Learning to move
Learning to move though your world is not just about getting from one place to another, it’s about how you do it. What do we need to get there, how do we experience the journey on our way though. Children don’t have these abilities yet, they haven’t developed these senses, they can’t explain the world that they live in.
Children don’t have the communication skills to explain their emotions, they don’t have the words because they haven’t learn’t them yet. You don’t fully mature emotionally until your 25, at the youngest, so expecting them to self regulate age 5 is ambitious at best. I like the way the book, ‘The Red Beast’ explains this concept and for a book aimed at children, I’ve found it to be a great resource for adults too. The book explains in simple language that emotions like anger and frustration can come out of nowhere. It explains how your body reacts, the fight or flight reaction that most people experience. It explains a few ways to calm down, or assist others to do so.
Part of emotional development and learning how to self regulate is the development of the vestibular and proprioception senses. These are related to balance and body control and can be used to keep children calm. Your proprioception sense is all about deep pressure and physical work, requiring coordination and heavy, manual labor. It delivers a slowly released dopamine hit, best described an that sense of accomplishment after you’ve done a physically demanding task or taken a second to relax under a weighted blanket. Stimulating a child’s proprioception sense is a more effective way to calm a child long term. A short term solution to the same issues is engaging their vestibular sense. The vestibular, or the tube inside your ear that controls your balance is kinda like a muscle you can train and training that muscle can help you to calm down. This is done by moving your head out of a natural possession. Flipping a child upside down or having them spin around is a great way to assist in this process.
So how do I achieve this? Well the first thing you need to know, restraining someone is defined as placing a force in them that is over 10% of their body weight, therefore, weighted blankets aren’t recommended in small children. The second thing, your body’s response to anger is thing that anything bigger than I am is always a threat. I recommend as a starting point, setting up a secluded space in your house where your child can calm down in peace. This can be done with deep bean bags filled with dense foam, misquote nets and calming toys like stress balls and weighted toys. To keep your child calm, invest in resources like gym balls, lycra and mini trampolines. Most importantly, allow for risk, thinks like shaving chalk or sticks with veggie peelers can be very therapeutic for young children.
Finally ‘big emotions’ are part of childhood, theirs no avoiding screaming fits in the middle of a shopping centre, it will happen and its not because you’ve done something wrong. It’s entirely normal for children to ‘misbehave’, it someways it can reflect positively on your parenting. Children, are not good communicators yet, but they have a need to express themselves in the best way they know how. Movement is a way for a child to express themselves. So make their movement ‘educational’. I’ll link a few resources that I like bellow for risky play and calming spaces.
Activity of the week, and today let’s look at STEAM. STEAM, or science, technology, engineering, art and math is about the five universal languages of the world and how we use them to communicate internationally. Today we’re looking at engineering by building some bridges.
You will need
Egg cartons
Paddle pop sticks
Cardbord
Plastic lids
Matchbox cars
Get your child to help you cut up some egg carton stilts for your bridges, some cardboard strips for the roadways and place those with the other resources over the table. encourage your child to build roads for the cars to go over with bridges, underpasses and roads between the two.
https://sensoryspace.com.au/collections/weighted-items
https://dreamfarm.com/sharple/?sku=DFSH4410
https://i-createcraft.com.au/product/safety-saw/