Navigating the Playground with a 2-Year-Old

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Summer is a great time to explore the playground with your child. Playgrounds provide a fun and exciting playground with toddlerenvironment that gets your child outside and active. Children of all ages can enjoy a playground in many different ways.

Read on for specific tips to navigating the playground with a two-year-old:

  • Choose the right time of day to play.  Pick a time of day when peers of a similar age will be at the park. Older kids play differently, and it’s best to have your little one playing with children his own age.
  • Climb the stairs and uneven surfaces. A two-year-old is expected to be able to climb stairs independently and walk over uneven surfaces without losing balance. The park is a great place to practice these skills. If your toddler is a little unsteady on the wobbly bridge, hold their hand to increase confidence.
  • Go down the slide. Depending on your toddler’s confidence and the size of the slide, you can either hold them on the way down, or let them slide down by themselves. Many parks have smaller slides that are good for beginners.
  • Play in the sand. This will help to develop your toddler’s fine motor skills and tactile sensory processing. If you can, try and build a castle or mountain to help develop spatial skills.
  • Ride the spring-animals (the kind you sit on that wobble). This will help improve your child’s balance and strength while having fun!

Parks are a great environment to encourage your kids to get outside and play. In addition to the benefits mentioned above, playgrounds help to foster social skills, build friendships, and support a healthy lifestyle.

The Importance of Swimming Skills

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Swimming was always one of my favorite activities as a child, which is why so many of my childhood memories from mysummer swimming chicago summers off of school take place at the neighborhood pool or at one of Chicago’s beautiful beaches. Aside from the fact that spending a day at the pool is a fun way to pass the hot days of summer, swimming has many other benefits for your child’s development. Below is a list of the top reasons why learning to swim is so important for your child.

Reasons Swimming Skills are Critical for your Child:

  • Strengthening: Negotiating the water requires your child to use all of her muscles. From her core to her arms and legs, your kid will become stronger while playing against the resistance provided by the water.
  • Coordination: Swimming requires a lot of coordination! While each swimming stroke is different, they all require simultaneous movement from your child’s arms and legs in different directions. As your child learns how to swim using a variety of swimming strokes, she is learning how to coordinate multiple movements from multiple body parts at the same time.
  • Sensory input: Swimming is a great way to get a lot of sensory input. The water itself provides deep pressure input to the whole body. The constant sensation of the water can help to decrease tactile sensitivity that your child may experience out of the water. The water also provides proprioceptive input to the body, which can help your child’s body awareness and the body’s position in space. Lastly, the changing position of your child’s head that is required with swimming provides vestibular input, which will help your child strengthen that sensory input both in and out of the water.
  • Safety: Being able to negotiate the water safely is an extremely important skill for your child to learn. While you can never predict what situation your child may encounter in the water, being able to swim, as well as being able to tread water, is the best way for your child to be prepared in challenging and potentially unsafe  water situations. However, it should be emphasized that no matter how strong of a swimmer your child is, all swimming and play activities around the water should be supervised by an adult.

Happy swimming this summer!

Summer Training for Fall Gaining

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As summer begins, summer plans take shape.  Hopefully these plans involve lots of fun and sunshine.  Summer should be an enjoyable and exciting time for all children and their families, but it is important to remember to also focus on children’s growth and development.  Sometimes during the break from school, skills gained in an educational or summer therapytherapeutic setting can be lost.  It is important to remember that summer is a great time to keep working on skill development, therapeutic goals, and preparing each child for the challenges of the upcoming school year.

Research continues to show that consistent and high intensity therapy (two or three times per week) results in faster and better functional outcomes for daily skills.  With a more relaxed schedule, summer is a perfect time to increase therapy intensity and have fun building the skills children will need for the new school year.

Specific areas of focus in the summer to prepare for school:

North Shore Pediatric Therapy wants to help your child gain the confidence and independence to conquer all age appropriate tasks! Summer spots are limited. Call us at 877-486-4140 and let us know how we can best support you and your child!

3 Outdoor Activities to Promote Speech & Language Development

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Summer is finally here!  Take advantage of this time of year, and enjoy the time outdoors with your child with these 3 speech and languageeasy activities to promote speech and language skills outside.  Remember, learning and development don’t always happen at the table.  In fact, learning and development are often best accomplished in the context of engaging play and multi-sensory activities.  So take the learning outdoors and enjoy spending time with your child in the summer sun!

