Through my work I have seen some, but not the majority, of children with the diagnosis of Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), who have been extremely sensory challenged since birth. More of my families noticed strong reactions to noise, to bright lights, to movement or touch, a few months into the first year.
Here is a theory I am developing that, I believe, accounts for some of these issues.
The baby is born with the instinct to take signals from the mother’s body. A baby who is carried in arms by the mother has close contact with mother and can feel her heartbeat, anxiety, sweating, or her calm. The child can feel her breathing, her muscle tension and will entrain with the parent to educate their sensory system how to respond to the brilliant, overwhelming, ever changing sensory world around them.
When a child is in a stroller or other device that prevents contact with a parent, they cannot easily process, for instance, an ambulance that passes while they are on a walk. When an ambulance passes, the world fills with piercing sound, flashing lights, speed, wind in the face.
If a parent is holding the child, she can read the parent’s body response and understand that this is not life threatening. It might even be exciting, thrilling, when the child is safe up against mom’s body. Mom’s heart rate does not go up, she does not go into a state of anxiety, her muscles don’t tense and harden.
As we CARRY our babies through the world, they learn from us – before they have the cognitive capacity to understand causality – that they can, in fact, cope with the input from the world.
The combination of oxytocin from contact with a beloved parent, and the calm response of the parent’s body can reassure the infant that they are safe.
A child in a stroller has no defense, no feedback, no way to regulate their responses. This can create micro-traumas throughout a day that may simply have involved a shopping trip. A stressed brain is less able to learn and more likely to stop attending.
I would reconsider the role that baby equipment plays at many levels, and the way that equipment keeps us from supporting our babies’ development.
While there may be any number of factors that could be causal in the triggering of SPD, including pre-natal exposure to toxins, abandonment, or the presence of a mother who herself has SPD, I believe that we can safely say that entrainment with the body of a beloved parent can, and I believe, DOES help the infant grow to become a child who can easily cope with the sensory environment.