Let Me Give You Some Feedback...

Nerd ALERT... I am going to do a bit of a dive into something and I'm going to geek out a bit as I do it because I find this so interesting. I don't know if you will, but please hang in there. This is cool stuff. Its kind of like in 7th grade when they made me learn Christmas carols in Spanish. I never thought I'd use that but its come in handy since I work with children. So here we go.

It takes a lot to learn a new skill. Instruction are verbally given. You have to hear them and the correct part of the brain has to absorb it and understand it. Then that cue is directed from the brain down the spinal cord to nerves that take the instruction to muscles. Nerves innervate the muscles and cause them to contract and perform the action.

As you can see there is a lot of room for the system to break down. What if you cannot hear? What if you cannot understand what was said? What if you've had a spinal cord injury and your spinal cord is severed and the message cannot get to the muscles? What if there has been damage to the nerves and muscles and they cannot react? Its a lot going and everything has to work in unison to make an action happen.

And here's another rub... that chain of events can take a long time. Not hours, but in the scheme of things it can take a long time. An example is when I'm at the baseball game and a fly ball is hit in my direction in the stands. My husband may yell, "Watch out!" but I have to hear him, find the ball in the air and decide which way to move. There's a good chance I don't make it out of the way because it took too long for me to react.

This is where physical therapy comes into play. (Good, I'm glad you're getting to the point, Lisa) I use my hands to "facilitate" my client's muscles to do what I want. I do that using a shorter and faster feedback loop. It starts with touching the correct muscles which sends a signal to the spinal cord and right back to the muscle. A good example of this is when you touch a hot stove, you immediately retract your hand without thinking and before any pain really starts.

I use my hands to help facilitate gross motor skills with babies for many reasons but a big one is that babies don't understand verbal commands. Telling a baby with torticollis to look the other direction doesn't work. Nor can you explain walking to a one year old. I use my hands to tell their muscles what I need them to do. This is why if you've ever worked with me that I do not teach children to walk by holding their hands. I give input to the leg and hip and core muscles that need to work and those muscles respond. This is also why I do not recommend containers like sit-in walkers, exersaucers, and baby seats. These containers give full support to the joints and no input to muscles to activate. That's why PTs will tell you that these containers do not help your child sit and walk.

Of course many many children have developed gross motor skills without PT. A typically developing neuromuscular system moves through age appropriate skills without external facilitation. It's a miracle, hence my need to marvel in it like a big science nerd. But sometimes there's a glitch in the system and we need just a little extra help to straighten it all out. Maybe our environment (possibly something in utero or otherwise) can cause just a tiny fault in the system. That's when you may need a PT to do a little re-wiring and get things going. Thanks for following along. Here's to more purposeful play to help gross motor skills happen on time.