What is Sensory Integration (SI)?

	Everyone receives constant messages from their senses. Most people are able to use these messages to appropriately interact with their environment. For example, as you are reading this, your clothing is providing tactile information to your skin. Your brain receives this information, but doesn’t focus on it, allowing you to focus your attention on visual information and continue reading this.
	Being able to quickly process and integrate sensory information promotes learning and development. Consider the richness of varied sensory input throughout a child’s day; being carried in different positions, taking a bath, the feeling of getting dressed, eating with fingers, and being in a noisy or soothing environment. Being able to integrate these different sensations helps children to “make sense” of their world.
	A. Jean Ayres, the pioneer of sensory integration theory states, as “a child experiences sensations, he gradually learns to organize them within his brain and find out what they mean. He learns to focus his attention on particular sensations and ignore others. Movements that were clumsy and jerky in infancy become smoother and more direct in childhood.”