“Life Will Get Better”: Part 4 — Movement
Part 4 — Movement
Ch 11 — Movement is Essential
Ch 12 — Movement Activities Throughout the Day
Ch 13 — Movement Strategies
This is a summary of the book “Life Will Get Better: Simple Solutions for Parents of Children with Attention, Anxiety, Mood, and Behavioral Challenges” by Nicole Beurkens, Ph.D. These are her ideas, and I’m simply picking what I think to be the high points of each chapter to make it a quicker read for parents that would find this information useful, but have busy schedules and can’t find the time to read the book in its entirety.
Ch 11 — Movement is Essential
This is my favorite section yet of the entire book. It’s right up my ally of everything I learned in chiropractic school. Movement is critical for building a healthy brain and a healthy body. This is why chiropractic works! When the spinal segments are moving as they should be, the brain and the body can function better… But enough about that.
Minimum movement and exercise create adverse consequences for our body and brain (which reminds me of a book I want to cover in our book club book of the week here soon). Movement actually sharpens our mind and stimulates growth and connections in our brain. Just like nutrition and sleep, movement is probably most essential during the years of childhood because they are growing a brain and a body, which takes a lot of energy. If you or your child struggles with inattention, anxiety, mood, hyperactivity, learning disorders, sensory processing, or any challenging behavior, making sure they are moving throughout the day will help tremendously. You don’t have to be an Olympic athlete or do vigorous exercise for it to work, things like walking and stretching work as well. It is important to find ways for you child to move throughout the day because it has a calming effect on the brain.
Ch 12 — Movement Activities Throughout the Day
Alright, parents, you are going to love this chapter. It talked at length about putting your child to work with household chores. Everyone can contribute to maintaining the home and chores are a great way to get kids moving and build independence. There is laundry, wiping surfaces, raking, shoveling, vacuuming, taking out the trash, putting away groceries, walking the dog, and who could forget organizing cupboards? Along with chores, there are also several games they can play to get movement. Some activities the book mentioned were freeze-tag, races, red light-green light, hopscotch, bags, four square, Frisbee, playing catch, shooting hoops, and balloon volleyball.
Ch 13 — Movement Strategies
You may have heard about sensory integration before. It is the brain’s ability to make sense of and use info coming from the sensory environment. As a pediatric chiropractor, this is to a T what I’m trying to accomplish through chiropractic, better sensory integration. The best strategy from this chapter to boost sensory integration is the use of movement breaks. We are either in school or at work all day, and we need to make sure to get up periodically to stretch or walk around. This helps the brain reset and focus for longer. Movement breaks support your attention and give you the ability to concentrate on lengthy tasks by increasing blood and oxygen to the brain. You may be inclined to tell your child to “sit still” when trying to accomplish a task like homework. This is most likely more detrimental because kids naturally want to move around when learning. This is completely normal because it helps stimulate your brain and engage on the topic. Maybe you think of things like ball chairs, rocking chairs, standing desks, and treadmill desks as a distraction but these items actually help you concentrate more by moving and stimulating the brain. This is an even bigger deal for kids with ADHD or attention problems. You should encourage movement, and periodic movement breaks to boost their attention.
