A physiotherapist can be considered as the heart of an innovative educational approach whereby the therapist can help to maximise the potential of children with profound and multiple learning difficulties.
Physiotherapy can help your child diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Global Developmental delay (GDD), cerebral palsy, genetic disorders acquired physical dissabilities. Our therapist can assist your child discover his or her gross motor skills, such as sitting, crawling, standing, walking, kicking a ball, and jumping.
Physiotherapy is often the first step in helping kids with cerebral palsy. It can help improve motor skills and can prevent movement problems from getting worse over time. Children with milder cases of CP may only require some physiotherapy to treat their condition.
Our physiotherapist is here to help your child who may have difficulty with functional movement, poor balance, and challenges moving through their environment successfully.
After an assessment, the physiotherapist will design and implement a program that will help to improve the individual child’s areas of need and increase overall function and participation.
Role of Physiotherapist in Autism Spectrum Disorder
Many of us
wondering how does an autistic child benefit from physiotherapy. Physiotherapy
helps with the development, rehabilitation and improvement of movement skills
and performance. Recent research has
stated that many children with autism also struggle with gross motor skills,
low tone, gait abnormalities and motor planning.
1. Gross motor skills
Defined as large movements using the arms, legs, torso and feet. Other
reasons that children with autism may be delayed in their gross motor skills
include decreased attention or play skills and tactile sensitivities.
Physiotherapist works on gross motor skills such as rolling, sitting, standing, walking and running as well as improvement in flexibility, strength and endurance. Physiotherapist help the child to learn effective movement patterns, improve balance and coordination through functional play.
2. Low tone
Tone is described as the amount of tension in muscles at rest. Children
with autism often have tone that is lower than average. A child who has low
tone can result in
–
balance
concerns
–
poor
body awareness
–
requires
more effort for simple tasks
Physiotherapist works on strengthening exercise, maintains a good posture and exercises such as climbing, jumping and any exercises that keeps the body and muscles engaged.
3. Gait abnormalities
Many children with autism are prone to walking abnormalities, the most
common being toe walking. This defined as walking up on the toes with no true
heel contact with the floor. Toe walking can cause
–
Decreased
endurance
–
Decreased
balance
–
Altered
biomechanics
–
Tight
calf muscles
–
Weakness
in the front of leg muscles
Physiotherapist can help to stretch the shortened muscles or strengthen weak muscles while working on overall biomechanics.
4. Motor planning
Motor planning is the term used to describe the brains capacity to
understand a motor action, figure out how to do it, involve the correct muscles
or body parts and execute the activity.
Physiotherapist help to improve with specific training and goal setting with both the parent and the child.
Physiotherapy
is often used in conjunction with other therapies such as occupational therapy,
speech language therapy and behavior therapy.
A few examples:
If a
child is learning how to write and is slouching at the table, it can be a sign
of poor core strength. A physiotherapist can help with the core strength while
occupational therapist teaches writing.
A child who has difficulty in holding
a pencil in a proper grip due to weakness of hand muscles and poor gripping
strength. A physiotherapist focus on strengthening exercises for hand muscles
while occupational therapist teaches the child to hold the pencil in a proper
grip.
.
A moderate autistic child
demonstrates tip toe walking whenever the child has difficulty in regulate the
emotions causes the child to have muscle tightness at the calf region due to
frequent tip toe walking.
Physiotherapist works on stretching
exercise to improve muscle flexibility and occupational therapist works on
sensory integration activities to help regulate the child emotions. Even the
behaviour therapist plays role in controlling the behaviour/emotions.
A
physiotherapist has to be very creative to design fun motor skill activities
that speak to the child and incorporate therapy goals. A child’s way of bonding
and learning is through play. As a physiotherapist working with kids lots of
toys and creative ideas makes the therapy work. It takes patience and a
creative mind to help the kids reach their full potential.
Kavita
Nalla Thamby
Senior
physiotherapist at The Play project
Mahavidya.
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