ABUSE VICTIMS TAP INTO SENSES.

Byline: Peggy Hager Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Children who are emotionally disturbed as a result of abuse now have a new way to get help: a room designed to let them rediscover their senses and promote contact with the world and other people.

The Valley Child Guidance Clinic's Sensory Room is fashioned to stimulate children's senses just by entering it.

Painted in bright yellow and green, the room is softly lighted. On a counter is a gurgling fountain, along with jelly beans and bottles of different scents. Small, soft pillows cover one corner of the room, while one wall has small squares of different textures.

``We are all unique in how we perceive the world,'' said Andre Kunzli, a therapist who works in the sensory room. ``We learn through our experiences. A child who has been beaten with a piece of wood will probably have a different response to wood than a person with no abuse experiences. If the child is experiencing a sensory numbness, we will teach him or her that wood has other uses. In this way we build alternative perceptions that help with other therapeutic goals.''

The Palmdale Boulevard center began in 1985 with two employees and now has 74 employees serving 750 youngsters.

Kunzli believes that adding sensory therapy to a child's regular therapy is crucial for children's recovery, particularly for youngsters who have not responded to conventional talk therapy.

He recalled an 11-year-old boy who remembered a Christmas from several years earlier by smelling cinnamon sticks.

The incident gave the therapist an opportunity to discuss a part of the child's life with him that he otherwise might not have been able to access.

``Talking is always a way to suddenly make sense of the world, but it doesn't give you the whole spectrum. I mean we are made out of our senses,'' Kunzli said. ``By asking him to re-experience or experience a sense ... it's a bigger sense of who he is, and he has more awareness of actually his own body, his center.''

Kunzli said that when he came to America from Switzerland, he tasted jelly beans for the first time and disliked them. After spending 10 years in the states, he tasted them again and discovered that he now liked them.

``I hope that children also will be able to experience these changes,'' Kunzli said.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) The Valley Child Guidance Clinic's Sensory Room is filled with various objects to help abuse victims stimulate the senses.

(2 -- color -- ran in AV edition only) no caption (small lamps on a shelf)

(3 -- ran in AV edition only) Robert D. Gilbert, who funded the sensory room, poses with director Joelle Hunnewell of the Valley Child Guidance Clinic.

(4 -- ran in AV edition only) Children use various objects inside the sensory room to help them reconnect with images and feelings from their past.

Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News