What is Scoliosis? Scoliosis is the curving and turning of the spines in children and adolescents. It’s most common form is ‘idiopathic scoliosis’ which means we are not sure why it occurs. It is also common in children with neuromuscular disorders such as cerebral palsy. Congenital...
Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) impacts approximately 5% of our population. This means about 1 child in every class is affected. DCD describes children who are significantly clumsy, fall a lot and struggle with basic motor skills. It does not include children whose condition can be...
What is Muscle tone? Muscle tone refers to the amount of underlying tension in a muscle. It describes how much tension is in a muscle when it is relaxed. What happens when it is low tone? In children, low muscle tone is used to describe when an infant...
When we have new born babies we hear a lot about tummy time, but why is it so important? And how much tummy time should our babies do? Why is it important? Lying on tummy's is important for babies as it helps to develop neck, back, hip...
Play is something that children do, and they do it freely, by choice. Most children don’t require much coercion to get them to participate in a playful activity. Children learn through play experiences – interacting with various objects, surroundings and people. You have probably heard...
Plagiocephaly Plagiocephaly is a condition that impacts newborns through to babies approximately 8 months of age. It is sometimes known as flat head syndrome. Babies are born with softened heads; this means that if they spend too much time lying on one side of their head...
Questions about when children should start wearing shoes and what type of shoes are frequent questions asked of physiotherapists. There is no set age as to when your child should start wearing hard soled shoes. It is actually more to do with when your child...
Posture in a Tech Dominated World It is natural for all of us to be worried about the development of our children’s posture. We have all heard that too much X-Box/PlayStation, Iphone/Ipad and computer use can cause detrimental effects on our children’s posture. However, in todays...
What is Cerebral Palsy? Cerebral Palsy is a group of neurological disorders ranging from mild severity to severe severity that impacts children early in life resulting in movement disorders. Movement disorders can impact a child’s ability to participate in both gross and fine motor activities. Gross motor skills involve things such as walking, jumping...
Participation in sport is important in a child's overall development. It assists in acquiring gross motor skills such as running, jumping, hopping and throwing. It also helps with hand eye co-ordination with the greatest benefits from ball and racquet sports such as tennis, basketball, soccer and football. Children also benefit...