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The Torture of Touch
Raising a Child With Sensory Integration Dysfunction By Laurie Dove
Explaining DSIAccording to the Sensory Integration Resource Center, based in Littleton, Colo., DSI occurs when a child's brain cannot correctly process everyday sensations.
For example, a child with DSI who is crossing a street and hears the blare of an oncoming car horn may freeze and be unable to move out of harm's way because his brain cannot process what to do next.
It is this lack of an appropriate response that is the real culprit in a DSI child's behavior, causing instead extreme and inappropriate reactions to particular situations.
For Lofgren's daughter, it meant hugging others to the point of pain, an extreme response to affection.
"She would crash into people to say hello," Lofgren says. "She wouldn't stop running until she smacked into people. She would hug so hard it would hurt, or she would knock you over if you were kneeling."
Lofgren's daughter also craved movement. She sat upside down on chairs, frequently jumped off of things and loved to constantly run around outside.
Some children, like Lofgren's daughter, crave sensation. As a result, they seek out more intense sensory experiences, according to the Sensory Integration Resource Center. They can be hyperactive, seeking more movement input, sometimes by touching others too often or too hard. They also can be seen engaging in unsafe behaviors, such as climbing too high or enjoying sounds that are too loud, such as a television or radio volume.
Other parents, like Michelle Smith of Chico, Calif., found their children reacting to touch almost as if it were torture. By the time Smith's son, Max, was 3 months old, she knew he didn't like to be touched. She also noticed that he always kept his hands as fists.
"I woul always try to uncurl his fingers to caress his hand," Smith says. "And he always pulled it away as if it hurt."