Outdoor Speech and Language Activities:

  1. Plan a nature scavenger hunt.  Write 10 clues on a brown paper bag (or present the clues verbally if your child is not yet reading), and encourage your child to find each of the 10 items.  For example, a clue might be “I am green, and I grow in the ground” or “I am all different colors, and I smell very good.”  If you live in the city and have limited access to nature items, use a digital camera to capture items on the list.  This activity promotes reading, listening, categorization, and memory. Read more

5 Healthy Summer Habits for Your Family

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Summer is a perfect time to focus on getting healthy, especially for kids. Read this list for healthy ideas for your family that take little effort and can make a big difference.

5 Tips for a Healthy Family This Summer:

  1. Buy healthy food that’s in season. During the summer, there are plenty of healthy foods available in the store and at the farmer’s markets. Take advantage of this abundance of produce and give your kids fruit at meals and for snacks instead of packaged foods. Make salads a staple for lunch or dinner. Use fresh, cool vegetables that taste great on hot days such as cucumbers, celery, bell peppers, and spinach leaves. Mix it up and make summery green salads with fruit accents, such as spinach tossed with strawberries, blueberries, or grapes. Read more

What are the Best Over the Counter Foot Orthotics?

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Although most children with feet problems should be treated with a custom orthotic prescribed by a podiatrist, over-the-counter orthotics are an option for some children, teens and young adults.  Could your teen or young adult child benefit from an over-the-counter orthotic?  Read on for several great options.

What are Over the Counter Orthotics?pediatric orthotics

In general, over the counter (OTC) orthotics look like shoe inserts and are placed inside your shoe to add extra support and to help with arch problems. They’re geared toward people suffering from foot, knee, or back pain that can arise from having flat feet, wearing uncomfortable shoes, or simply walking or running incorrectly. Unlike custom orthotics, they are available without a doctor’s prescription.

What to Look for in an Over the Counter Orthotic:

It is best to find an over the counter orthotic that has a plastic polymer or a hard plastic that is a little more rigid than just the typical shoe insole. While the average lifespan of custom orthotics is 3 years, the average life span of over-the-counter orthotics is 6 months.  Read more

Encourage Your Child to Try Different Swimming Techniques

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Though the Chicago winter months bring cold, snow and gloomy days, swimming continues to be a great activity for the family, albeit girl in poolindoors. Swimming offers many benefits for children, including enhancing sensory processing, strength, endurance and coordination. A common concern among families with whom I work with is that their child does not like dipping their face in the water, which impacts the child’s swimming experience.

These strategies aim to assist parents that are working with their child to feel comfortable with dipping their face in the water during bath time, as practice for the swimming pool:

  1. Play “Simon Says” by indicating different body parts that should dip into the water. For example, “Simon says put your nose in the water” or “Simon says put your ear in the water.”
  2. Blow bubbles in the water using a straw. When your child feels comfortable with this, remove the straw and have them blow bubbles with their lips touching the water.
  3. Soak a washcloth in water and have your child wring it out over various parts of their body (hand, ear, mouth, etc). Allow your child to wring out the washcloth over your body as well.

Try playing these bath time games for several weeks and slowly introduce placing their whole face into the water. These activities will help your child feel more comfortable with putting their face in the water, one body part at a time.

 

Why Hockey is A Great Game to Teach Your Child

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Not only is hockey enjoyable to watch for entertainment purposes, hockey is also a perfect gross motor and extracurricular activity Little boy playing hockeythat will get your child involved with his peers. Team sports incorporate many different skill sets and help your child follow the guidance and leadership of another adult (i.e. the coach).

Below are some examples of skills that hockey could address for your child:

  • Balance: Skating requires a significant amount of balance and trunk control. as ice can prove to be an unstable surface. In addition, there are thin blades to support their entire body weight.
  • Hand-eye coordination: Being able to control the puck in order to pass it onto teammates as well as shoot the puck into the net accurately and effectively (without getting it taken away by opponents).
  • Bilateral skills: Using both hands together in order to control and carry the hockey stick.
  • Timing and sequencing: Being able to anticipate where the puck will land as well as understanding where your opponents will be on the ice and moving accordingly.
  • Teamwork: Working together to work towards one purpose, rather than working independently.
  • Safety awareness and body awareness: Being able to avoid getting checked by opponents as well as being able to maneuver safely on skates and avoiding the puck (e.g. getting hit in face by puck).

As you can see, hockey is not only a great form of exercise and a way for your child to meet new friends, it also helps your child improve many skills that are needed throughout daily life. Feel free to reach out to your child’s teacher, occupational therapist or physical therapist to see if hockey or other gross motor activities would be encouraged for your child. Stay tuned for my next blog about why skiing is a great gross motor activity for children. Go Blackhawks!