Question
What does the vestibular system do?
Answer
The first thing the vestibular system does is it tells you where your body is in space. It really helps you walk from point A to point B safely. It helps you stay in your seat without falling. It's really good for safety awareness. In an occupational therapy clinic setting, we'll treat this through spinning or we'll use swings and move them in all different directions. Sometimes I'll hear parents or adults saying, "Don't spin, because you're going to get dizzy." We have to be careful about doing that too much because a child's neurological system will actually seek out the sensory input it needs at that given time to help organize the senses. We need that sensory organization to lay the foundation for learning. In order to develop properly, we do need to let them move in those directions.
Another thing the vestibular system does is it turns on the reticular activating system in the brain to pay attention. That's why kids fidget. I observed some kids in a fifth-grade classroom as they moved back and forth in their chairs to ignite the vestibular system, to turn that brain on and pay attention. A lot of teachers, though not all, will say, "Sit still." But those kids in that classroom needed to move, not just at that moment, but they need to move throughout the day so that they could have the skill and be able to pay attention when they need to.
The vestibular system also supports all six eye muscles. It acts as a tripod for a camera and allows the eyes to be able to scan and track across for reading and writing, to be able to go across the middle of the body. Just because a child can read an eye chart just fine in the nurse's office, like a Snellen chart, does not mean they have perfect vision. One time we had a little boy that was holding an eye come in for treatment, and he read the eye chart in the nurse's office just fine. He was having trouble with reading. We had him spin, and then we looked at his ability to go from point A to point B with his eyes. As soon as he got to the middle, his eyes would loop like a rollercoaster, every time. Since his eyes were looping around, he was going to have trouble reading. Can you imagine your eyes doing that every time you tried to scan? He had two weeks of vestibular treatment and was then able to control his eyes. Lo and behold, he could read. Movement is key to having strong eye muscles that could work as a team. Behavioral optometrists that work on complete vision will often work with occupational therapists to treat the eyes. If you go to the gyms in their offices, they actually have trampolines and swings, just like we do, because they use all of that to help treat vision.
Just to recap, the vestibular system helps with spatial awareness, attention, visual skills such as reading and writing, and lastly, emotional regulation and activity regulation. If a child is off the wall, we call it, or really hyper, it’s really important to be able to naturally bring that child back down again. It’s the same with emotions. If they're very angry, it’s important to be able to naturally bring them back down again and to be calm again.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, The Decline of Play Outdoors in Children - And the Rise in Sensory Issues, by Angela Hanscom.
