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When my son was two years old, he slipped and hit his lip on the bathtub. I initially thought he was fine, as he didn’t cry very much, and there wasn’t a lot of blood. However, in the next few days, as his lip started swelling up and he developed two black eyes, I realized he was hurt much more seriously than I initially thought.
As it turned out, this high pain tolerance, combined with his hyperactivity, were some of the early signs that my son is hyposensitive. The way we process sensory information is really foundational to how we understand the world, says Stephanie Okada, an occupational therapist with Total Spectrum Counseling, who specializes in treating people with sensory differences…..Story continues….
By: Rachel Fairbank
Source: ‘Hyposensitivity’ Can Look a Lot Like Misbehavior | Lifehacker
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Critics by Olga Bogdashina
Sometimes the senses of autistic children are in ‘hypo’, so that they do not really see, hear or feel anything. To stimulate their senses they might wave their hands around or rock forth and back or make strange noises. Children with hypovision may experience trouble figuring out where objects are, as they see just outlines, then they may walk around objects running their hand around the edges so they can recognise what it is.
These individuals are attracted to lights, they may stare at the sun or a bright light bulb. They are fascinated with reflections and bright coloured objects. Having entered an unfamiliar room they have to walk around it touching everything before they settle down. Often they sit for hours moving fingers or objects in front of the eyes.
Children with hypohearing may ‘seek sounds’ (leaning their ear against electric equipment or enjoying crowds, sirens and so on). They like kitchens and bathrooms – the ‘noisiest’ places in the house. They often create sounds themselves to stimulate their hearing – banging doors, tapping things, tearing or crumpling paper in the hand, making loud rhythmic sounds.
Individuals with hypotaste/hyposmell chew and smell everything they can get (e.g. grass, play dough). They mouth and licks objects, play with faeces, eat mixed food (for instance, sweet and sour) and regurgitate. Those with hypotactility seem not to feel pain or temperature. They may not notice a wound caused by a sharp object or they seem unaware of a broken bone.
They are prone to self-injuries and may bite their hand or bang their head against the wall, just to feel they are alive. They like pressure, tight clothes, often crawl under heavy objects. They hug tightly and enjoy rough and tumble play. Children with vestibular hyposensitivity enjoy and seek all sorts of movement and can spin or swing for a long time without being dizzy or nauseated.
People with vestibular hyposensitivity often rock forth and back or move in circles while rocking their body. Those with proprioceptive hyposensitivity have difficulty knowing where their bodies are in space and are often unaware of their own body sensations, for example, they do not feel hunger. Children with hypoproprioceptive system appear floppy, often lean against people, furniture and walls.
They bump into objects and people, stumble frequently and have tendency to fall. They have a weak grasp and drop things. Hyposensitivity is especially common for autistic people and is more often seen in children than adults and adolescents due to masking. Those experiencing this have a harder time stimulating their senses than normally.
They may not feel pain as easily as others, may be drawn to loud noises, be attracted to bright lights and colours, among other things. Hyposensitivity can lead to an inactivated brain. This can give concentration problems, feeling drained or feckless, depression, procrastination and also hypersensitivities. Autistic children are often engaged in stereotyped activities. Very often these self-stimulatory behaviours – such as Rocking, Spinning, Flapping their hands, Tapping things & Watching things spin.
(which are often defined by non-autistic people as ‘bizarre/abnormal behaviours’), – can be viewed as involuntary strategies the child has acquired to cope with ‘unwelcome (and often painful) stimulation’ (in the case of hypersensitivity) or to arouse the nervous system and get sensory stimulation from the outside (in the case of hyposensitivity), and sometimes to provide themselves with internal pleasure.
That is why, no matter how irritating and meaningless these behaviours may seem to us, it is unwise to stop them without learning the function they serve and introducing experiences with the same function. Each of the senses should be assessed, and depending on the sensitivity.
We can desensitize the child’s capability to tolerate the stimuli and/or to provide the aids to help him/her cope with ‘offensive’ stimuli (for example, tinted glasses, earplugs). Desensitization is aimed to increase sensory tolerance very gradually through pleasurable activities.
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