Sensory Therapy, DIY Style
September 23, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
An article in today’s Morning News of northwest Arkansas describes a multi-sensory room for adults with “severe intellectual disabilities.” The room is equipped with a “clear plastic, 5-foot-tall column of illuminated bubbles, an aroma generator and a projector that throws a variety of soothing images on the wall,” along with a giant vibrating pillow, a “vibro-acoustic mattress.” Specialty stuff indeed—-though the article begins by noting that some of these devices borrow a page from the likes of aromatherapy devices, recordings of rainforest sounds, beanbag chairs, and other 1980s trends, and got me thinking about how Charlie tends to address many sensory needs with the stuff around us: Polar fleece blankets and hooded jackets of course, but also the cushions and the couch frame (he gives himself a deep pressure squeeze by sliding in among them), an office chair with wheels, squishy pillows found for cheap at Walgreens, liquid soap and shaving cream.
Sensory delights are out there, just lurking and waiting to be found.
we do brushing, squeezing and joint compression for Alec but he is also a lover of fleece and silkies (their blankets came with a sample swatch and he carried it around and it lived under his pillow for a while) and while he has always loved water he has just discovered the joy of being totally submerged in a swimming pool, we just finished week one of swimming lessons
Kristina:
I live near you and would really like to talk with you privately. Could I possibly have your email to have private discussions? Many thanks and i promise I am not a crazy nor will I bother you.
Dang. And my kids just settle for flipping upside-down on the couch and kicking the wall. I coulda paid SO. MUCH. MORE.
we made the master bedroom into a playroom for L and K and it is total sensory for them. my old feather boa, from my college days is one of their favs. also playdough, and floam, which L hates, but K and I love it!!!
@Kate, you can email me at
autismvox [at] gmail [dot] come
hope things are ok——
A parent would love to hear from other parents who have used brushing. So would I. Please see my top post today (another one will top it tomorrow).
I think choosing the sensory input does not need to be done by a therapist.
C just loves multi-sensory rooms.
I’ve just started taking all of my kids to an amazing sensory playground in our city- it’s really incredible (I looked for pictures online but couldn’t find any). It has a big central are with padded benches circling a stand up glow in the dark fish tube, and things all over the ceiling so the kids can lie on the benches with their hands on the “fish” tube to feel the vibrations of the bubbles, and just bliss out. Another room is just full of mats- literally. All walls and the floor are covered with mats of different sizes and thicknesses- you can move them all around so that the kids can arrange them however they want and get about a good 10 foot jump down (safely) if they choose to. Another room is for gross motor, and they have the funkiest play stuff in there that I’ve ever seen- skateboard type things where you can lie on your stomach, attach bungie cords around the padded pillars, and just fly! In addition to the trampolines, jumping stuff, a rope climbing wall etc. But the coolest thing is the black light room- everything in it glows in the dark- even the rocking soft couches (either in a U shape so you can get the front-back rocking, or one that looks like half a pipe- you can lie down full length in it and rock side to side). Those also have big curtains of fibre optic lights above them so that you can pull the entire curtain of lights over you while you’re in the chair (they’re suprisingly heavy). That’s also the “craft” room- blackboard painted walls in one area with neon writing implements/paint etc., glow in the dark sand with dinosaurs buried in it, piles and piles of squishy toys. There’s a .pdf of their brochure at (http://www.hopewellchildrenshomes.ca/pdf/Playsense-info-2008.pdf) , which gives a better description- it’s way too expensive for a family to do, but wow, it’s a very good way for a “disability” group to spend its money.
But we’ve found in the past that it’s actually pretty cheap (and easy) to set up even a basic Snoezelen type room in a school or at home…most of the stuff you can get from the dollar store. At one of my daughter’s last classrooms we helped her teacher build one from scratch- she did get an old high jumping mat donated to her (one of the big huge squishy mats), we got a bunch of donations from a fabric store (fabric of all colours and textures as well as netting for the ceiling), and then went to the dollar store and found almost everything else. The upper part of the room was all clear, white and sparkly- and was mainly made up of dollar store Christmas decorations (stars etc hanging from the netting with clear mini Christmas lights behind it). A bunch of the squishy hand toys that you can get from the dollar store, balls of different sizes, shapes and textures, fibre optic spinny toys, old x-ray “dresses” (the kind of thing that you need to wear when you or your child is getting an xray and they want to protect your reproductive organs- we had them donated by dental offices and the hospitals. They weren’t in perfect shape, but a few odd stitchings and they were fine and worked well as weighted blankets. Some noise-making toys and things like glow in the dark etch-a-sketches, a small ghetto blaster that we could play ambient music on, etc. I think that aside from the donations the teacher spent about 100 dollars (mainly on lava type lamps that she’d gotten from a thrift store). We’d used most of the stuff at home in the past because my kids have pretty extreme sensory needs, but it was amazing to see the difference when it was all concentrated into one area…I would have loved a room like that for me