It is Sensory Awareness Month!
Sand and Grass: Friends or Foes?
Sand: I love walking barefoot on the beach…the feeling of sand between my toes, embracing my feet with each step, or resisting movement as a result of the wave that just packed it down. Warm dry sand, cold wet sand…I love it. My son with sensory challenges? Not so much. He feels every grain. The very shift in sand that I love creates an unstable platform for his feet. The shift from soft dry sand to packed wet sand does not make for an interesting walk…it makes for an unpredictable walk.
Grass: When I was growing up, my grandfather had the perfect lawn…golf course lush, creating a cushiony carpet under my feet. I loved running on it with bare feet. These days, I don’t enjoy walking on grass in bare feet – perhaps this is part of my sensory “stuff”. It feels weird and itchy on my feet…so it is no real surprise that Riley does not like to walk in the grass with bare feet. The individual blades of grass creating unpredictable feelings on his feet, the potential for squishy dirt or mud hiding underneath…quite simply, there are just all kinds of things out of his control.
In many ways, sensory processing challenges can be better understood by looking at a typical situation with an alternative perspective. A beach is not an expanse of land covered with sand, it is an environment made up of a zillion individual grains of sand with the occasional rock, shell, stick and trash mixed in. A backyard is not just a lawn; it is a collection of blades of grass with a few weeds thrown in on a dirt canvas.
Here is your Sensory challenge of the day: take a look around your world and choose a place or situation that you typically take at face value. Now attempt to assess this place or situation from a different perspective using a more critical sensory approach…
Good luck!
Sand and Grass: Friends or Foes?
Sand: I love walking barefoot on the beach…the feeling of sand between my toes, embracing my feet with each step, or resisting movement as a result of the wave that just packed it down. Warm dry sand, cold wet sand…I love it. My son with sensory challenges? Not so much. He feels every grain. The very shift in sand that I love creates an unstable platform for his feet. The shift from soft dry sand to packed wet sand does not make for an interesting walk…it makes for an unpredictable walk.
Grass: When I was growing up, my grandfather had the perfect lawn…golf course lush, creating a cushiony carpet under my feet. I loved running on it with bare feet. These days, I don’t enjoy walking on grass in bare feet – perhaps this is part of my sensory “stuff”. It feels weird and itchy on my feet…so it is no real surprise that Riley does not like to walk in the grass with bare feet. The individual blades of grass creating unpredictable feelings on his feet, the potential for squishy dirt or mud hiding underneath…quite simply, there are just all kinds of things out of his control.
In many ways, sensory processing challenges can be better understood by looking at a typical situation with an alternative perspective. A beach is not an expanse of land covered with sand, it is an environment made up of a zillion individual grains of sand with the occasional rock, shell, stick and trash mixed in. A backyard is not just a lawn; it is a collection of blades of grass with a few weeds thrown in on a dirt canvas.
Here is your Sensory challenge of the day: take a look around your world and choose a place or situation that you typically take at face value. Now attempt to assess this place or situation from a different perspective using a more critical sensory approach…
Good luck!
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