Working on Body Awareness and Personal Space: 6 Strategies for the Sensory Child

Does your child get too close to other children, invading their personal space?  For many children with sensory processing challenges they may have difficulty maintaining those socially acceptable personal bubbles.  This can affect our little one’s ability to interact and engage with peers, as well as, to make and maintain friendships with others.  It can be difficult to teach our children how to maintain personal space during play with peers, especially when an underlying sensory processing challenge is the cause of the behavior.

The first step to helping our children understand personal bubbles and maintain them during social interactions is to understand the sensory processing challenges that may be interfering.  Without understanding the underlying sensory processing needs no amount of teaching is going to resolve the behavioral concern.  When a child’s sensory system is overloaded or not getting enough sensory input to maintain sensory regulation, the sensory needs of your child override anything else in terms of social interaction and behavior.  We must first help our children regulate their sensory system in order to prepare their bodies for appropriate social interactions with others.  There are two reasons from a sensory processing perspective to explain why your child may be constantly crossing the invisible line and entering other’s personal space.

The first is that children with sensory processing challenges often have difficulty feeling and sensing where their body is in space.  When sensory dysfunction is present, many times the proprioceptive (deep pressure) sense is affected.  The proprioceptive sense is the one that provides our brain with sensory feedback from our muscles and joints allowing us to know where our body is in space and where our body ends and another person’s body begins.  Children with sensory processing differences in regards to their proprioceptive sense may frequently invade peer’s personal space, frequently touching peers or getting close to their face.  They may also use too much pressure and force when playing with peers.  These children require increased opportunities for deep pressure input throughout their day to provide sensory feedback to their brain to better understand where their body is in space.

The second reason is that children with sensory processing challenges can also have differences in their sensory processing in regards to their tactile system.  Sensory differences with the tactile system can give kids this inner drive to seek out increased opportunities for touch and tactile experiences throughout their day.  These kids have an increased need to touch anything and everything around them, including peers.  These little one’s require increased opportunities for play with different textures throughout their day to regulate their tactile system, as well as, deep pressure (proprioceptive) input to calm their tactile system.

Here are my 6 Sensory Strategies for Improving Body Awareness and Teaching Personal Space:

1. Use a Body Sock: Body socks are great for providing tons of deep pressure and proprioceptive input.  They are a lycra spandex material that is sewn together into a glove that fits over the whole body.  As children move around in the body sock the spandex stretches providing great sensory feedback to the child’s muscles, joints and brain where their body is in space.  Allowing your child frequent opportunities to utilize this body sock will allow them plenty of sensory experiences where their brain and bodies are able to explore how to move in comparison to everything around them.  This type of play can also be very regulating and grounding for children who are constantly on the go or have an overloaded sensory system, as all the deep pressure input is very calming to the body.  My biggest recommendations for parents when using the body sock at home is to have the children up and moving their bodies stretching their arms and legs out in the spandex material.  Simple ideas are: to practice some yoga moves while wearing the body sock, lay down on the floor while wearing it and make snow angels, or just dance around to some simple music.  For the most sensory feedback while wearing the body sock we want the children to move their bodies and experience how each movement feels thoroughly.  Body socks are not meant to snuggle up in and take a nap when it comes to helping with improving your child’s body awareness.
2. Use Heavy Work Tasks: Heavy work tasks are ones that involve a lot of pushing, pulling, lifting type of movements.  These tasks involve the whole body and all this movement with added resistance naturally provides the muscles and joints with deep pressure input.  Just like with the body sock, this deep pressure input from pushing, pulling, and lifting are all great for telling the muscles, joints, and brain where the body is in space.  The best part about a lot of the heavy work activities is that they are ones that typically already occur within your day to day routine, so there is no need to spend extra time or energy trying to add something into your already busy routine or day.  Some examples of heavy work activities for your child include but are not limited to: carrying in bags of groceries from the car, sweeping or mopping the floors, dusting the walls, wiping off tables etc.  When it comes to household chores children love to help and it provides amazing sensory benefits for them too.
3. Use a Weighted Vest or Compression Shirt: Using a weighted vest or compression shirt also provides consistent deep pressure or proprioceptive input into the sensory system.  These types of garments are great for assisting your child with sensing where their body is in space during social activities and engagements.  While the previous activities and strategies help your child’s sensory system learn and adapt, this one really sets out to lessen the sensory processing dysfunction during the given activity.  When a weighted vest or compression shirt is worn it provides tons of deep pressure input into the body essentially giving your child the extra feedback to know where their body is in relation to their peers and objects around them.  This type of sensory input can also be very grounding and calming for an overloaded sensory system.  While this strategy will lessen the sensory processing challenges in the moment, it is not a lasting fix for the underlying sensory processing dysfunction.  My suggestion is to have your child wear the vest or shirt as needed during activities when social interaction and engagement are the biggest priority and take it off when maintaining personal space is not needed as much.
4. Use Tactile Sensory Balls:  Using a tactile sensory ball or squishy sensory ball can also help by providing your child with tactile and deep pressure input into their hands during social interactions and engagements.  Similar to the weighted vest and/or compression shirts, this one is a great strategy to utilize when social engagement and maintaining personal space is a high priority.  It will provide your child with something to keep their hands busy with during the activity, as well as providing them with the needed tactile and deep pressure input they are seeking during these interactions without having to touch their peers.  This is another great one to use during activities, however, this one will not result in lasting changes in their sensory processing skills when the strategy is not in use.  Therefore, it is recommended that these types of strategies be utilized with a balanced sensory integration treatment approach to improve sensory processing abilities overall.
5. Use Sensory Bin Play:  I am a huge fan of sensory bin play for children.  This type of play allows children the freedom to explore different textures by getting their hands in them and digging.  The best part is that this type of play provides tons of tactile input, as well as, deep pressure input when using certain textures and items.  Some of my favorite textures to play in range from dried beans, sand, dried pasta, pom poms, to water.  For more sensory bin filler ideas check out the following links for both Wet and Dry sensory bin ideas.  Providing this type of input during your child’s play each day will have lasting benefits in terms of improving their sensory processing and regulation.
6. Provide frequent Opportunities for Cuddling with your Child: I think one of the biggest things we need to remember as parents is that children need to have unstructured time where their sensory system can take a break from all the stress and expectations that are placed on it.  As a therapist and mother, I think that one of the biggest things we can give our children is time and space where we don’t place all these huge demands on them.  As parents we are our child’s safety zone; a place where it’s okay for them to be unregulated some of the time, a place where they can fall apart and it’s okay.  In terms of helping our little one’s learn and understand where their body is in space is to allow them opportunities to explore how close too close feels and so on.  Provide your child opportunities for cuddling, wrestling, hugging, and close play.  This will do two things for your child: it will allow them opportunities to meet their sensory needs that they are seeking in a safe and acceptable way.  It will also give you physical opportunities to explain what too close means to your child and how it feels in terms of their sensory system, because too close for one person can feel completely different for another person.