The Reviews Editor of SEN Magazine (name unfortunately unknown) wrote about the importance of balance for people of all ages. In this abridged version of her article, I’ll focus on the significance of children finding their sense of balance.
Balance gives us more than the ability to maintain our posture in various positions. It also contributes to a sense of mental and emotional well-being that adults refer to as feeling ‘balanced’ and ‘stable’. Conversely, we all have times when we sense that we are ‘off balance’ mentally or emotionally, or when we experience a sudden loss of physical balance that causes us to fall.
Balance is linked to good overall mental and physical development. Movement activities aimed at developing static and dynamic balance, such as learning to ride a bike, playing on a balance board or walking over stepping stones, help to improve confidence and control.
It can be relatively easy to integrate balance activities into daily routines in the home, school, and playground, and acquiring stability and balance involves multiple sensorimotor control systems that need regular practice in various conditions, but not necessarily any special equipment.
Typically, by the age of seven, children will have acquired a wide range of movement skills. However, when some children enter school, they may have deficits in these skills that can place them at a disadvantage in terms of beginning with firm foundations to support the cognitive-motor-affect domains of learning. Thus, the early years curriculum needs a richly diverse range of daily activities that can address these deficits, beginning with floor-based games and movements before moving on to crawling games that include moments of stillness, balance, body awareness and control.
Many physical activity programmes in primary schools have tended to focus on aerobic activities, although I now see an increasing number of yoga approaches being integrated into daily practice. An important, and often overlooked indicator of a well-developed sense of balance is the ability to move slowly, and perhaps we would all benefit from resisting the modern habit of rushing through life.
How Balance Facilitates Learning
Physical inactivity is currently a cause for concern in relation to obesity, as well as being linked to poor development of motor skills and weaknesses in balance. Research indicates that balance maturation is not fully achieved until around the age of twelve and a daily diet of co-ordination and balance skills can improve classroom focus and attention, as well as the capacity to remain seated without excess effort. To function effectively, children need practice in maintaining controlled positions and the appropriate posture for tabletop tasks.
Indicators of Problems with Balance and Coordination
Tires quickly or avoids physical activity
Slow to learn to ride a bike
Fearful of heights or new physical games
Difficulty getting dressed standing up
Falls easily or trips up often
Daily Balance Tips:
How many opportunities in school or at home are there for children to practice heel/ toe walking slowly, with one foot in front of the other like a tightrope? How about backwards?
Activities standing on one leg are countless, from cleaning teeth to making circles with the other foot in the air.
How many in your setting have difficulties standing on one leg? Are they more confident on one leg than the other? Make sure you practise balances on both sides.
Find ways of balancing barefoot, to experience your connection with the ground more fully. There are many yoga activities that can assist in developing balance skills, with the added advantage of also focusing on breath control. This can also support emotional balance.
Over the past 20 years, more and more attention has been given to the mental condition known as ADHD, or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. The number of children diagnosed with ADHD has grown substantially too and recently even young, pre-school children are being medicated to improve their attention span and behaviour. But should we be labelling all high-energy children, or children who have some difficulty focusing, with ADHD? There isn’t any test for ADHD – nor is there any medical procedure that can definitively identify the presence of this disorder in a child. Instead there are behavioural symptoms that are used for diagnosis.
True ADHD is a chronic condition that involves problems with inattention or distraction, hyperactivity and impulsive behaviour. Some people use the term ADHD casually for any child who has trouble focusing on a task for long or one who can sustain high levels of activity for a long time. But it’s helpful to recognize that most healthy people are occasionally inattentive, hyperactive or impulsive.
For example, it’s normal for pre-schoolers to have short attention spans and be unable to stick with one activity. Even older children and teens show varying lengths of attention span during the day. Young children also are naturally energetic and some simply enjoy a higher level of activity than others. Children should never be classified as having ADHD just because they’re different from their friends or siblings.
A critical distinction between typical childhood behaviours and those of ADHD is that ADHD symptoms consistently and significantly disrupt daily life and relationships. Children with true ADHD don’t have it only in one environment. If a child has significant problems at school but is fine at home—or the other way around—something other than ADHD is going on. Two other key characteristics of ADHD behaviours are that they begin when a child is young (before age 12), and they last more than six months.
Following are questions to ask when considering the possibility of ADHD. Is the child often easily distracted? Is he constantly on the move? Does she always fail to think before acting, to the point that it raises safety concerns? And most crucial: Do issues with inattention, distractibility, impulsivity and hyperactivity significantly impair all aspects of daily life?
If the answers to these questions are yes, then a consultation with an experienced health care provider may be needed. Assessing a child for ADHD involves several steps. The first is to rule out other possible concerns, such as health (including allergies or possible diet-related issues leading to sub-optimal health) hearing or vision problems, or learning, language or other developmental disorders.
