Welcome to pediatricOT!

Welcome! I'm an occupational therapist living and practicing in New York. I love what I do and I love to talk about and write about my work. You can leave questions for me about your child in the comments section.

Today, I want to share something that I tell all of the parents of the children I treat. Much has been written about prescribing sensory diets for children, and I could get quite clinical about the reasoning behind choosing different activities to achieve different behavioral outcomes. But here is a simple thing that everyone should do: make sure that your children play outside every day.

I was raised just outside the city limits of Chicago and am old enough to recall when there was still a good bit of prairie surrounding our neighborhood before it was developed. Soon after I learned to walk and talk, I was free to roam around the neighborhood, playing jump rope, hopscotch, tag, statues, and red rover with the other children on our block. When we were about seven, my friends and I all got bicycles, and we took off in packs. We went to one of the many parks in our town, or we went to the empty lots behind the golf ball factory looking for golf balls, or we went to the dime store on the little shopping street nearby and bought comic books and candy. Our parents didn't have to worry about our safety and they never tried to curtail our activities. Every day in the summer and on the weekends during the school year, our mothers let us out the back door after breakfast and expected us home sometime before dinner.

Now I live in New York City, and this opportunity for young children to operate with such a large degree of autonomy and freedom simply doesn't exist. As far as I can tell, most of the children I treat in my practice rarely get to play outside on any regular basis. This has the effect of delaying the development of their gross motor coordination and their core strength, and aside from the inability to bounce a ball or do a jumping jack, it affects their postural control, which in turn makes it hard for them to sit still for long periods and to regulate their behavior. I have almost never seen a child who was born and raised in Manhattan hit anything close to age appropriate gross motor skills acquisition. No wonder there is an epidemic of school related issues these days!

Now that the weather is getting better, it's important to take your children outside every day. Take them to the park, put them on the swings and slide and jungle gym, let them climb on the rocks, play tag with them, teach them how to jump rope and play hopscotch. It's more than mere fun. It's necessary to help the body to support the mind and spirit for learning and for behavior. If your child has a hard time sitting still in school, try making sure that he or she has an opportunity for intense movement before school starts. Take him to the playground and let him play for twenty minutes before drop off. Or arrange for your child to walk at least partway to school.

Last year I evaluated a little boy who was almost three years delayed in his gross motor development, and I suggested that he be taken to the park near his home every day. I ran into his father a few months later, who told me that this simple prescription had made a huge change in the child's behavior. He was more confident, since his balance and strength were better, and he could sit and focus for much longer periods. Also, he and his dad, who was taking him most of the time, had become much closer and had improved their often rocky relationship by having so much happy play together.