Bright From the Start by Jill Stamm

Author:Jill Stamm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.

SENSORY INTEGRATION

Everything your baby comes into contact with delivers sensory information: soft scrunchy blanket, firm smooth rattle, warm pliable breast. Babies and toddlers busily practice full-body touching, touch with fingers, hands, feet, mouths. In fact, there’s a brain-based reason that young babies seem to stick everything right into their mouths. Along the sensory-motor strip in the brain, the mouth- and tongue-processing cells take up lots of space. Relative to one’s thigh or forearm, the mouth and tongue occupy more territory! So babies get lots of primary sensory information by checking things out with their mouths and tongues.

Actively using the hands and mouth is critical in yet another way. Information doesn’t enter the brain as one isolated sense at a time. Sensory data pours in simultaneously through hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, as well as through the nerve endings all over our bodies, not just those in our fingertips. Movement, coordination, body awareness, and balance further add to sensory awareness of our surroundings. The way we organize and respond to this lively influx of information is known as sensory integration.

All of a child’s future skills—tying a shoe, being able to use a pencil easily, swinging on a swing—are complex processes that rely on a strong foundation of the brain’s ability to incorporate sensory input. Here’s why. Every second, two million bits of sensory information enter the central nervous system. The central nervous system, which consists of the brain and spinal cord, is the main processing center for the whole nervous system and therefore controls much of how our body works. In response, the brain:• Alerts: attends to new stimuli and/or important stimuli.

• Selects: filters out essential from nonessential input.

• Organizes: groups information into meaningful perception or patterns

• Protects: withdraws from a situation if a stimulus is too overwhelming.

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