Causes of childhood anxiety, stress and delays
A short talk by Mary Kostka (Ohana OT) discussing contributors to childhood developmental problems—anxiety, low self-worth, attention and behavioral issues—arguing that reduced early motor experience, excessive early academics, increased safety restrictions, screen time, and weaker core/sensory development have led to delayed milestones and higher demands on immature children. She recommends more tummy time, active carrying, play and later academic pressure to build a stronger physical foundation.
Hey, everyone. Mary Koska here with Ohana ot. And today I'm going to talk to you about something that's very near and dear to my heart, and that's our kids and what's happening with our kids in our country today. And what I'm concerned about is all the things that are leading to their feelings of lack of self worth, anxiety, attention problems, just a plethora of developmental problems, and just a general feeling of lack of success. And I feel that there's a lot of things that are happening that are contributing to this. So. So I just kind of want to go through what's on my mind that is contributing to that, see if this is a little better. Anyway, this is the Columbia river, by the way. I'm just on my lunch break here, so I would say it starts with one of the things contributing to developmental problems is our back to sleep program. And it's good for, obviously for sids, we don't want the kids to die. But the thing is, we have to counteract all that time on the back with tummy time. And the kids need easily as much time on their tummy during the day because that develops their other neck muscles and back muscles and hand muscles for good development. It affects their vision, it affects everything. So it's really important. So we just have to counteract it. And then the next thing is all of our. Our baby buckets, I call them all of our baby carriers, because the kids are basically just kind of laying back like this with their eyes up, and they're not using their trunk. Their eyes are not looking at, you know, seeing the faces because they're not up high. There's less interaction. They are. They're not using their muscles at all because they're just kind of sedentary in there. And so getting the kids up, having them on your hip in a baby carrier so they feel the natural movements. They're developing their trunk, their neck, their eyes, all of these different things. It's really important. And then I'm really concerned about how much we're pushing academics on kids at such a young age. I had a moment crying because her preschooler didn't know how to form every single letter. And it's crazy because developmentally you don't have the eye hand coordination to form an angled line until you're five and six. So preschoolers should be doing much more gross motor movements, painting on easels, using their whole arm, pretend play, all of that. And it's turned into much more academic. And then your kindergarten classes. Oh, my Goodness, they look like first or second grade. You wouldn't even recognize it from when you went to school. And while some kids can learn to read early and write early, many, many can't. And even the ones that can, it's. They're not developing their, their other skills that they need for life, for a good solid foundation for when the academics get even harder and also all their social skills. So they're not really allowing kids to play. And kids learn through play and, and it really is heartbreaking. And general, we have just a more sedentary lifestyle. So the kids are, you know, the screen time is a big problem too. Even at a restaurant when they should be learning how to role model and they should be looking at the parents and how they're interacting. They're not even watching any of that. A lot of them are on phones and so they're not learning so many concerns. So kids are just not moving as much. And when you don't move, you're not developing your muscles that you need for a solid foundation. You're not developing your sensory systems, you don't know where your body is in space. The vast majority of kids that we serve have very weak core strength, which they'll have strong arms and legs, but the weak core causes them to not be able to sit still and be always running around because it takes more strength to be still. And most don't really have a good sense of where their body is in space. If you ask them to touch their nose, a five year old should be spot on, right the tip of their nose and they'll be off, not sure where their nose is. Those are. That's because there's sensation in their muscles and joints. Hasn't matured. To have a really good sense of where your body is in space and for academics, you need a very, very strong sense of where your body is in space. To be able to write, just to be able to sit, to move your eyes, to be able to learn. And I think another contributing factor is that we're just so much more concerned about safety. I know when I was growing up, you could just ride your bike and come home before dark and you might be out there riding for hours and your parents didn't even know exactly where you were. And we're a lot more cautious than that now. And I'm not saying don't be cautious, but we need to have situations where kids can move that much. The increase of homework isn't helpful because kids need to come home and move, not come home and sit and do more work. And the eyes. Eyes are not fully mature until you're seven. And some countries don't even start reading instruction until seven. So in a nutshell, what I see happening is that we're. The children's physical being is less mature, so weaker foundation with much higher social and academic demands being put on top of that weak foundation. And so then it just comes all crumbling down and you see anxiety and a whole lots of different kind of behavioral problems, attention problems, hyperactivity problems, on and on and on. I think that's most of the things that I've been thinking about. But a couple other points that I find very interesting is that since the Back to Sleep program, our movement assessment of infants, developmental norms have changed where the kids are actually developing milestones later. And like I said, we need to counteract that with a lot of tummy time. And now crawling is being taken off of the key developmental milestones for physicians to check, which is just crazy. In my mind, it's such an essential thing. And yeah, some kids just pop up and start walking, but it's still really beneficial even for those kids to do a lot of exploration, build forts, crawl through tunnels. It works on so many skills for the body that it's still a really important part of development. So that is what is on my mind. And I guess what my two cents is that we need to help our kids move more and not put so many academic demands on them so young Aloha.
