The 7 senses are sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, balance (vestibular) and body awareness (proprioception). In autistic people, the brain sometimes processes sensory information differently to those without autism. Everybody is different and therefore individuals will experience things differently and respond in different ways.
Sometimes these different sensory perceptions can cause discomfort, distress, anxiety, fear or confusion and result in ‘challenging’ behaviour as the individual tries to block out what is causing the problem.
In some cases one or more of the senses can’t filter out background experiences or interpret information from the environment at a level which is comfortable (hypersensitive). At other times, the registering of information may be poor (hyposensitive) – the brain doesn’t get enough information (hyposensitive).
When the input is ‘too much’, you may find that autistic individuals rock, flap, spin or hit their ears as a way of trying to block out the overload that they can’t tolerate and to help them to calm down or relieve the discomfort. Or they may hide, or seek a quiet place to reduce the amount of sensory stimuli (sensory avoiding). In cases where the senses do not register information effectively (hyposensitive), your child may seek out sensations such as noises, touching or movement as a way to feel ‘just right’ and get more sensory information to their brain. Sensory seeking and sensory avoiding behaviours can be seen in the same child in different situations.
Things to look out for
Top tips relating to sensory differences
- Spend some time monitoring your child’s eating. Keep a food diary to see how many different foods your child is eating. You may find that they are in fact eating a wider variety of foods than you thought.
- Be a ‘detective’ and try and guess why they are eating in a certain way. If they can talk, ask them why they can’t eat or if they can write, ask them to try and write it down, or draw what’s wrong.
- A place mat which is ‘their area’ to eat can help.
- If your child finds eating with others difficult, make sure they are not sitting directly opposite another person.
- A place mat which is ‘their area’ to eat can help.
- If eating at school is difficult, ask what the environment is like at school or even visit the school during a meal time.
- Try and make meal times predictable. Serve 3 meals and plan snacks and try and establish a routine.
- Visual prompts, timetables, choice boards or choice books (pictures or words) can be helpful. Using these strategies, try giving your child a choice between two less preferred foods so they still have some control for example, ‘carrots or peas?’
- Try writing a social story. These can be used to help your child try new foods or to explain why eating a varied diet is important.
- Expose your selective eater to food at every opportunity, get them to handle food, play with food, and help in the kitchen, so food and eating become more relaxed and fun. Try and make eating and being around food a pleasure, not a chore.
- If your child has an intense interest, use it as a motivator, for example, make the food into a train, line up peas, maybe their favourite character could come to ‘tea’.
- Remember, you need to persevere. You often have to expose your child to a new food a lot (15 times or more) before they accept it as new food and will try it or eat it.
- If your child has PICA (regularly eating non-food items) talk to a health professional, as there is sometimes a medical reason.
