Why Do Children Need Touch and Movement?

When children touch, sensory receptors in their skin tell them what they are touching. These receptors give them discriminative information about the touch (soft, hard, cold, wet, etc), as well as protective information about what type of touch (burning, an insect crawling on their skin, pinch, etc).  When a child is young, they learn best by hands on touch experiences.

When children move, receptors in their large muscles and joints tell them information about their body (where it is, how it moves through its environment, how the body parts move in relationship to each other to make smooth and coordinated actions).  This is called the proprioceptive system.

In addition, when a child moves, receptors in the inner ear (the vestibular system) use the information to maintain a sense of balance, equilibrium, and organization.  The vestibular sense is the unifying sensory system of the central nervous system.  It communicates with higher centers of the brain to help regulate and organize information regarding speech and language processing, motor planning, attention, regulation of emotions and energy level, and perceptual motor skills.

Activities which encourage movement also facilitate development in the areas of: visual attention, visual tracking, eye-hand coordination, focus, arousal level, respiration, postural control, body awareness, trunk rotation, language processing, praxis, social interaction, and intrinsic motivation. 

Early childhood sensory experiences of touch and movement (knowledge gained through the skin, muscle, and joint receptors) prepare the central nervous system to be able to efficiently gather and process information from the eyes and ears.  Children’s individual needs of amount of sensory input vary, however, if sensory experiences are provided daily, they will seek out how much input they need to be able to feel organized, be able to attend to learning tasks, modulate their behavior, and overall participate more fully in home, play, and classroom activities.

Sensory integration affects every aspect of learning.  It is the ability to take in, sort out, and make sense of information from our environment, or the organization of sensation for use.  Sensory integration occurs automatically and on an unconscious level during normal development as children interact with their environments through their senses (taste, touch, smell, vision, hearing, movement, and proprioception).