How to Tame Your Sensory Seeker

In this video, NAPA paediatric occupational therapist Erin shares some tools that she uses when helping her sensory seeking friends. If you prefer text, we have transcribed the video for you below. For more information on sensory seeking, feel free to browse through these related blog posts. We hope you find these tips helpful!

We’re going to be talking about our sensory seekers 

So, those are our friends that are constantly moving their bodies. They might be trying to touch everything in their environment or running into or bumping into objects or people in their environment. We’ll talk about a couple things that we can do to kind of help organize them throughout their day.

There are some great tools that you can use.

That might include weighted tools such as:

• pressure vest or weighted vest
• ankle weights
• weighted blankets
• and weighted stuffed animals

These tools can be placed on a child’s lap during fine motor and feeding tasks.

Some activities that are really organizing are:

• Deep pressure or heavy work tasks – including pushing or pulling weighted objects, such as laundry baskets and shopping carts.
• Providing deep pressure by rolling a therapy ball along their back

Vestibular input

In addition, the use of vestibular input. So, linear vestibular input is going to be calming. Placing a child on a swing and swinging them in a back-and-forth linear motion. Avoiding rotary input as that tends to be alerting and can be disorganizing.

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