Earth day is April 22nd this year, and we wanted to prepare all of the kiddos out there with ways to celebrate! We’ve said it before and we will say it here again, getting outside is great for so many things, including calming and attention (see our blog post about this HERE). It is also great for promoting movement of many varieties!

Here are some fun, Earth Day themed activities to get you and your family moving in the great outdoors:

1. Hiking – Hit the trails with your family, there are so many great hiking trails in Somerset, Mercer, and Middlesex Counties, you will never be bored! Many of these trails feature wildlife and beautiful flowers as well as inclines and declines that are sure to get the blood pumping! Hiking can be used to teach your child about the “Leave No Trace” rules that apply to all hiking paths, where what is found in the forest, stays in the forest. This is a way to honor the nature found there and to leave it undisturbed for all hikers and wildlife alike.
2. Gardening – Gardening exposes your child to many fun colors and textures while having them work and help by carrying plants to be potted, then squatting down low to help plant them! They get to feel dirt, feel the many different textures that come along with different plants, and maybe even find a worm or two! This can be turned into an educational experience about what animals and nutrients are needed to help a garden grow big and strong too!
3. Plant a Tree – This is similar to gardening, but to plant a tree you need to use a big shovel. Have your child grab their mini-shovel and start digging! This can also be turned into an educational experience where you teach your child about how important trees are for our Ecosystem and for life, to teach them about why we celebrate Earth Day in the first place! When the little tree is all planted, they can look at your work and feel a sense of accomplishment that will last years and years as the tree grows!
4. Canoe or Kayak – Both of these water related activities are very fun AND involve a lot of core and upper body strength! There is a lot of wonderful wildlife to be celebrated in lakes, rivers, and streams, and paddling on the water with your family is a wonderful way to experience the outdoors from a new perspective. You may see turtles and fish, and seeing these creatures living in their natural habitat will help your children learn about why bodies of water are important to protect as well.
5. Go for a Bike Ride – Go to either a bike path or start from your house and bike somewhere that you want to explore with your family. Bike riding is a whole body activity and is easy for the whole family to do together. If you bike on Earth Day, you can teach your kids all about alternative forms of transportation and how riding your bike for transportation helps decrease the harmful emissions in the air, helping create a cleaner environment for everyone.

Happy Earth Day everyone! Go out there and explore the great outdoors! We hope this post helps generate some ideas for combining movement and activity with the outdoors for some teachable moments so that your kids can learn why we celebrate the green world all around us!

This month is Autism Acceptance Month (formerly known as Autism Awareness Month). The purpose of the month, which was originally geared toward raising awareness and sharing resources to raise awareness for the Autism Community, is now aimed at both raising awareness and fostering a culture of acceptance. What does this mean exactly? The name change to Autism Acceptance Month urges for a change in how the community at large embraces individuals with Autism as well as their families. A large source of stress for individuals with Autism and their families is a lack of community support, this includes difficulty finding support within the education system, providing accessible housing, providing affordable healthcare, and helpful, comprehensive long term services. 

That said, we wanted to highlight one resource we found that was designed to help individuals within the community and to help educate the community as a whole. This resource is a children’s book, created by an individual who has Autism, that seeks to describe and normalize various sensory needs, mobility needs, and even nutrition needs for children with disabilities, and is not solely limited to ASD. This resource does so in a way that does not teach children who are neurodivergent or who have a disability to feel like their difference is their fault OR that it is something that needs to be hidden in order for them to fit into everyday life. This children’s story highlights that children all have differences from each other, that the needs of many children can be met within the school setting, and that this is a great thing! It seeks for foster “Neuroinclusion” rather than to create an environment of othering and exclusion. This story is called “A Room For Us All: A Neuroinclusive Story”.

Below is the link to the article written on this topic which has a PDF of the story we mentioned at the bottom of the article!

Other references resourced here:

This week, we wanted to discuss how PT may be able to help your infant with feeding difficulties. Recently we have been seeing and treating many infants with difficulties feeding, for example trouble latching, mouth tightness, and trouble getting enough milk! When you bring your new baby home from the hospital, there are so many things to learn and so many things your growing family is experiencing together, whether you are an experienced parent or new parent. If your little one seems to be having trouble feeding and becomes very fussy at meal times, you may start feeling very overwhelmed and exasperated, because all you want them to do is eat to grow big and strong!

A lot of times, babies who are experiencing feeding difficulties also have a lip and/or tongue tie, requiring releases. They also may seem uncomfortable in their bodies and seem fussy a lot of the time. It is often blamed on gas or colic, but there is often more to it. Many new parents are referred to a lactation specialist and/or speech therapist to help with their baby’s feeding difficulties and lip and tongue tie concerns. Both lactation specialists and speech therapists are amazing professionals to have on your team during this fussy, troublesome time. 

