Everyday activities—focusing in a crowded classroom, the sensation of a shirt’s tag against the neck, or transitioning between tasks—can become a daily challenge.
As a parent, watching your child struggle to navigate their world can leave you feeling unsure of how to help them.
Here, you and your child will find understanding and a safe place where their struggles are acknowledged.
When your child is struggling with daily tasks or regulation, a sensory assessment can help provide the clarity and guidance you need to move forward.
The tactile system processes sensations related to touch, from a gentle caress to the texture of materials against the skin. For a child with sensory issues, some textures or touches might feel overly intense or uncomfortable, leading them to avoid certain fabrics, resist touch, or even seek more intense tactile experiences to satisfy their sensory needs.
The vestibular system, located in the inner ear, manages balance and spatial orientation. A child with sensory challenges may struggle with activities that involve motion, becoming dizzy easily, or they might crave intense movement experiences, often seeming like they “can’t sit still”.
Proprioception involves the awareness of body position and movements, originating from muscles and joints. A child with difficulties in this area might appear clumsy, misjudge the strength needed for tasks (like holding a pencil), or seek out deep pressure and heavy activities to regulate themselves.
The visual system helps interpret what we see. Children with sensory issues related to vision might be sensitive to bright lights, struggle with tracking moving objects, or find visually cluttered environments overwhelming, making tasks like reading or identifying objects in a busy background challenging.
The auditory system processes sounds. A child with auditory sensory challenges might find certain sounds too loud or startling, even if they’re background noises to others. Conversely, they might enjoy or seek out specific sounds for comfort. Some children may tune out sounds altogether while hyper-focusing on tasks.
This system governs the sense of taste. For children with sensory issues, there can be strong aversions or preferences for certain tastes or food textures. They might be exceptionally picky eaters, sticking to a limited range of foods they find palatable, or they might seek out intense flavours.
We look at how your child handles tasks like dressing, eating, or making friends, comparing it to what’s typical for their age group.
If your child experiences challenges with things like dressing, studying, or socializing, we can work to understand their sensory needs so that these activities go more smoothly during the day.
We believe therapy is part of living a healthy life; you don’t have to be in crisis or facing an emergency to seek support. Our practice is built on long-term connections, and we walk with you as you navigate the different phases and challenges in your life.
While working with children and adolescents is what we’re best known for, we extend our specialized assessment and therapeutic support services to parents, adults, and couples who are on their own path to healing and living a life they love.
After the evaluation, we will provide you with tailored strategies and recommendations designed to optimize your child’s nervous system functioning as well as help you develop a deeper
understanding of their unique sensory experiences, how they process the world around them, and offer actionable insights to help regulate their responses.
In our dedicated feedback and coaching session, we will look deeper into your child’s sensory patterns, strongest sensory systems, and methods to nurture the growth of other areas. This step empowers you, educators, and caregivers to provide tailored support, helping your child unlock their full potential across home, school, and community settings.
Sensory processing is the ability to attend to, organize, and interpret information from our environment. Our body takes in information from many systems: touch, vision, taste, smell, hearing, and different types of body movement. Our brain processes this information and goes on to tell our body how to behave in response. When a child has difficulty with sensory processing, they may either over-respond and become easily overwhelmed by sensory input or under-respond and show little reaction to certain sensory information. This can impact how they cope and function in their day-to-day.
We’re able to complete sensory profile assessments on infants, toddlers, school-age children, adolescents, and adults!
Our assessments take a comprehensive look at all of your child’s sensory system so we can determine how they work, both separately and together. We look at smell, sight, taste, interception (understanding and feeling what is going on inside your body), hearing, touch, vestibular (awareness of the position of your head and body) and proprioception (ability to sense your body’s movement, positioning and location).
Education and advice to parents and schools, the Alert program and Zones of Regulation (curriculum to promote regulation in children), sensory play ideas to support their nervous system or to expand their tolerance in certain sensory areas, and/or specific strategies and tools to help channel sensory needs so that these needs are met in more appropriate and functional ways.
The outcomes of a sensory assessment are different for each child, but in general, you can expect to see certain improvements to differing degrees. You may notice that you:
If you’re looking to get started with J. Gordon Psychology Group, get in touch! You can email, call or submit a message using our contact form.
780-938-4473
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Helping them comfortably navigate their world
4710 99th st. NW Edmonton,
Alberta T6E 5H5
