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Hello everybody, it’s Dr. B and Elizabeth here for our March Madness, and we’re gonna be hopping down the bunny trail hip hoppity. Okay. Won’t sing. I love to sing, but I don’t sing well, but anyway, so good morning, America, or wherever you are, and we are going to have some fun today, because I want to take you through just a couple key milestones that you should be aware of in order to assess a little fiddle fart’s pastoral integrity.
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And so we’re going to do that by hopping down the bunny trail. ChiroSecure, thank you so much for giving us this opportunity. We are going to dodge out and go to some slides and have some fun as we hop along. So many of you, Elizabeth is going to take a nap just for a few minutes. So many of you may feel like this bunny, right?
When it did, when you’re coming to What do I do about milestones? And what do they mean? And what do I look for? And if a kiddo isn’t meeting it, what do I do? And you’ve got this, your exasperated look on your face, like this bunny that’s hopping through the air. Or maybe it’s just a bunny hopping through the air.
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Anyway, nevertheless, let’s have some fun today and hop down that bunny trail. And like I said, ChiroSecure, you’re amazing for giving us this opportunity to educate and enlighten the world about the benefits of chiropractic. And why these little fiddle farts should be under chiropractic care. So first of all, last month, if we back up, if we rewind and go back and do listen to the broadcast from last month, that we’re going to set some paradigm for you, because we talked about bellies and bums.
We talked about some belly time and some different stages of tummy time that you want to be mindful of and what you’re taking a keen eye to, if that little fiddle fart is meeting those needs. Postural knees or not. And we talked about bum time. So now we’re going to fast forward a little bit. And this kind of dovetails into what we did last month.
So these are four key locomotor patterns that you want to be mindful of. Are these kiddos progressing through these stages? And again, this is how you build a milestone practice. You educate parents and caregivers that these are key things. We want to make sure that little foot of fart is progressing and moving.
And if they have vertebral subluxations, they might not be able to get in these neuromotor patterns. Keyword, neuromotor, brain building, developmental patterns, movement patterns in order to foster optimum brain development. These four, we go through what we call the FISH. Or spinal patterning.
Again, go back to last broadcast when we talked about tummy time. And this is a lot of belly time, extension time, building vestibular input, proprioceptive input to the brain. But we need to be free of vertebral subluxations in the spine in order to get into those patterns. Then we go into this push pattern, four or five ish months, that, that little bit of farts on the belly.
But pushing themselves up. And then we go to these homolateral crawl patterns and these contralateral crawl patterns. So you want to be mindful. Are they moving through these stages and hitting these milestones? Because this is going to be a precursor to what we’re going to talk about now and having that core tone.
It’s all about having that core tone in order now to, to progress developmentally. And we’re specifically going to talk about. Jumping and Hopping today in honor of our March Madness and Easter fun. These four patterns first, and then we’re going to go to jumping. Age two or three ish, we’re going to start to see that little fiddle fart being able to jump both feet off the ground.
What do they need to do to get to that point? They need to be able to be walking, running, and navigating steps. Even if it’s just one foot at a time, navigating steps, those things come before they’re going to start jumping. There’s a thing called gravitational insecurity. That means we don’t like our feet leaving the ground, especially both feet at the same time.
That is going to be Really, if we have poor vestibular tone, so rewind, especially back to last month when we talked about belly time and coming up into extension head at 45 degrees and then 90 degrees and being able to be up and look around. That is a ton of vestibular development. If that vestibular vision is not up to par, okay, that’s movement of our head against gravity like their feet leaving the ground.
What you may see as chiropractors out there, if you do side posture on a pelvic bench they might not want to get in a side posture because their feet are coming up off the floor and that is alarming to the brain. So they’re definitely not going to want to get into these stages of jumping. So moral of the story, make sure they’re adjusted.
Cranial sacral therapy can be huge in this arena. Make sure that vestibular tone’s up to par. You may start, if they’re not jumping, they’re not wanting both feet off the ground, you might start with either. Simple, linear rocking over a physio ball, just A to P rocking and getting that vestibular tone up to par.
Then also get them on belly time and playing games building Legos, doing puzzles or whatever to get that vestibular tone up to par. Then to make sure they’re able to navigate stairs one foot at a time, and then they’re jumping. Now. Phases of jumping. I want you to take a keen eye to biomechanics here.
One, we need to make sure that the ankles are not subluxated. So you might have to do some extremity work because initially jumping is going to be a pogo stick. They’re just up and down. Arms aren’t moving. Arms are to the side. They’re jumping flat footed up. Okay. And they’re landing flat footed to have a wider broad surface area when they land because they’re more comfortable.
Then they should progress to where The arms, the shoulders come up when they’re jumping and arms come up in front of them. And you’re going to start to get some movement, some flexion and then ankles to get like a springboard off the ground. So initially you start with that peg leg landing with a flat foot arms are stiff to the side, but we should get progressive developmental movement.
If the core, is up to par, is developmentally okay. That means we have good core trunk control, like we talked about last episode, because if they don’t have good postural control, and if they’re subluxated and that gross motor hasn’t come on board, they’re not going to want to go through these phases of jumping.
