Sensory Integration Disorder: Is it real?
Did you every play Marco Polo as a child? I used to love closing my eyes and spinning around faster and faster when I was ‘It’. Now imagine playing that game in the middle of a busy intersection. Cars are honking, dogs are barking, siren sounds get closer, and people are yelling. You are ‘It’ and are trying to listen to the where ‘Polo’ is coming from. For a student that is hypersensitive to sound, touch, and light, the world is a chaotic place. As a result, new surroundings can be very disorienting for them. Some label such sensory hypersensitivity as sensory integration dysfunction (SID).
The label of sensory integration disorder may come as a welcome relief to some parents who want an explanation for why their child has not reached certain milestones, like walking or talking. As parents, it is instinctive to worry that something may be wrong with our child. We view Bobby obsessively lining up cars in a row as a symptom of Autistic Spectrum, and Daisy mixing up words as dyslexic. Yet, does a label like SID actually help parents? Although it is a ‘condition’ identified by some health practitioners, there are many psychologists and neurologists who think that the label of SID is actually doing a disservice to parents. I will outline several reasons for why this is the case. The first issue is that the difficulties associated with SID reflect a neurodevelopmental immaturity, rather than a distinct disorder. The absence of adults receiving a diagnosis of SID begs the question of whether in some cases, the child might outgrow the symptoms naturally without the need for expensive and unproven treatments. The next point is related to this issue as sensory hypersensitivity is a symptom of other disorders such as dyspraxia, ADHD, and Autistic Spectrum. A label of SID might falsely lead to parent to feel comforted that their child is receiving support, when more serious problems might be going undiagnosed, and as a result, untreated or supported. Finally, there are very few published clinical trials on either the diagnosis of SID or the treatment of it. Those that are published have been criticized as flawed research, due to small samples and heterogeneous samples (ie, including students with ADHD, ASD, in the sample). It appears then while the symptoms of SID are indeed real, they can point to more serious disorders which merit diagnosis and treatment.
