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Pediatric Physiotherapy
What is a Pediatric Physiotherapist?
A pediatric physiotherapist treats babies/children with a wide range of difficulties and conditions, which include motor development delay, abnormal muscle tone, neurological or orthopedic conditions and also sensory integrative problems.
Children have a natural desire to move, explore, learn and grow. While processing information in the brain occurs automatically for most, for some children it can be faulty because of genetic problems or a premature or traumatic birth. This can lead to developmental delay, behaviour issues, learning problems and sensory dysfunction.
How can a Body Group Pediatric Physiotherapist help your Child?
Our first step is to carry out a comprehensive assessment of your child's general development (including their motor and sensory status).
At The Body Group, our pediatric therapist offers Bobath Neurodevelopment and Sensory Integrative Therapy. Both these breakthrough therapies will help your child function better, by normalizing their movement patterns. Bobath's approach influences muscle tone, perception, attention and coordination of normal movements; this can be done during everyday functional activities. Sensory Integrative Therapy involves full body movements that provide vestibular (movement and standing still), proprioceptive (movement and body position) and tactile stimulation.
Our pediatric physiotherapist will provide you with everyday specific exercises, ideas and advice on how to handle your child, as well as advice on appropriate shoes, toys and baby equipment.
Our approach is holistic and practical for parents, and experience has shown an early start can help to identify problems before they become habits. We treat babies and children from 0-2 years, and each session lasts between 45 and 60 minutes.
What is Sensory Integration?
Sensory Integration is the brain's ability to organize the sensory information we receive from both our body and the environment. As well as our five senses - touch, smell, taste, vision and hearing - we have a proprioceptive system which provides us with information about our body position and movement, and the vestibular system, which lets us know whether we are stationary or moving. These sensory systems work independently and as a team to accomplish complex tasks. When the brain processes these sensory messages poorly, motor development, language and behaviour can all be compromised.
From birth to around age seven, the brain is primarily a sensory processing machine. It locates, sorts and organizes all sensations; the child senses things and moves his body in relation to them. These years are known as those of sensory-motor development. As a child grows, the brain's development of cognitive and social functions is based upon an appropriate foundation of sensory-motor processing.
Examples of children who may have sensory integration problems include: some premature babies who have spent time in the NICU. Exposure to too much stimulation (such as light, sound, and touch) can cause a breakdown in sensory systems and impair sensory integration. Another example are babies born by cesarean section: because the baby does not have to go through the birth canal, he/she misses the first struggle with the proprioceptive (deep pressure) and tactile systems. As a result, these children may sometimes have problems with body awareness, and can be hyper- or hyporeactive to both movement and touch.
When should you book a check-up?
Book a check-up if your baby:
- was premature
- doesn't like to be touched or is irritable
- has poor eye contact, doesn't follow objects with the eyes
- dislikes lying on his/her tummy
- cries a lot, more than three hours a day
- is not hitting his/her milestones, and has difficulties with transitions or changes
- has Downs Syndrome
- is very floppy or stiff
- turns his/her head/body only to one side, prefers generally one side
- doesn't react when spoken too, or to loud noise or banging doors