Sense of smell in children

The sense of smell helps the child to explore the world around him.
Smelling, like tasting and touching, is one of the ways that a toddler explores his surroundings. A newborn child can find his mother’s nipple by its smell and distinguish the smell of his mother’s milk from the smell of another person’s milk. The sense of smell develops the most in the first six months of a child’s life and reaches its peak in early childhood. For this reason, children’s sense of smell is better than their parents. However, children’s sense of smell is not very reliable. Very young children cannot detect odors that can be dangerous, such as poison or rotten food. But from the age of two, the child can recognize unpleasant odors such as the smell of his dirty diaper.

The sense of smell and taste are closely related because they are both part of the chemical sense system, which is made up of thousands of specialized sensory cells. Smelling the good smell of foods and drinks creates a desire to eat them and is effective in other vital activities such as swallowing, digestion and absorption. Just like adults, children crave the smell of baked cookies even before they get their hands on one. Children with olfactory disorders generally have nutritional problems and weight loss.

What do you think of when you smell a box of crayons? Don’t you imagine yourself lying on your stomach and painting a picture? The human brain can use a lot of information to record memories. But smells play the most important role in preserving and recalling memories. For this reason, children in kindergarten relax by smelling their mother’s scarf.

The sense of smell is the watchdog of all the chemicals that enter the body through the air. It is possible to detect many hazards such as fire, gas leak and rotten food by smelling them. In these cases, the child receives the first warning of danger from his olfactory system. This warning helps the child to stay away from the source of the smell and not approach it. However, children at a young age need to be taught how to react in risky situations. Children with olfactory disorders are much more vulnerable than healthy children when faced with risky situations.

A unique feature of the olfactory system is its connection with the limbic circuit of the brain. Odor receptor neurons located in the olfactory epithelium are only two synapses away from the amygdala and the entorhinal cortex. Therefore, it can be explained why smells affect human emotions, moods and behavior. Smell disorder affects the individual and social behavior of children and their ability to communicate with others.

 Smell disorder is an early symptom for the diagnosis of many neuro-psychiatric diseases, including ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, Asperger’s, anxiety disorders, depression and schizophrenia.  

It is very difficult to assess the sense of smell in children under 3 years of age. But children from three years old and above respond well to smell tests. Despite the importance of the sense of smell in children, in our country, the sense of smell is not usually evaluated in children’s health examinations. Smell disorders are more likely to respond to treatment strategies if they are detected at an early age. Carrying out simple smell tests from the ages of 3 to 10 years makes it possible to easily diagnose diseases related to children’s smell.
Carousel of smells is a very simple smell test designed as a game. In this test, 9 standard smells are included. After smelling the brown label, the child is asked to choose one of the four options next to it. Based on the number of correct answers, it is determined whether the child’s sense of smell is normal or he has an olfactory disorder.