HOW ARE YOU TEACHING YOUR CHILDREN TO SUPPORT AND STRENGTHEN CORRECT MOVEMENT PATTERNS?

The best a parent hopes for is to positively influence the development of their children socially, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically.  We hope to build a strong foundation for our children in order to navigate this complex modern life.

What do you do to influence your children physically?  Imagine if the foundations of your body were included in the elemental framework of your family’s behavior.  You may have weekly dinner with friends, church every week, or a daily ritual together.  How would the health dynamics shift if you had daily or weekly movement sessions together, properly integrating posture, muscles, and function?

Parents are constantly reminding their kids to brush teeth, say please and thank you, and offer help when someone is in need but are we cueing our children in ways to prevent future injuries, imbalances, physical pain, and how to stand strong, tall, and initiate movement with their hips.  Maybe the major aspect inhibiting this physical cueing is knowing how and what to bring awareness to within ourselves.  Many people do not learn how to work on the foundations of their body until adulthood.  I’m on a mission to help equip families and children with the education and resources to not neglect their physical resiliency.  The longer we go with imbalances in our body, the longer it takes to improve them.

Are you modeling living a healthy lifestyle?  Bringing movement into your daily life?  Do they see you working on the foundations of your body?

THE GREATEST GIFT YOU WILL EVER GIVE YOUR CHILD IS A GOOD ROLE MODEL.

They are born with instinctive potential for the correct postures and movements.  Their bodies know how to bring in air using their diaphragm, a breathing pattern mostly forgotten in adults, and they do not just give up trying to walk when they fall down a few times.  They are resilient and their body develops perfectly stage by stage.  Even when we are restoring dysfunctional movement patterns in adult, we often look at babies or children for a point of reference.  Which is why it is vital to establish proper movement patterns and allow children to develop how their bodies were brilliantly designed to, rather than setting them up for dysfunction later on.

The demands on children’s bodies change at all different ages, from birth, school, and to sports.  Being symptom free (aka pain free) does not equal ideal development or proper function.   

Not helping your child develop muscles that keep them strong for life can lead to long lasting problems.  Imbalances and asymmetries that are at the core of motor skills can hold a child back developmentally, both physically and cognitively.

Many parents do not realize how societal norms and school are slowly de-geniusing children’s bodies and what different stages of life are harmful.  Our feet are not designed to be crammed into shoes, car seats used outside of the car purpose are unfavorable to a baby’s spine and muscular development, and children (and adults) are not meant to sit longer than 20 minutes.

The first year of life is crucial in forming the spine in its natural curves and meeting milestone of rolling over, crawling, sitting up, head control, and starting to walk.  It is important that the baby strengthens motor skills with well-developed spinal curves before going vertical and working against gravity.  .  Gravity is constantly pushing us down, our bodies having to learn how to push back.  Without being challenged in natural movements, the body can develop asymmetries that may seem tiny, but will follow through muscular and bone development, balance, motor, and sensory skills.

The best head start you can give your children, mentally and physically, is to support and strengthen the patterns of correct movement as little as the beginning of push back against gravity.

All bodies are built to move and want to move.  Babies never give up, toddlers never stop, and preschoolers are full of energy—every movement and lack of movement matters.  Kids go from constant physical freedom to school age and sedentary.  The most important time during a child’s life of fine-tuning balance, coordination, motor skills, and endurance is spent sitting in a chair at school.  The chair is the cause of most physical problems in today’s society.

Typically at 9 or 10 years old, schools have kids identify their sport.  Practice and repetitive movements follow.  This is wonderful in bringing movement to the body and stimulating the brain, but this is mostly done before their bodies are prepared to stabilize their core and properly move from the hips.

Bodies are not compartmentalized, they’re whole, struggling to lengthen, grow, and develop.  They are yearning to move vigorously and energetically.  If you get them started they will not want to stop.