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Home › Articles › Development › Toddlers Making Messes

Toddlers Making Messes

How Toddlers Discover Their World

By Teri Brown

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Ooey, gooey and messy, oh my! If there's one thing you can be sure of with toddlers it's that they know how to make a mess. But perhaps all of that mess making has a purpose. Maybe they're supposed to make a mess!

That's what Gina Guzman from Aloha, Ore., decided when her children were quite small. She found that messy activities not only stimulated their imaginations but were educational, too. "Little ones need a variety of sensory experiences to help the connections in their brains to develop," says Guzman. "Right now my kids are learning how to make African mud cloth. I'm sure my little one will be right in there with them, only using the mud as body paint as well as for the actual project!"

Learning in the Making
Sande Gruskin, the director of the Family Center Village Parenting Place at Nova Southeastern University, believes making messes – or sensory play as it's also called – is critically important for a child's development. "Sensory play gives children experience in processing information," says Gruskin. "It allows for the development of sensory integration and paves the way for more complex learning later on."

Ashley King, a pediatric occupational therapist and the owner of Action Potential Therapy Services in San Francisco, Calif., says sensory play is an integral part of her therapy and a child's normal development. "Play is the job of every child," says King. "It is the means by which young children learn new cognitive and motor skills. The play skills a child demonstrates represent his current understanding of his social and physical worlds and how he can integrate his language and motor abilities with those worlds."

Hidden Senses
King says that while everyone knows the five senses – taste, touch, smell, hearing and vision – we also have two "hidden" senses that work behind the scenes and provide us with the ability to move without really thinking about it. One of those senses is the vestibular sense. This sense tells us where our heads and bodies are in relation to the pull of gravity. "This sense is quite noticeable when you are flying in an airplane and the plane begins to turn or descend," says King. "You are sitting upright in your seat, but you somehow know that the plane is moving in a different direction."

The other hidden sense is called proprioception. "This sense tells us where our joints and muscles are when we aren't looking," says King. "When you clasp your hands behind your back, you are using your sense of proprioception to guide your movements."


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