Incorporating Sensory Activities Show Benefits for Children

Think­ing out­side of the box to max­i­mize treat­ment out­comes is some­thing Kristie Kem­n­er-Schoen and Lyn­nae Glas­cock have been doing for years in their roles in pedi­atric ther­a­py at Quin­cy Med­ical Group. Their suc­cess in part­ner­ing with their meth­ods is a mod­el they want to share.

Kem­n­er-Schoen, Clin­i­cal Coor­di­na­tor of Pedi­atric Speech Pathol­o­gy, and Glas­cock, Clin­i­cal Coor­di­na­tor of Pedi­atric Occu­pa­tion­al and Phys­i­cal Ther­a­py, recent­ly pre­sent­ed at a con­fer­ence for the Illi­nois Speech and Hear­ing Asso­ci­a­tion speak­ing to speech ther­a­pists on ways to incor­po­rate sen­so­ry inte­gra­tion treat­ments into speech therapy.

Their meth­ods include uti­liz­ing motor com­po­nents and even fun to help chil­dren retain infor­ma­tion and meet their long-term goals. That means mov­ing away from or min­i­miz­ing sit­ting at a table dur­ing ther­a­py or uti­liz­ing pen­cil and paper tasks. ​“If you can attach a motor com­po­nent or attach mean­ing to some­thing or even fun you’re much more like­ly to remem­ber those skills and par­tic­i­pate,” said Kem­n­er-Schoen. ​“You may be tar­get­ing the same aspect that you would be using a pen and paper, you’re just doing it in motion.”

Part­ner­ing speech ther­a­py and occu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py tech­niques were some­thing that derived out of ana­lyz­ing the best options for their patients and the chang­ing needs of kids today. ​“We’re deal­ing with a dif­fer­ent set of chil­dren now,” explained Kem­n­er-Schoen. “ We have a lot more com­plex cas­es, and we have to meet that need.”

Though their tar­get audi­ence at the con­fer­ence was speech ther­a­pists, they’re not stop­ping there. They have plans to speak to region­al school dis­tricts as well on the pos­i­tive impact inte­grat­ing sen­so­ry-friend­ly envi­ron­ments can have on learn­ing. They are both real­is­tic with the chal­lenges of mak­ing these changes in a class­room but know in the long-run these changes can make a larg­er impact on learning.

“We under­stand that teach­ers are in a sit­u­a­tion where they may have 25 to 30 kids and they don’t want to lose con­trol of their class­room,” said Glas­cock. ​“But, we focus on what we can do. We try to give them as many options as we can. Our pre­sen­ta­tion pro­vides sev­er­al sce­nar­ios you may see in a class­room and var­i­ous options they can uti­lize to address them.”

In the end, it’s the progress that they have seen with their young patients that val­i­dates their meth­ods. ​“We’ve seen such suc­cess with our kids and have seen them progress so much faster. They like com­ing to ther­a­py and have fun. They’re work­ing they just don’t know it, because they’re play­ing at the same time,” explained Glas­cock. ​“We’ve been doing this for a long time now, and have seen so much suc­cess with it we want to make oth­er peo­ple know about the pow­er­ful strate­gies too.”