Short YouTube demo by Mary Kostka teaching a "tilt carry" technique to help infants/young children develop trunk control. She demonstrates placing a hand between the legs at the hip base, supporting the head as needed, and carrying the child slightly tilted off-center so the child must engage trunk muscles; suggests using a doll for practice and notes variations and benefits.
Hey there. Hi. I'm just going to show you a.
Way that I really like helping develop.
Trunk control in little ones. Any size little one that you can hold. So what I like to do is bring my hand up between the legs and place it on the hip and then put that right up against my body. This. My monkey has extremely poor head control, so he would need more support up here. I'm gonna just kind of hold his head up a little so I can do this other thing. So then I bring my arm across here and so I can hold him more. More at the base of the hips. Now when I'm walking, I'm gonna let go here just to show you. If I do a tilt carry so I'm slightly angled, then the child's engaging their trunk a little bit to right. So just carrying them forward facing, supporting at the hips, tilting them slightly off center makes them work their trunk a lot. And then you can do it on the other side. And this is the fastest way that I have found to help kids develop their trunk control when they're little and just. Just little subtle changes in how you carry the child. And this you can do with a doll. A doll would be better than my monkey. He's really kind of hard to show. You do the same thing on the other side through the legs. We were teaching how to tie shoes with this monkey through the legs support at the hip base. That right on your. On your body. And then you're. You're on arm is underneath. So that way you can support however much you need and just kind of hold them here. But what's nice is they will just start to right themselves and work their trunk muscles and they get a little tired. They can lay in your arm, they can come up. So the tilt carry is just every time they pick up their child and carry them around, just get them a little off center and the child has to really work their trunk.
So that is my tip. For some of these kids that are a little lower functioning or they're just little ones, that is my favorite way to help them get some trunk control and some strength.
