Mary Kostka explains when to use weighted vests versus compression clothing for kids. Weighted vests work for about 20 minutes to ground a child, but skip them if core strength is weak. Compression clothing provides all-day calming pressure if it's not too tight and the child can remove it easily.
Foreign sensory heroes. Welcome to day 28. We are talking about weighted vests and compression clothing on this one. They are pretty popular now. You hear a lot of people doing weighted vests. One caution I would like to say about weighted vests is that they're not, they're not good if the child has a weak core, because just think about it, you already have trouble sitting, you have a weak core, and now we're going to put weight on it. So that is a big mistake that I see because a lot of our kids do have a weak core. So I don't recommend them for that. They should only be used for about 20 minutes at a time. They kind of habituate to them and, and lose their effectiveness. But they can be a great tool, like going to the grocery store or sitting for circle time. They can really help, help that child feel more grounded. They should be able to take it off themselves. Now, compression clothing you can wear all day long. It doesn't matter. And that is clothing that is very snug. And one way you can do it is just to wear swim clothing, like a rash guard or the swim jammers. Like they're, they're more like longer shorts. So they, they squeeze them. They want to be able to take them off. But basically that firm, constant pressure on the body is very calming. And a lot of kids will just do amazing with that under their clothing if they are having difficulties with different fabric textures and that sort of thing. So you can get a compression clothing that's made from more of a lycra spandex kind of fabric, but you can also get it more like a compression vest that's more like a neoprene fabric where they can like really kind of squeeze, squeeze them in pretty, pretty snugly like feel. So it feels more like a hug. And you just have to kind of see what they prefer. Obviously you want to make sure that it's not too tight, that they can get it off, that they can breathe well and. But it's, it's, it can be extremely. It can be a game changer. So it's definitely worth giving a try. There are weighted vests now that are basically a compression vest, but, but then you put, you put the weights in there. So it can be both. And I'll put some examples below the video to kind of give you an idea what to search for. Again, Amazon's pretty easy place to find things, but you can look. There's lots of different companies. If you just Google another brand that's really good is Under Armour. Works really well as well. Okay. Hope that that is helpful. And fill out your worksheet. And I know you have a lot, a lot of different things to try. 30 days is really like a fast overview. But even if you can just take one or two things from this and apply them and they help you, then I'm happy. That's, that's great because not everything's going to be for every kid, but this just gives you a lot of different, kind of a broad overview of the things that we find help the most. Right away. Okay. Aloha. See you in the next video.