The health care provider also should talk with the child and the parents about the child’s symptoms. Other family members, teachers, sports coaches or child care providers may be asked to fill out questionnaires about behaviours they regularly see in the child. This can give a more complete picture of the child’s condition overall.
There are many factors that can lead to behaviours looking like ADHD but which may not benefit from medication. It is vitally important to try to get to the root of the problems, rather than resorting to a quick fix solution that usually involves a prescription for drugs.
A recent post on the Neurochild Community Facebook page flashed red lights for the healthy development of our young children. While the report concerns observations in primary schools in the USA, it is possible that the situation here might be tending the same way. Here’s the slightly amended post:
Ask anyone who works in a primary school or elementary school and you’ll hear about children dropping out of their chairs. This seems to be the new norm. But why? What’s going on that’s making simply sitting in a chair a physical challenge for our youth?
A highly respected director of a progressive preschool who has been teaching preschoolers for about 40 years says she has seen major changes in the social and physical development of children in the past few generations. “Kids are just different,” she said. “They are more easily frustrated – often crying at the drop of a hat.” She has also observed that children were frequently falling out of their seats “at least three times a day,” less attentive, and running into each other and even the walls. “It is so strange. You never saw these issues in the past.”
She went on to complain that even though her school was considered highly progressive, they were still feeling the pressure to limit free play more than she would like in order to meet the growing demands for academic readiness that was expected before children entered kindergarten.
It is through active free play outdoors where children start to build many of the foundational life skills they need in order to be successful for years to come. It is before the age of 7 years – ages traditionally known as “pre-academic” – when children desperately need to have a multitude of whole-body sensory experiences on a daily basis in order to develop strong bodies and minds. This is best done outside where the senses are fully ignited and young bodies are challenged by the uneven and unpredictable, every-changing terrain.
Preschool years are a critical developmental period. If children are not given enough natural movement and play experiences, they start their academic careers with a disadvantage. They are more likely to be clumsy, have difficulty paying attention, trouble controlling their emotions, utilize poor problem-solving methods and demonstrate difficulties with social interactions. We are consistently seeing sensory, motor and cognitive issues pop up more and more in later childhood, partly because of inadequate opportunities to move and play at an early age.
Lack of play opportunities lead to weaker core and postural muscles and an underdeveloped sense of balance. Too many consecutive hours spent at a desk without a break for physical activity all add up. Once we put these factors together, we can start to understand why a child might fall out of their seat at school. Education needs to transition towards play-based learning rather than away from it, for the sake of our current and upcoming generations.
Most people still believe that learning happens in the brain and the body doesn’t play a role. See how teachers insist that children sit still without any fidgeting with any part of the body when in the classroom.
In the past, children could make up for this body neglect by using their bodies in all kinds of activities after school hours. They used to climb, run, tumble, dig, fall into ditches and fall out of trees. The change isn’t all due to TV and screen time but also because today’s families live in small homes without access to open play areas. Long hours are spent in commuting to and from school. The streets have become dangerous places. It’s been estimated that children are spending 25% less time on free play than they did in their grandparents’ time.
The reality is that the brain needs the body’s movement in order to create the neural pathways that make ease of learning possible. You can’t make a child learning ready with workbooks, i-pad games or computer programmes. It develops as children’s brains mature along with experiences occurring as a result of bodily sensation and movement.
Important movements are the early reflexes, followed by large body movements such as climbing, jumping, swimming, playing hopscotch, catching and throwing balls, riding bicycles, running, skipping, sweeping and digging. Smaller body movements develop fine motor skills, such as cutting vegetables, drawing, building with blocks, moving to music and learning rhythm through clapping, singing and so on. Movements that need crossing the midline help build the pathways connecting the two brain hemispheres and are crucial for learning to read, write and understand maths.
Children love to move; they need to move. This is an instinctive drive hardwired into our human DNA that is responsible for our healthy development. If children’s bodies are given the chance needed to move in play, they will develop to a stage of learning readiness. Perhaps not all of them will reach this stage at exactly the same time but we do have the genetic potential to be wired to learn.
So limit sedentary time. Push your children out of doors. Make sure you spend quality time in play parks or open spaces over the weekends. Buy body healthy toys like trampolines, skipping ropes and balance boards rather than the latest hi-tech toy. Go back to basics if you really want your child to reach his or her potential at school.
We read regular reports in our news about children (and adults) drowning in the sea, rivers and beaches. The reasons for these incidents vary but one is definitely due to young people not having swimming skills.
