The Ultimate Guide to Sensory Swings Parenting Chaos
Sensory Swings are designed to provide therapeutic benefits for children with all abilities and at various ages. Check out our great range of sensory swings for children with autism who need vestibular sensory input. If you’re lucky enough to live in a sunny, warm climate year-round, it’s easy to find outdoor activities that provide vestibular input. Running, biking, climbing, jumping, swinging, and sliding are all fun ways to provide movement opportunities. Functions in a variety of ways for your child – it provides sensory input your child needs to calm and organize, but also encourages movement and exercise. The raindrop help with sensory processing disorder balance, motor planning, and spatial skills.
While the overall swing is beautiful, strong hanging materials, beautiful fabric… It unfortunately was no strong enough for my ASD sensory seeker. He managed somehow to rip the first one within a week, and a second one within two weeks.
A swing can be a valuable investment to help children with sensory integration. Sensory swings, hangouts, wrap swings and other therapy swings. They are popular for use at home (eg. for helping autistic kids to relax), in Occupational Therapy clinics and in schools. These lifting, pushing, and pulling activities can help.
Gentle vestibular stimulation, rocking or swinging, is known to relax users and is a great way to therapeutically calm users with autism, disabilities and sensory processing disorders. Alescia Ford-Lanza MS OTR/L, ATP is an Occupational Therapist and Assistive Technology Practitioner with over 15 years of pediatric experience. She specializes in educationally-relevant interventions with a focus on sensory integration and assistive technology supports to learning.
Gauri Ratnam completed her Masters in English Literature from the University of Pune. She began her journey as a German translator soon after completing her graduation, but later moved on to pursue her passion for writing. We actually had our entire swing system covered through our state department of education during the COVID lockdown. They knew we couldn’t do PT virtually so they helped us create a way to meet Ivan’s sensory needs at home.
This is not true at all, since children who are sensitive to movement will freak out when they sit on the sensory swing. The vestibular system and the visual system are closely linked, so defects or improvements in the processing are often seen in both these systems. The pod swing is the perfect sensory swing for this since it can be used without or with vision. You may not think of a trapeze bar as a therapy swing at first, but this was actually recommended to us by Ivan’s physical therapist and we have found so many uses for it! Many children love to just hang from a trapeze bar or use it to swing, but we’ve found it to be a fun way to incorporate muscle strength into Ivan’s play. Swings are fun and can be a used to help kids calm down, get their sensory needs met, and as you saw with some of the types of sensory swings, be a place to “get away”.
It is perfect for kids who like to relax with gentle sways. Also, be careful when spinning the child in the swing because this is a very strong sensory input. Some children may throw up, even if they love spinning, which means that their vestibular system has overloaded.
Since we have a dropped ceiling in the room we had to rig up a contraption to hang the swing from a truss. Not a big deal when your husband is a structural engineer. According to him if we could have hung it from a floor joist that would have been easy to do with the materials provided. I did have to find a video on how to hang the material but I am a visual learner. These are great for clinics and helping children with special needs and promotes a lot of development and growth.
40”Saucer mat swing can support up to 600 pounds on a resilient nest of hand-braided spider webbing for a kid- and even a couple of friends – fit 2-3 kids. Last, but certainly not least, is a mesh or net style swing that gives a child options. You can spread out the mesh so it fits like a seat or spread it out to lay back or cozy up inside. This therapy-grade platform swing is comfortable, durable, and holds up to 300 lbs. This type of swing is great for kids that want to see their surroundings while in a swing, but still giving some security with sides around them. It’s perfect for relaxing with gentle sways back and forth.
These swings are heavy though and can’t move in multiple directions, but depending on your child’s needs they may still be a good source of sensory integration. 【High Quality & Safe】- The sensory swing’s design with reinforced nylon edgings and double stitched to increase safety, soft PVC air cushion make you don’t worry about mold problem. The swing can support up to 100 pounds, easily taken down and stored away at any time to make more room. Therapy swings are also a great way to manage sensory integration and can help calm kids who have difficulty with sensory overload. Your child can pretend that they are surfing a huge wave or blasting off to space on this simple, but fun, skateboard sensory swing. This swing is an investment for a sensory room or play space, but holds up to 650 lbs.