What you might not know is that a Pediatric Physical Therapist may be helpful as well, specifically a pediatric physical therapist trained in a special technique called Total Motion Release (aka TMR). This gentle technique helps PTs to look at the whole body of a child, no matter how small, to see if there are any asymmetries in their posture. These asymmetries in their posture are often left over from the infant’s specific positioning in utero.  They make it uncomfortable for your baby to be held in certain positions, which may affect them during feeding or otherwise. They can also contribute to tightness in your baby’s neck, jaw, and inside their mouth, which may affect their ability to feed, as you may be experiencing at home! Funny thing is, the muscles and other soft tissues of the body, specifically in the hips and the trunk, are MUCH BIGGER than the little muscles of the neck, jaw, tongue, and mouth. Because these soft tissues are bigger, they may be adding to the tightness your baby is already experiencing in their mouth, which may be increasing their difficulties with feeding.

If you are thinking this sounds like your little one, breathe a sigh of relief, because these asymmetries are easily worked out with simple and easy positioning techniques, especially if your baby is very little. Here at KidPT, we look at the whole body of your little one and use TMR to do this. Through our TMR lens, we look to see if your baby has any of these soft tissue asymmetries in his or her body. We can talk with your lactation specialist or speech therapist to see what their current concerns are, and as a team we can progress your baby toward ease of feeding, and an overall increase in comfort in their bodies, together! Parents often find that not only does the baby feed better, but they become calmer, happier and sleep better! If you are currently experiencing feeding difficulties with your newborn, and want an experienced pair of hands to see if asymmetries in your baby’s body may be contributing to this, come on in to KidPT for a free Discovery Visit with one of our Physical Therapists! We would love to help you and your little one with our no muss, no fuss approach! 

By: Dr. Ali

This week is St. Patrick’s Day and with all of the green, Leprechaun fun, we wanted to add some fun moves to your family’s festivities! If you need a visual version of these exercises, click above to view the exercises in video form!!

1. Leprechaun’s Jig: Jump together on two feet, then jump onto one, to two, then to one, and keep repeating this over and over again until you have done 10 one footed jumps total! Look, you’re doing a jig!
2. Making the Rainbow: Go on your belly to start. Place your hands on the ground and your feet on the ground. Then push your tooshie up into the air and hold
3. Creeping over the rainbow: Tip toe on a line with a sneaky expression, so you don’t “tip” the Leprechaun off that you are coming. SHHHHH its a surprise, you have to sneak up on him if you want his gold!
4. Jumping in the Pot of Gold: Jump into your imaginary pot of gold but bringing one knee up close to your chest then jumping onto the leg that is up while bringing your opposite knee close to your chest. 
5. Give gold coins to your friends: Squat low (because you are still up on the imaginary rainbow) and pass your friends coins by reaching down low. Pass the coins to 10 friends!

We hope you have fun getting JIGGY with it! We know you will all be the best rainbows, pot o’ gold jumpers, jig dancers, and gold coin sharers out there! Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone!

Hypermobility can be thought of as extra laxity in the joints, aka the joints are more flexible than is typical. In the clinic, we measure joints in degrees, and usually joints like elbows and knees are supposed to straighten to make the arm one line and the leg one line, which would measure to be 180 degrees. Hypermobility is really easy to see in the elbows and the knees especially because the angle will be visibly past straight, or past 180 degrees.  It is definitely harder to see in the spine, the hips, shoulders, ankles, wrists, feet, and hands but they can be hypermobile too! A couple of extra degrees is completely fine and is within what we call normal. But, when 10 or more extra degrees can be seen and measured, we start to consider this within our treatment planning in the clinic.

You might be thinking, so what, my child’s knee can bend a little backward, why does this matter? That is a great question! We will use the knee as an example. It really matters if you see them standing and “hanging out” on a hyperextended knee (a knee that is over straight) for prolonged periods of time. There are plenty of kids and adults who have hypermobility throughout their whole bodies who have learned through athletics, or just through life, to control their mobility and stand with “neutral joints”. But, at baseline it is harder for those with hypermobility to control their joints. Because of this, they have to train their muscles and ligaments to sense when they are in the right place.

There are many systems that come into play to learn how to control hypermobile joints, but simply put, the muscles and ligaments need to learn how to sense when the joints are aligned versus when they are hyperextended. Then the muscles need to be trained to hold the joints in the “good place”, gaining control and strength through frequent practice. When this is practiced A LOT, it will become a skill that the child doesn’t need to think about, and will happen automatically.

We PT’s care about hypermobility because it can make it harder for children to sense what their bodies are doing as they move and harder to control their bodies. Part of our awareness of what our bodies are doing as we move comes from signals the joints send to our brain. Sometimes with hypermobile joints, these signals are decreased unless the joint is at its “end range” aka when it is fully extended. This causes children with hypermobility to lock out their joints while completing movements, which can lead to abnormal movement patterns in early life. Constantly moving with abnormal patterns on joints that are over extended can also cause joint injury in later life. 

The other big factor that can be tied to hypermobility we also look for and treat is decreased coordination. When there is less control over the joints, it is hard to put movements together. This is especially so for movements that require standing on one leg, pushing through the arms, and moving the limbs, head, and/or trunk in different ways at the same time.

If your child shows signs of joint hypermobility and you believe it is affecting their ability to move easily and with control, call and inquire about our free Discovery Visits, where we can screen your child to see if physical therapy would be an appropriate option for him or her. If you have any questions about this article, feel free to contact us at info@kidpt.com .