How does your child do with balancing on one leg? Can they:
3-year-olds balance for 3 seconds
4-years-olds balance for 4-8 seconds
6-year-olds balance for 20 seconds
8 year olds and older balance for 40 seconds
Try asking the child to stand with feet together? Observe their balance. And then with their eyes closed?
Although these may be norms that guide us to knowing how a child is going, it is easy to incorporate fun to give each child more opportunities to develop balance, and most children will develop and thrive.
Why does balance matter?
The vestibular system is a vital component of our sensory system that plays a crucial role in maintaining our balance, spatial orientation, and coordinating our movements. The development of this system begins only a few months after conception and is important throughout the development of the baby in utero and beyond. The little hairs in our inner ear are stimulated when we move our heads and body in different directions and on different planes and provides awareness of where our body is, in space, assisting postural control, body movement and sensory integration. It also sends signals to the eyes enabling them to respond, focus and integrate. Hearing, vision, and balance are highly inter-related and reliant on one another.
Physical Development:
By providing accurate information about the position and movement of our head, the vestibular system helps our brain to adjust our body's posture and muscle tone. This coordination is critical for performing everyday tasks, such as walking, running, and even looking at something while moving.
Children with vestibular dysfunction may exhibit poor motor skills, balance issues, and difficulties with coordination. These challenges can lead to delays in the development of crucial gross and fine motor skills. By addressing vestibular dysfunction, children can experience improvements in their physical abilities and overall quality of life.
Academic Learning:
Balance, awareness of where your body is in space and visual and auditory tracking is essential for sitting up, holding paper and pencil, cutting, reading and writing, for telling the time and understanding position, left and right and before and after. Planning and organisation, focus and attention all rely heavily on a good sense of balance.
Socialisation:
The vestibular system also plays a significant role in socialisation. Many social activities and interactions require a good sense of balance and spatial orientation, such as playing sports or engaging in group activities. Additionally, the vestibular system is essential for maintaining eye contact during conversations, which is a critical element of nonverbal communication.
Let’s provide opportunities for lots of balance to help our children become confident and competent:
Our babies: provide ample time on backs and then tummies give a baby the opportunity to integrate visual and auditory systems, reaching, focusing, turning head side to side and up and down. This also requires that we reduce the amount of ‘sitting up support’ (pillows, baby seats, car seats etc) we give babies which can be very restrictive to their natural movement and to the type of movement they need to practice.
Tummy time helps baby and young children develop back, neck and tummy muscles to help stabilise vision.
Carrying baby gives them the opportunity to move in a variety of ways, stimulating those tiny hairs in their inner ear and helps with sensory integration – calming when being rocked or stimulating with faster movements. (e.g “This is the way the ladies ride”)
Crawling or shuffling to walking on all sorts of surfaces and with opportunities for shoes off, allows the child to develop balance as they respond to the changes in the surface or the direction (eg slope or edge). Feet have many nerves, muscles, ligaments, and bones to assist us with adapting to where we are walking and to make small direction changes that will later help with running and sport.
Different surfaces to balance on
Being upside down (going against gravity) give rapid fluid movements in the inner ear, which help refine the sense of balance. Our children need opportunities to swing upside down, to swing, spin, tumble, roll and dance. Generally, young children do not get dizzy like adults because they are still developing balance.
Different activities, different planes
Other movements that help balance: Jumping, hopping, skipping, reaching up, posting, sliding, trampolining, monkey bars, using a scooter board, changing direction games, obstacle courses and playgrounds. Playing in the sand, in mud, swimming and bike riding all challenge and develop balance and the children have loads of fun!
Aim for different surfaces, different heights, different planes, and lots and lots of exploration and time to repeat over and over again!
Balance - it really does matter!
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