Sit still, keep hands to yourself, & stop bumping into me!

Children often get in trouble at school for being "wiggly", not keeping hands to themselves or for personal boundary issues.  In late pre-k and kindergarten it becomes more important for students to learn these concepts.  When children do not master these concepts, they often get in trouble more and more and may start to dislike school.   Why do some children have problems in these areas?

Any of these issues may stem from a number of non-behavioral reasons. These are the major ones that I see:

Core Strength:  this affects sitting still in line, staying seated in a chair, and sitting upright in the floor during circle time.  Our core strength is a perfect synergy between our extensor muscles (in our back) and our flexor muscles (in our stomach).  When one, or both of those muscles do not have good enough strength to maintain an upright position for sustained activities, then a student will basically tire out.  The child may lean on others, attempt to lay in the floor, change positions, fall out of their chair, and be "wiggly".  In addition, kids with less than adequate core strength will often have reduced endurance and may be quite fatigued after an elementary school day.

Proprioception: this is one of our body's sensory systems that allows us to sense our body's position in space.  Our joints, tendons, and muscles contain the receptors that allow for accurate proprioceptive feedback.  When you lift weights, you feel each muscle that is being exercised.  If you work out well, you'll have awareness of those muscles long after your workout is over.  During and after this workout, you have a keen sense of where these sore muscles are.  In fact, if you close your eyes, you could likely point right to the place that you are the most sore.  This is proprioception (and maybe some lactic acid setting in too!).  Everyone has different thresholds for senses.  Kids that seem to be a bull in a china store most likely have very high thresholds for proprioceptive input.... meaning that their nervous system needs much more input before it can register the input. Kids that may have a high threshold for proprioceptive input are the ones that bump into everything, seem to be accident prone or clumsy, constantly seem to touch others, may hug or play too rough, or may crave  jumping/bouncing.

What to do?  For core strength, swimming, karate, and yoga are great activities that help.  You have to stay after it so that you can build on the core strengthening.   For proprioception, a sensory diet works wonders.  Activities that allow a child to get this input prior to school will help the child to succeed.  Sensory diets have to be allowed during and after the school day too.  They don't have to be obvious activities though.   A sensory diet activity can be carrying books in a crate to the library, jumping on a trampoline for 20 minutes prior to school, monkey bars,  sitting and bouncing on a yoga ball, climbing up a rope,  and other heavy work activities. 

If you need help, then get a pediatric occupational therapist involved.  Often, it is helpful for the connection at school as an O.T. can explain why a child's behavior is an attempt to activate the nervous system, not an attempt to drive the teacher crazy.  :-)

Spaghetti for fine motor and motor control

Dry spaghetti noodles stuck in Styrofoam was a fun activity today to improve fine motor control, pincer grasp, as well as proprioception.

First, stick noodles in Styrofoam. These show beads on noodles. I used the very small fun fusion beads plus beads made from cut up straws.

Next, I asked children to sort and put 5 beads of each color on noodles.

Kids had to be careful and grade their force when putting on noodles or else they would break!

Next, I asked them to take off  the beads one at a time with tongs. To make it more difficult, you could put them on or off in a pattern of the therapist's choice.

 Taking the beads off the long noodles were the most challenging, as the kids had to squeeze the tongs longer but also had to not bend /snap the noodle.