’s developing language center. A child naturally will mimic a caregiver’s behavior. A child is dependent upon primary caretakers in his or her world to begin modeling learning behavior and molding learning potential. In the first two years of life, a language base is acquired, and nursery thymes, stories, and singsong repetitions build phonemes, the basic segments and elements of a particular language, are stored within memory. Without such exposure to language, skills to acquire language cannot mature. Listening to symphonic sounds, jazz, harmonic, or nature sounds will also stimulate auditory discrimination within the brain structure, and builds bridges between the two hemispheres. Other Pathways If the corpus callosum is missing, damaged or altered, other potential pathways include the anterior commissure, a much smaller pathway connecting the brains through thousands of white connections (considered the wiring of the brain) existing over the olfactory bulb. This pathway cannot compete with the mighty strength of the billions of connections that form in the corpus callosum. The plasticity of the brain and its endless connections continues to amaze scientists, parents, and doctors alike. I have seen a child, without a corpus callosum, walking, talking and doing the things normally not seen in a child without one. He is my child. I exposed him to every sensory technique I came across, by pure innate instinct. He had another rare diagnosis from birth, unrelated to his brain, but as I was already doing sensory activities with my first-born daughter, I just continued them with my son. When we found out he was missing his corpus callosum entirely, I can only point out all the stimulation I did with him prior to and after he was diagnosed, as to how well he is functioning today. Building Success into the Adult Years Early brain stimulation builds a child's curiosity throughout life. The foundation is laid for education through the full senses. The educational system, exposure to arts, sciences, and novel physical recreational experiences, will determine a child's success in life. Dictated by the amount of, or lack of, early childhood sensory stimulation may determine the life choices available to him, how self-confident or how challenged he feels, and how successful an adult that child becomes. Infant and early education matters! Infants become pre-schoolers, grow into grade-schoolers, and mature into teenagers. Facing the pressures of early adulthood, a fully engaged, reasoning brain, (built on sensory pathways established at a young age by caring, engaging adults), is a resourceful tool to have. Decisions made during these critical years speak to the future success of these children. The brain’s wiring will convince children to choose to pursue higher education or career success, or a path towards self-destruction. I urge all parents to engage children's brain power early. It is never too late, and never too complex. Start walking in the woods, listening to different types of music, having family game nights, or using word-find books. As a parent or grandparent, your active brain still seeks sensory input. As a person ages, the physical pursuits of golf, tennis, racquetball, or running, all recall muscle and brain memory formed in childhood and early adulthood. Taking up a new sport, hobby, or craft all require either re-building or strengthening brain connections that may have become lax or dormant. As the old axiom goes, “It's like riding a bicycle, you never forget.” Active seniors are the driving force behind today's new fitness craze. Active bodies fuel active minds. Choose brainpower for yourself and your children, no matter what your age, life situation, or circumstance. If you cannot do it for yourself, do it for your children. Learn more from one of the best resources on sensory integration and its effects on the developing brain: |
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| Building the Brain Through Sensory Integration |
| Jennifer Cummins, Building the Brain Through Sensory Integration |