Mary Kostka explains proprioception, the sense of where your body is in space, and how it calms kids' nervous systems. Tug-of-war, pushing, carrying heavy things, jumping, swimming, and animal walks all work. Simple ways to help your child regulate.
Aloha magnificent moms and dads. Mary Koska here with Ohana Ot. In this video I'm going to talk about some great activities you can do with your child to help them develop their proprioceptive system, which is their sense of where their body is in space by stimulating the receptors in the muscles and joints, the proprioceptors. And the really great thing about proprioception.
Is its side effect is that it's.
Calming to the nervous system. So in essence the kids are, when they're doing activities that are intense to their body, they're actually trying to calm themselves. So this will give you some ideas of ways that you can help meet that need in a little bit more controlled way than them being kind of wild all over the house. Some of my favorite ones are the part activities that are very intense where you're just co contracting your whole body. So tug of war is one of my go tos for proprioception. And you can just use a towel or a sheet, just make sure that whoever falls that they're going to fall on something soft. So have a couch behind you or just anything that's soft. So tug of war is definitely you're contracting like almost every muscle in your body you're pulling against. Resistance is one of my favorites. Another one is I call push aware instead of tug of war. So you put your hands, you stand up and you put your hands against each other. So if you're, you're this way and you just try to move the mountain or you can do that against a wall, push on the wall. But really any activities that are pushing, pulling, carrying, involving heavy work, those are the things that are going to activate the receptors of the in the muscles and joints. Those proprioceptors. For little kids, I love to just fill up a laundry basket and have them like pushing around the house. That's a really great one. When you see your kids doing that, like moving the furniture, that's, that's what they're doing. They're trying to give themselves that input. Having the little five pound balls, exercise balls, carrying those around, that's a really great thing. Climbing and jumping trampolines are great, just all those kinds of things. Swimming is a really great activity for it. Karate, just any kind of dance proprioception activity that I love is the wheelbarrow walk. So in any kind of animal walks too, like the crab walk or the bear walk, but the wheelbarrow walk is great. You can do it up and down the hall, have them walk on their hands and hold their feet, doing any kind of yoga poses, standing on the head. All those things are really, really great. See you in the next video.
Hi again.
I am so glad that you took.
The time to watch this video and I'm really proud of you because I know you're busy and it takes time to sit down and focus and learn something new and just really proud of you. Give yourself a pat on the back. You're going to see this after each video because I just want to reinforce you and just let you know I'm proud of you. And change isn't easy. Some of these things, you hear the idea and then implementing it. We're all habitual, so it's not always easy to do. So just do your best to make little baby steps forward and make little changes that are positive and keep watching.
Stay.
See you in the next video. Aloha.
