Category Archives: Paediatrics

Unstructured Play: Summer Activities for Kids + Families!

Summer can be a challenging time for parents. With the little ones at home on summer vacation, they may still be working regular hours. For stay-at-home parents having children at home during the day from school can also be a challenge. Summer time can throw off the routine. It can be easy to rely on screen time too keep kids occupied while you try to get things done around the home. It can be even more difficult to pry kids from their screens and encourage active play.

Play involving different challenges is an amazing tool to not only keep kids occupied. Structured, and unstructured play are important for a few reasons. Play and activities help with a Child’s:

  • Concentration – a great time to work on a subject that challenges you child is after play and exercise!
  • Balance and Propioception
  • Gross Motor Skills and Coorodination
  • Problem Solving
  • Sleep
Growing pains getting treated at oakville Physio, massage and foot clinic
Help your little one over the summer with Play!

Here at Oakville’s Palermo Physiotherapy and Wellness Centre, we treat the whole family! Our Oakville Physiotherapists, Chiropodist (foot clinic), Massage Therapists, and Yoga Therapists work with babies, children, young adults, adults, and older adults. Part of our treatment for our young Patients often involves exercises in the form of play!

Unstructured Play

We’ve put this first because unstructured play is an important part of growth and development.  It allows children to use their imagination, sort through socialization.

Get to the Park!

Taking a trip to the playground using a local path sounds simple but can allow for imaginative play. This includes going on “missions” or adventures. The playground can be anything, a pirate ship, space ship or even a castle! Ask probing questions and encourage imaginative thought! Your adventure can even carry into writing a short story or a drawing later in the day.

Build a Fort

Appliance boxes can be great fun to crouch into, crawl around in and even make a fort in the yard. Crouching and crawling to build this fort, pushing and pulling, all these actions work on the strengthen and coordination of your little ones.  In weather that may be too hot setting up some chairs, couches and blankets can be great fun!

Sprinkler

Kill 2 birds with one stone. It’s been a dry summer here in Oakville and some of our lawns have suffered. Set up a sprinkler and make your own splash-pad! The sprinkler lets kids cool off as well play. Run through the falling water and away from it. Jump or step over the sprinkler or a stream of water (try forwards and backwards), and duck down under the water.

Flip flops by an Oakville pool. Keep feet wart free with foot clinic and chiropodist help in oakville.
You don’t need a pool to cool off in Oakville!

Grab Bag of Fun

Pull out a box of goodies and let the kids have at it. Some ideas for this box:

  • Old costumes
  • Fun hats
  • Sports balls
  • Dollar store fun
  • Pool Noodles
  • Skipping ropes
  • Sidewalk Chalk
  • Bean Bags
  • Bubbles!

Keep older children busy and give them some responsibility to organize this play. Listen to their suggestions and get them involved in the play.

Stay tuned for some specific games and activities from an Oakville Physiotherapist. These activities will challenge your little ones without them knowing!

Feet showing oakville foot clinic

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It’s Tummy Time!

Tummy time is when you baby plays on his or her tummy (or front). Tummy time should start when your baby is born and should happen everyday. When awake, babies need tummy time! With the “back to sleep” campaign that encourages parents to place their babies on their backs to sleep, infants have been spending less time on their fronts. This is also a side effect of transferable carriers that allows parents to easily move their baby from stroller, to car, to home. When you transfer your baby from one position to another, carry your baby, or wear your baby they are forced to work and strengthen stabilizing musculature against gravity and against forces created through position changes. Babies who get transferred using primarily carriers have less opportunity for this.

Benefits of Tummy Time:
  • It helps make the neck, arms and muscles of the body stronger

    Boy growing shoing physio to kids, massage, foot clinic, wart treatment
    Tummy time helps with development!
  • It helps your baby practice movements that are needed to be able to progress to rolling, sitting, and crawling
  • It allows your baby to look around and experience it’s environment
  • It helps decrease the risk of your baby developing plagiocephaly or prevents it from progressing
Tummy Time Tips!

It can be easy for parents to avoid tummy time with their little ones or cut it short because their baby voices some displeasure. Try these tips to help make tummy time a more fun experience for baby (and parents).

  • Support baby with a small rolled towel or cushion under the chest
  • Progress the time your baby spends on their tummy at one time and repeat frequently during the day.
  • Play games like peek-a-book or make funny faces
  • Play with special / different toys or mirrors
  • Read a book with your baby
  • If your baby is already fussy, tired, or hungry
  • Try putting your baby in different positions for tummy time, such as across your knees / lap and laying on your chest while you lay down

Paediatric Physiotherapy in Oakville, massage yoga, foot specialist

If you need help with tummy time ideas , progressions or positioning for your baby a Physiotherapist with a special interest in Pediatric Physio can help. At our North Oakville Physiotherapy clinic our Physios see many babies and children who benefit from some small pointers for parents to work on with them at home.

 

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Physio for Treating Infants with Torticollis

Yes! We treat people of all ages at our Oakville Physio, Massage, Chiropody and Yoga Therapy Clinic. That includes children and infants. Adult patients are often surprised when they see a little one leaving their Physiotherapy appointment, not realizing that Physiotherapy can be beneficial even for little ones. In Private Practice Physiotherapy we have been seeing an increase in infants presenting with Torticollis. Congential muscular torticollis (CMT) and postural torticollis are the most common.

What is Torticollis?

Torticollis is due to tightness in one a neck muscle that connects from just behind the ear to the collarbone and sternum. When it is tight it causes the head to tilt to the side and rotate, the neck may have limited movement, and there may even be a small bump on the side of the neck.

Babies born with torticollis may also develop flatness on one side of the head called positional plageocephaly from sleeping with the head turned to one side more often. While not inherently problematic this asymmetry and decreased mobility can affect the delelopment of the child as it limits an infants ability to turn their head to see, hear and interact with the environment around it. This is all key to development. In the long term, torticollis may lead to delayed gross-motor development, delayed spatial awareness, delayed fine-motor skills, and delayed cognitive development.

What Causes Torticollis in Infants?

Congentical muscular torticollis in infants is thought to be caused by a variety of reasons including a traumatic birth an intrauterine positioning. Positional or acquired torticollis has increased in recent years and is though to be correlated with the “back to sleep” campaign that encourages parents to place their infants on their backs to sleep. Babies are spending more time on their backs and in carriers in positions that often re-enforce this position. There is less variety in positioning and therefore less novel input for strengthening and mobility.

What is the Treatment for Infant Torticollis

Regardless of the patient’s age, Physiotherapy is the primary treatment for all forms of

Physio for babies for torticollis
Physio treatment for Infant Torticollis

torticollis. Physiotherapists provide treatment to help address the impairments caused by torticollis. This includes tight and weak muscles. Early recognition and treatment of torticollis in infants results in the best outcomes.

The Physiotherapist will work with a child’s Paediatrician / family doctor as well as the parent or guardian to develop and work towards agreed upon goals for the child. These individualized treatment goals may include treatment and exercises to:

  • Strengthen neck muscles
  • Correct muscle imbalances
  • Gain pain-free movement (range of motion)
  • Improve postural control and symmetry
  • Improve the body’s alignment by easing muscle tension

These goals may be achieved with your Physiotherapist through stretching, strengthening, massage, positioning, taping, and a home exercise program. If not treated, torticollis can become a permanent condition.

If you have concerns regarding torticollis and your baby it is important to recognize and treat as soon as possible. Approach your family doctor or paediatrician with your concerns. 

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