W-Sitting Picasso
A few days ago a friend came up to me in music class and asked “so, what’s with the w-sitting?”
She recently read an article in a parenting magazine that said w-sitting was harmful to the hips and knees and limits trunk development. Of her 2 year old twins one was a frequent w-sitter and now my friend was making herself NUTS trying to fix her feet all day long! Read more
Joni Daichman, MSPT, Tracy Cueli-Dutil, DPT and Roberto Tuchman, M.D.
Paper presented at the Geneva Centre Internal Symposium on Autism, Toronto, Canada (October 2002)
There has been an increased interest in the relationship between motor function, cognition, attention, language development and social communication disorders over the last few years.(Gillberg 1998; Landgren, Kjellman et al. 1998; Kadesjo and Gillberg 1999) The purpose of this brief report is to review the sensorimotor system as it applies to autism and related disorders. In addition we will discuss and highlight the motor clinical findings in children with autism and related disorders and provide preliminary data on our own clinical experience. Read more
Originally published in Autism Spectrum, Winter 2005
Movement is an integral part of our social, emotional, and physical lives. A 4-month old excitedly kicks her arms and legs in response to the funny face dad makes, so he does it again. An 8-month old will crawl to retrieve her favorite rattle, shake it to hear the sound it makes, and then look at mom to share the experience with her. An 18 month-old takes moms hand, walks her to the kitchen, and says “juice” while pointing to the refrigerator. As a child grows, the length and complexity of movement sequences become more sophisticated. Read more
The destruction in Haiti made me think about how children with autism and other disabilities are coping and surviving. I found the following article on a center for children in Haiti with developmental disabilities. The work they had done is so admirable, but now they are going to be starting over again.