HW Sitting Position and Posture Part 1

Aloha, Mary Koska here with Ohana Ot with our how to Improve Handwriting course. And in this lesson, we are going to be talking about what I think is probably the most important and most common problem and most commonly overlooked problem. And that has to do with sitting position and posture. So let's get sit started. One of the most common things that I see is that people are just not fitting in their furniture correctly. Especially I see this in schools and at home, but really at work, at your home office, typically the chair is not in the. The desk height aren't correct. So it's very easy to get it right. All you have to do is make sure that when you're scooted back in your chair that your back can touch the backrest at the same time that your feet are on the floor. And you want the table to be at the same height as your elbows, it can be a little higher. The problem, when the desk or table height is too high, you end up in this position, and when it's too low, you end up bending over. And as you can imagine, none of us would like to sit all day with our feet dangling or not being able to lean back in the chair. And that's really typically what's happening for children at home and at school. It's a very easy fix for this. What you need to do is just put a pillow behind or against the back rest. And. And what I like to do for kids at school, you can do this at home as well, is just put a T shirt over the top of it to hold it into place. And that makes it fun because kids can individualize their chairs. And it's better if it's a little bit. If it's a little bit small on the small side so it's nice and snug. It's not going to keep falling off and causing problems. And for an easy fix for the feet is to take some old books that you're not using and some duct tape, wrap it around, and you can stick a little Velcro underneath to keep it from sliding around on the carpet. Typically a couple inches is all they need, just whatever they need so that they can be all the way back in the chair and feet flat on the floor. If there's a lot of space to fill, sometimes you need quite a bit. Get a plastic storage box and put something in it that's heavy books, some rice. If you do something like rice, be sure to duct tape the lid so it doesn't pop off. And there you have it. It's a Very easy, easy solution. And it can make a huge difference because when you're putting energy into sitting upright, that energy isn't going into the hands and into the head. And most people that struggle with handwriting usually don't have really good core muscles. So that's really, really important. Another thing that you can do, a lot of kids don't do well if they can't move around a little bit, is just to put something, a little cushion under their bottom that can help them wiggle. There's commercial ones. One is called move and sit cushion. You can also make it with a beach ball. Just put a little bit of air in the beach ball and put it in a little pillowcase. And that can just give them just enough, just that they can kind of wiggle around. One of my favorite things to do that is helpful is just to get some theraband and you can attach it to the front legs of the chair just like this. And if the kids like to push down on it, you can just duct tape it right here so it stays in place. What they do is they put their leg behind and then they can push against it. And it gives them some nice sensory input that makes them feel more calm and comfortable. But it also helps keep their bottom in the chair. And it's nice and quiet. It works great. One of my favorite things I remember, I remember one year I was out at recess and this little kid came up to me and said, Ms. Mary, Ms. Mary, remember that thing you put on my chair? It helped me so much. Can you put one on again? That actually happened a lot that they'd come and find me because it really was helpful. They loved it. I also like to do a little handwriting routine, a little song that wakes up all the muscles in the body. But I'm going to put that in a separate video. So if you want to play that video to go along with it for the kids to go on with it, then it'll be by itself. And also put in the downloads. I'll put the words to the song to help work on that core strength. I. I love having adults and kids do the Superman position. So you get on the floor on your tummy and you get your arms up and your legs up off the ground and hold that as long as you can. Should be able to do it at least 30 seconds. You can also do like a sustained crunch. Just curl up, up against gravity. And I will put pictures of those two exercises in the downloads below as well. Another thing that's really helpful is just to get up and move around. So it's nice to have the kids get up and just jump up and down 10 times and then sit back down and get back to work. Allow movement breaks frequently to get up, get a drink of water. I think that's one of the great things about in classrooms when they do stations because it allows the kids to move around. A lot of people, kids and adults tend to kind of slide out of their chair. Especially a lot of the chairs in school are made of a really slick surface and adds snow pants to that. And they're just sliding out all the time. So the shelf paper you get for RVs, it's kind of like bubbly and sticky. You just tape that to the chair and no more sliding around. You can get it at the dollar store. Another great solution is just to alternative positions. Letting kids lay on the floor to do their work on their elbows. It's great. Their back and neck are getting a nice. Getting stretched out in the opposite way of when they're at the table builds postural strength. Feels good. You can also just tape a piece of paper to the wall and work standing up. And that's a great thing as well. The wrist gets in a nice position. And so those are some of my best solutions for sitting position and posture. Hope that's helpful and we'll see you in the next video. Aloha. Thank you.