Minds in Bloom is once again honored to welcome guest blogger Loren Shlaes, a registered pediatric occupational therapist and a regular contributor to the special needs blog at Pediastaff (where this post is also being published). This is the second in a series of posts from Loren about how to help students who may be challenged with attention, sensory, or other issues be successful in the classroom. Most likely, you have at least a few students with these challenges every year, but even if you don’t, the information in these posts is relevant to all teachers.
This second post is all about why it is so very important that children sit properly. It turns out there is much more to sitting than I had ever imagined!
Posture is Critical to Learning and Attention
Tips for Helping Children Sit Up Straight
- Frequent movement breaks: Movement fires the nerve in the inner ear that tells the muscles to extend strongly against gravity and the brain to alert itself to the environment.
- Make sure the children’s feet are resting flat on the floor: There is a mechanism that sends a postural signal to the spine to extend upward when there is pressure on the bottom of the feet.
- Teach children to make sure that their sitting bones are pointing straight down while they are in their chairs: Do you know where your sitting bones are? Put your hand between yourself and the chair, and feel the large, pointy bone in your pelvis that protrudes downwards. When the feet are firmly touching the floor and the sitting bones are pointing directly downwards in the chair, a strong postural signal is sent up the spine.
Unfortunately, many school chairs are designed and constructed so that the chairs are easy to stack and store, rather than with the children’s comfort and posture as a first priority. It is actually difficult to sit in these chairs correctly. Sometimes an easy fix to this is to stick a couple of paperback books under the chair’s hind legs.
Managing Circle Time
Don’t let children W sit
Minds in Bloom would also like to thank PediaStaff for collaborating with Loren to make this series possible. PediaStaff places pediatric therapists in schools, clinics, and hospitals throughout the country. In addition to their highly informative blog, they also have a huge Pinterest presence with over a hundred boards pertaining to education, child rearing, special needs, and various kinds of therapies. This post can also be viewed on the PediaStaff blog.
Did you learn something new from Loren? Do you have ideas to add? Please comment.