It is also very important to pay attention to the child's natural preferences and harness his enthusiasm. Does he enjoy vigorous movement or sitting still? Does he enjoy one toy versus another? If he prefers his toys over a person, you can engage him with these toys - for example, place the toy on your head or hide it and create a problem for the child to solve. By doing that, he is drawn into interaction. The caregiver and the toy become one and the same, Once the child is motivated and you are in rhythm together, the key is to extend your interaction. Add new twists to the game.
It is important not to get caught up in repetitive actions (i.e., opening and closing a door or putting a toy car in and out of a garage). Try to move to more creative and innovative actions to sustain the child's attention and focus.
Another key to helping a child with sensory processing difficulties is to find the right level of sensation. If the child is overresponsive, you have to be soothing. If the child is underresponsive, you have to energize up in an animated and interesting way. This can be done for each of the child's senses. For example, for a child who is overresponsive to sound, use soothing vocalizations. If a child is underresponsive to sound, use highly energized vocalizations. College With ADD
Find out whether he responds better to high- or low-pitched sounds. For a child who is easily overloaded by visual complexity, keep the visual challenge simple. For a child who requires visual complexity, a lot of colors and patterns is preferable. A child who prefers robust movement in space may enjoy roughhousing or other gymnastics. A child who is initially more stationary has to be approached more gradually and enticed into greater movement.
For the child who has trouble with auditory processing, start with simple vocalizations or words, building up to more complicated ones, including, as the child gets older, games that the child can win by following gradually more complex directions.
In all these activities, the child is learning to attend, interact, and use his senses more adaptively; at the same time. As you tune in to the child's rhythms, find what pleases him, join those pleasurable activities, extend circles of communication, and harness all the sensory processing and motor planning abilities of the child simultaneously, you are strengthening his underlying processing capacities as well as helping that child learn to focus and attend.
As part of this comprehensive approach, many children require specific therapeutic or educational therapies, For example, some children may require occupational or speech therapy. Ideally, such programs are begun during the toddler years during the stage at which the child is just learning how to sustain attention and engage in shared social problem solving. By using the techniques of occupational and speech therapies, the child can be helped to become a dynamic attender and a problem solver. Even for older children, such programs can be helpful.
Modulating Hyperactivity
Not infrequently, children with attentional problems also have difficulty controlling their activity level. Thus, the most common label is ADHD rather than ADD. They can become constantly active, intruding into other people's space, or seemingly passive, lost in their own worlds. These patterns are often already in evidence in the infant and toddler. An adult interacting with a small child, however, can modulate the activity. At first the adult can simply join the activity; but then gradually slow it down. With the slightly older child, "modulation games" can be played, such as a copycat game in which each side quickly instructs the other to go fast, slow, or superslow, or play a drum hard, soft, or supersoft. The child who is always shouting and drowning out others with his voice can be helped to modulate his voice by imitating soft sounds and whisper sounds, as well as loud ones.
A parent or other interactive partner may have more influence on a child's level of activity than we are accustomed to assuming. A parent's pattern of response can increase the frequency and intensity of the child's behavior. It can influence the rigidity or emotional sensitivity of the behavior. The more variable or unpredictable a pattern of response (or reinforcement), the less likely it is to help the child adjust or control her behavior. On the other hand, a completely predictable set response is not helpful, either, for it does not help a child become sensitive to changing environments or to the needs of others. College With ADD
Consider the following examples. A mother is very preoccupied and responds to each of the child's gestures or appeals, but does so in a somewhat unpredictable manner (this is called a random ratio pattern of response or reinforcement). Such a pattern leads to very high activity levels because the more the child does, the more responses (reinforcements) he gets. In contrast, if a parent's response to the child is based on how much time has passed (e.g., a self-absorbed caregiver runes into the child only periodically), this will lead to less and less activity. Such a pattern where the caregiver responds one time after five seconds and the next time after eight seconds, and so on dampens the child's interest in initiating communication and play.
The activity can get so low that the child looks more and more self-absorbed. These patterns of response can exert a potent influence on behavior. The influence can be subtle, and it may appear that only the child's innate biology is controlling his behavior. Often, however, both biological and experientially based factors are working together.
As you can see, problems with attention can have a number of different developmental pathway,. Each of them combines the child's unique "processing" profiles with different types of child-caregiver interaction patterns. In a comprehensive approach, we work on each underlying difficulty (processing, motor planning, and so forth) to build a foundation for engagement and attention. To learn more, you can check out College With ADD.
