Health and wellness for a growing child is top priority from the time they are born and into their years of development. Understanding how to improve your child’s posture can promote a healthy life and future for children. Physical therapists and chiropractors work with kids to create healthy habits from the start. They work to correct bad posture, and promote postural stability as they grow. To make sure your child is set up for life and can avoid some medical conditions, invest in chiropractic care for kids posture.
Natural Causes of Poor Posture
Muscles, bones, and joints are all affected by posture and natural influences. From medical conditions to injury, there are a range of factors that can contribute to body posture.
Babies
From birth, babies can experience position issues, injuries, and misalignments that throw off the body’s natural growth patterns. If left untreated from the beginning, these factors can lead to faulty posture, discomfort, pain, and even injury.
The birth process is one that puts high levels of strain on both baby and mother. The intense pressure when exiting the birth canal can cause issues with spinal health and alignment. The unnatural positions a baby goes through in the birth experience can often cause misalignment in the spine, neck, or pelvis. If not treated, the misalignments can cause discomfort in the joints and muscles as the baby grows.
Children
As children become teenagers, they go through rapid growth periods, start playing sports and activities, and begin to encounter a variety of new environmental factors. Healthy posture can make these transitions easy, but most people struggle with postural habits and health. As they grow, potentially experience injuries, or sustain misalignment, some kid’s bad posture can worsen.
Bad Postural Habits
Beyond environmental factors that can give strength to the body or cause issues, many children develop habits throughout their life that keep them from proper posture.
When misalignments in the spine, neck, or pelvis are left without treatment, they can lead to pain or discomfort. Our natural reaction is to use other muscles or joints to take pressure off the affected area. This overcompensation can strain new areas and perpetuate unhealthy posture position.
Laziness is also one of the most common factors that lead to bad habits. For example, slouching the upper body when sitting and losing strength in the back muscles to keep the spine in a straight position, all lead to issues with posture.
Improve Kids Posture
During fitness activities, leisure time, and even while sleeping, kids can be taking an active role in an improved posture. With chiropractic health insights and an intentional investment in good habits with posture, your child can promote their spinal health, mental health, and even help alleviate some health conditions they may face.
Posture Exercises
There are specific exercises and yoga poses children and adults can do to work towards healthier posture and improved spinal health. Through stretching and increasing the strength level of the muscles, your body can become better equipped to maintain a straight spine and pelvis.
Stretching yoga exercises for posture:
- Child’s pose
- Cat/Cow exercise
- Forward fold
- Downward facing dog
- High planks and side planks
- Pigeon pose
Get Support
Poor posture isn’t only due to the body, it can also be due to a lack of support from objects we use. From desk chairs to foot wear, make sure the choices you make for your child are ones that promote their health.
Shoes are one of the most important things that can keep the body standing tall. Get to know your child’s feet and get shoes that have the correct arch support and cushion they need. This can take pressure off certain points on the foot and help properly align the spine while they walk, run, and play.
Once your child knows how to sit up straight in their chair, make sure the chairs they use have the support their body needs. Get desk chairs with proper back support and make sure your kids know how to keep both feet firmly on the floor. This can keep the hips in line and reduce stress on the lower back.
Chiropractic Care
Chiropractic care clinics can helps improve kids posture through evaluations, exercises, and stretching. To promote spinal health and keep the back and neck healthy, go to the bone experts. Most bad posture habits are due to weakened muscles, strain or pressure, or misalignment in the body.
A chiropractic care professional will begin by evaluating your child’s spine and joints. This investigation can uncover some underlying issues leading to poor posture. They can pinpoint places of tension, detect misalignment in the vertebrae, neck, and pelvis, and locate places of muscle weakness.
Once issues are detected, a family chiropractor can use gentle manipulations to realign the body, releasing tension. They can then help children through exercises and techniques to build muscle strength and stretches to promote flexibility.
Benefits of Posture
The benefits of proper posture don’t end at the physical. Beyond the improvement to the body, children can also experience benefits in their mental health and emotional life. Posture can easily promote improvement in a variety of health areas for children, giving way to a better understanding of their own body wellness.
Some benefits of healthy posture include:
- Improved digestion
- Elevated mood
- Reduction of pressure on joints
- Decreased risk of spinal injury/pain
- Correct alignment of the spinal column
- Reduced headache or migraines
- Increased energy
- Better sleep
- Improved circulation of blood and oxygen
Your child will find great benefits in improving their body posture. While many people don’t pay much attention to how they sit in a chair or how they stand on the floor, being intentional about our posture can create major changes to our lives. When children are set up with proper spinal alignment and taught exercises to maintain their posture, they have the tools to play an active role in their overall health, mood, and mental happiness. Through better sleeping patterns, proper digestion, reduced back and neck pain, and improved mental health, kids can spend more time enjoying childhood and grow into a happy and healthy future.