Teaching children to swim is crucial to prevent drowning but when should children be enrolled for swimming classes or taught to swim by their parents?
Amy Pedan writes the following in The Conversation:
Age four is a good time to start
Many swimming schools offer lessons for children as young as six months, and parents often feel under pressure to get kids started as early as possible.
These lessons can help a child get used to water, learn to put their face under and learn to close their mouths. They can also be a great opportunity for parent and child to bond, as the caregiver is in the water with the child. Research has even suggested swimming in the early years can benefit physical, cognitive and language skills among three to five year olds.
But while it may be possible to teach young infants basic motor skills in water, infants cannot, and should not, be expected to know how to swim or to be able to react appropriately in emergencies.
There’s not a lot of research available on what age is the “best” time to start swim lessons. Studies from Australia suggest children start being able to master water confidence and basic aquatic locomotive skills at around four years of age, regardless of the age they are when lessons begin.
The same researchers also reported that regardless of whether lessons began at two, three or four years of age, children achieved the skills necessary to perform freestyle (aka ‘crawl’) at five and a half years.
There is evidence to suggest that swimming lessons improve swimming ability and behaviour around the pool in younger children (between two and four years of age) but the jury is out on how well these skills are maintained in the long term.
You may have also seen videos circulating on social media showing infants being tossed into pools and rolling over to float on their back unassisted. Austswim, Australia’s national organization for the teaching of swimming and water safety, has advised against forced back float and submersion in favour of more developmentally appropriate strategies.
Amy did her own research which showed a negative prior aquatic experience, which can occur during formal learn-to-swim lessons, can negatively impact a child’s achievement level.
Consistency is key
Parents sometimes enrol their children in swimming lessons at a young age and then pull them out before minimum competencies are achieved, frustrated by the cost of lessons and the seemingly slow progress. Over the past two years, COVID has also interrupted swimming lessons and water safety education for many children.
Some will return to lessons and catch up, but some may never return—perhaps due to the cost of lessons or because the child is now focused on a different sport or activity.
So when considering whether to enrol your child in swimming lessons, consider sticking with it over the long term until your child truly has the skills to stay safe in the water.
Consider your child’s maturity level and how ready they are to learn to swim. Factor in the long-term costs associated with lessons and when that investment may provide the greatest benefit.
Once enrolled, what’s the best way to learn?
You might be wondering what’s better: a short weekly lesson or school holiday intensives, where the child does a swim lesson every day for a week or two.
The answer may depend on your family’s schedule and what’s available in your area but even if you opt for holiday intensives, try to provide opportunities for your child to regularly practice the skills learned in the pool. The more often a child swims (formally or informally) in a pool, at the beach or at the river, the better they will do at swimming lessons.
In addition to learning to swim, it should be very obvious that children need active adult supervision at all times when they are around water.
Child development refers to the sequence of physical, language, thought and emotional changes that occur in a child from birth to the beginning of adulthood.
As children grow, they develop in various different ways. Every child goes developmental stages that include everything from physical skills such as sitting and standing, to social skills such as smiling and forming relationships with others.
Of course every child develops at his or her own pace but there are certain skills considered to be particular important and which should be attained by a certain age range. These are known as developmental milestones.
To track a child’s progress, we look at five main areas of development. These are:
Cognitive development
This refers to the thinking skills and knowledge that help children understand the world in which they live. They learn to, amongst other things, process information, to learn facts, to know right from wrong, to make decisions. This aspect of development can be broken down into further categories. These are: (1) intellect, which determines how much children are capable of learning at different stages of development, (2) memory and (3) reasoning, which allows the child to make connections between things.
Social and emotional development
Social skills make it possible for children to interact with others while emotionally they learn to understand and manage their feelings. It is common to refer to socio-emotional skills and the acquisition of empathy, sympathy, ability to recognise feelings and being able to relate to others in various situations. This area is especially important for developing self-awareness and self-confidence.
Speech and language development
Being able to understand and communicate with others are vital in our peopled world. We also use language for problem-solving and, of course, for school learning.
Gross motor development
The large muscles in our bodies are referred to as ‘gross’. Those in the head, neck, arms, legs and torso are used to move in a coordinated and controlled way. We use these muscles in most of our everyday activities.
Fine motor development
The ability to move small muscles especially in the hands and fingers refers to fine motor skills. In turn, small movements need accompanying skills, such as body awareness and hand-eye coordination. They are crucial for basic skills such as tying shoelaces, buttoning shirts, playing a musical instrument, using knives and forks, and also for handwriting. Fine motor development is typically a little later than gross motor.
Any delay or interruption in these developmental areas may have implications for later school learning. If you notice that your child is lagging in any area, it might be wise to seek the help of a developmental specialist.
