Child Sense: From Birth to Age 5, How to Use the 5 Senses to Make Sleeping, Eating, Dressing, and Other Everyday Activities Easier While Strengthening Your Bond With Child

by Priscilla J. Dunstan, Linda Acredolo (Foreword), Susan Goodwyn (Foreword)

Your infant is crying and you don’t know why. Your toddler refuses every kind of food–except one. Your preschooler wages war with you each morning over what to wear. Every day, parents struggle unsuccessfully to understand why their children act the way they do. Now child development expert Priscilla J. Dunstan breaks down those barriers to understanding with this revolutionary and accessible guide that teaches a new way of parenting–custom-designed for each child’s personality.

The product of eight years of groundbreaking research, this book will help you understand how your child interacts with the world. Dunstan begins from the premise that every child has his or her own dominant sensory “interface” with the world. Some children are highly sensitive to touch, others to sound or to sight. And some are unusually sensitive to all outside stimuli, especially taste and smell. This sensitivity affects how your child behaves, learns, and communicates from the very first days of life. Uncovering your child’s dominant sense–and knowing what your own dominant sense is–is essential for finding common ground and creating bonds of trust and intimacy with your child.

Use this book to

• take comprehensive “sense tests” to determine your child’s dominant sense–and your own
• understand how sensory overload plays out from infancy to age five, at home and in school
• learn why your child’s sensory personality shapes the way he or she instinctively reacts to new experiences and people
• appreciate the richness of your child’s emotional life, and help your child thrive in the outside world

For every parent who has ever looked at a child’s behavior and thought What is he trying to tell me?, Child Sense shows you how to find the answer.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Sarah Bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

Borrowed from the library, enjoyed reading and thought very interesting theory will be buying my own copy

[Judith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very enlightening!
What is your child's dominant sense? What is your own dominant sense? How do you process the world, and how does that affect your behavior? According to this book, there are 4 types of people,
- tactile: experience the world through their bodies (need to touch and feel)
- auditory: experience the world through sounds (can be stimulated or be overwhelmed by chatter, coos, and noise)
- visual: experience the world through what they see
- taste/smell: those who are sensitive to tastes, smells, and others' feelings

The same behavior - such as playing with food or throwing it down - can stem from different reasons:
- tactile: like to feel the texture of the food, and find out what happens when food is thrown down
- auditory: curious to find out the sound of the food/plate, etc hitting the floor
- visual: particular about the way food is presented on a plate (no spaghetti for me, too messy!)
- taste/smell: if the food does not taste or smell right, I won't eat it!

This book is excellent in pointing out potential mismatches (eg tactile child may be physically loud, and drive an auditory parent crazy) and give suggestions in how to better communicate with your child.

Excellent book! I am looking forward to finding out what my baby's dominant sense is. I am tactile, and my husband is auditory. As a lagniappe, I get to understand my husband better as well!

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful ways to identify your child's dominant sense (auditory, visual...) and how you can use this understanding to connect with them better. I didn't read the whole book, just the introduction and the relevant sections. As a parent, I found it thought-provoking and worth reading.

A few criticisms:
- Like most people with an interesting theory, she over-applies it. Every problem is because you have a different dominant sense than your child.
- The section on how to identify your dominant sense (for adults) is not useful. It's worded like a Cosmo quiz.
- Sometimes her generalizations didn't make sense or seemed too sweeping. Like: why are tactile children necessarily rough-and-tumble? A tactile child could be low-energy or high-energy.
- Her fourth category - "taste/smell" - was really interesting to me. After reading Elaine Aron's "The Highly Sensitive Person," Dunstan's "taste/smell" kids sound like an exact category match to Aron's "highly sensitive" people. But Dunstan seems a little naive about this category to me. Like, "Oh, taste/smell people will be GREAT parents because they are just so happy about meeting other people's needs." Um, what about "Taste/smell people might find parenting difficult because their highly sensitive systems will be overloaded by demanding babies"????

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my everlasting goal of finding ways to be a better parent, I stumbled on Child Sense by Priscilla Dunstan. This book is all about determining which sense is dominant in your child, and using this knowledge to better interact, and make your life easier. It is geared towards young children under age 5.

I found it very interesting, and very informative. The lists provided to help determine which sense your child is were detailed enough that it made my choice easy. I very easily figured out that my little monster is a tactile child. This means he experiences the world physically.

There was a whole chapter devoted to each sense type (tactile, auditory, visual, taste/smell), and gave some good advise about how to approach both everyday events (like eating, sleeping and dressing) and extraordinary events like moving, having another child, starting school and dealing with death. The book divided each type down further into age ranges (birth-1 year, 1-3 years, 3-5 years), which me see not only where my son was, where he is now, and what I can expect in the near future.

I'd definitely recommend this book to other parents. Any insights that make your life as a parent easier, and your child's life smoother, are well worth hearing about.

[Jroscanyan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of reminds me of taking those color personality tests. Some good info, but by no means an end-all. This book helped me see a little better how my children (who are different sense-oriented from each other and me) interact and view the world. I tried using some of the techniques for their sense-orientation, and it did really make a difference. I am trying now to be more conscious of their primary sense-orientation and prepare for it in how we go about our days.

Also like how it's organized so you don't have to read through all the senses that don't apply to you. However, I would suggest doing so because each chapter helps you better pin-point which sense your children (and you) are prone to view the world with.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting read, all about another take on your child's personality based on their dominant sense. It was interesting to find out that I have the same dominant sense as my daughter and my husband has the same dominant sense as my son. Has some good suggestions for improving your parenting based on your dominant senses. I think Dunstan's baby language theory (as seen on Oprah) is amazing and totally works, so was excited to pick up this book. Interesting stuff!

[Juanita · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fabulous book helping parents identify what sense they used the most and what sense their child uses the most. It gives tips for eating, sleeping, playing and more according to the child's primary sense.
I got this book from the library, but it would be a great reference book.

[Dani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting approach to 'How to talk so your child will listen'. It makes a lot of sense once you have an idea of what sense your child or even everyone in your family is. I would recommend this book to be in every new parent's library.

[Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the whole this was a very good book that helps you understand your children better, which can only be a good thing. Yet there was still some aspects that did not quite add up for me. I mean are all tactile children really so aggressive and so on and so fore.

[Bree · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting insights into how children process information. Picked i up at the library and am considering purchasing it for a reread when #2 gets bigger.

[Alley]

An interesting look at the way each person relates to the world by looking at their dominant sense.

[Dawn Herbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has opened up an area that I would like more information on to understand those I love. An easy read and good jumping off point...

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would have to say out of all of the parenting books that this is my favorite one! It helped me understand my children so much better.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some super interesting stuff here.