They might jump, but they might be in a very premature level of jumping meaning. Both feet come up, they come down flat footed. Arms aren’t moving, they’re more stiff to the side. Rather than arms being able to be in front of them, come down in a more springboard landing fashion. Ankles are flexed, hips are flexed, and they move smoothly.
When they come out of that jump, then they can just take off and start walking from there. Okay, so there’s phases of jumping we need to look for. Now, by age four or five ish We start hopping. That means they can withstand gravitation on one leg withstand the effects of gravity and be on one leg.
Things you can do to start them progressing from jumping on both feet to hopping are things like I throwing pillows on the floor, so that they have to walk on an uneven surface. Rolling out rolls of bubble wrap, the bigger bubbles of bubble wrap, and have them navigate on these uneven surfaces walking wise.
or even hop or jumping wise, getting them used to these unstable surfaces, walking on the sand walking on uneven grass, getting them used to one foot being up off the ground at a time on an unstable surface. Then their brain can be more compatible with a hopping mode. Again, with hopping, you’re going to go through the stages, developmental, biomechanical stages of hopping like we did jumping.
Initially, it’s going to be more flat footed, one foot off at a time. They’re landing more flat footed. They don’t have flexion at the ankles. They’re more guarded with their arms because their brain is getting used to this developmental stage. They progress from this more stiff, peg leg, pogo stick hopping to one where they come down, they have more flexion of the ankles, they come up on their toes, their arms are now swinging through the motion as they come up as well, and they’re not so stiff shoulder, stiff shoulder like.
We want to have a keen eye. to these biomechanical patterns as they progress and then develop their core tone. If they missed belly time and bum time, like we talked about last episode, they are not going to want to go through these progressive stages of jumping or hopping. That is key to you. That you need to go backwards and develop more core tone in order for them to do these these milestones in the proper way.
Now, it’s really interesting. The Waldorf School of thought is a child doesn’t have neurological readiness. They’re not ready to enter school. Not by age, but by one of the, one of the criteria is by motor movement patterns. And they look at how well do they progress through these developmental motor milestones.
Jumping and hopping are a couple of those milestones. They look at for neurological readiness to engage in school. So here’s another moral in my story. If you want to foster a milestone practice and build your practice, volunteer, go to churches, go to preschools and do some neurological or motor assessments to determine is that little fiddle fart potentially ready and able to thrive in a school environment, in an academic environment.
So why are we looking at motor milestones? Because the brain is directing movement and postural stability. The areas of the brain that we need for learning attention, focus, and behavior, they’re the ones that are driving this posture control. If they don’t have good motor control, their brain is probably not ready to engage in an academic setting.
So that’s where you come in as the life changing chiropractic facilitation that you have. is that you can offer to look at do they have vertebral subluxations that are hanging up that core control and that posture control in order to foster those motor movement patterns. One of the things you want to look at too, again we talked about gravitational insecurity, do they not like their feet off the ground?
Put them on a physio ball. Put them on an unstable surface and see if they can weight shift from side to side and have one of those feet, one of their feet come off the ground and maintain their posture control. This little fiddle fart’s got good posture control, but if they’re toppling over, if they cannot be on a physio ball, shift their weight.
maintain posture control and grab for a toy, then they’re not ready to really engage in a academic setting in a successful manner. These are the things that you want to start to employ and exercises you want to start to employ. You, a couple of the things you can do is sidewalk chalk. Duct tape, masking tape, all those things are fun ways to put together a sensory, motor, postural maze, so to speak, that they can have fun with, especially in the spring and summertime, where they can do hopscotch, they can do hopping.
These little pads are like leapfrog plat pads. So they can start here with both feet. Then they can hop on one foot. They can go through these and where they have to jump on both feet from pad to pad. You can set up hula hoops and they have to jump from hula hoop to hula hoop, forward, backwards, side to side, so you might have a four hula hoops in a row.
Or you can make boxes out of duct tape and they have to jump from one box to the other box, front, back, sideways. By the age of five, that little fiddle fart should be able to jump on, hop on one foot. forward, backward, and side to side. So these are key things that you want to look at in order to, again, determine neurological readiness, especially for the academic setting.
So gross before fine. Gross motor, core control, the tree trunk matures and comes on board before fine motor control. If they’re not able to do these activities, More than likely, they’re going to have trouble with fine motor control, like buttoning, lacing up shoes, holding a pencil for fine motor control, and these are things that are going to be very exhausting and laborious for them in a classroom setting.
You can take a keen eye. Do they have good core control? Are they ready for neurological readiness for school? Are that, is that going to prepare them to be able to do fine motor activities like speech, oral motor, writing visual motor, being able to read and track? If they don’t have good Core Control Board, those fine motor abilities are going to be lacking.
They’re going to be less successful and ready for the school paradigm. More on that next month. So hopefully this gives you some key things to look forward to. Two things I want you to look for. Can they jump? Can they hop? Can they do it with good mechanics? If they can’t, you’ve got some work to do. Again, adjust the spine, keep the core in line, and you’re ready to ready to foster good learning environment, academic, social, and motor learning for a successful child.
So again, ChiroSecure, thank you for all you do, and next month Elizabeth and I will be back, with some more key motor stone, mile motor stones for you to know about. Until then, have an amazing March.
Today’s pediatrics show Look To the Children, was brought to you by ChiroSecure.
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