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Hello everybody. Welcome to June Live, chiro Secure. Look to the Children’s show. ChiroSecure, you are amazing for allowing us to pass this information on. Two other chiros out there and help us change the world. So we are excited. I’m here with my little pal Elizabeth and today we’re going to talk about school readiness.
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Do you, as a chiropractor, know how to do a quick screen to figure out if a little fiddle farts nervous system, yes their nervous system, is ready to start school? Now we’re talking here kindergarten first graders, but certainly if what you learn today. It’s not something you’re seeing, or something you are seeing, depending on which way you look at it with older children, and they’re struggling with school, with learning and attention behavior emotional modulation, etc.
Then you know where to go look. So with that said Elizabeth is going to take a little bit of a nap while we chit chat and she’ll be back to say goodbye. All right. So school readiness. Here’s the deal. This is the fun part is so much of what I’ve been teaching over the last 25, almost 30 years now. is now coming to fruition in the world of neurodevelopment and neuropsychology, neuropsychiatry, et cetera.
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And so we’re going to talk about some really quick ways to see if kiddos are ready to sit in a classroom and soak in all that information that’s supposed to be soaking in. All right, so here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to Here’s the order. It doesn’t have to necessarily be in a sequence, but these are the things you want to look at.
Jump, hop, skip, pick up sticks, and Superman pushes a wheelbarrow. There you have it. Yep, you’re going to look, jump, hop, skip, pick up sticks, and Superman pushes a wheelbarrow. What the heck does this all mean? These are some very simple screening things you can do with kiddos. And the other fun thing to do is if you belong to organizations like churches or preschools, or you work with teachers that have preschool programs I don’t know what to do.
different organizations that you’re involved in. You can go, you can volunteer if you, if it’s, you’re a bag of chips, volunteer to go in and say, okay, we’re going to have a field, fun field day with these preschoolers and kindergartners to be in first graders to be. And we’re going to just play some games and you can line them up and you can do these activities with them.
And right then and there, you’re going to be able to screen, five, 10, 15, 20 kiddos. Within a very short period of time and be able to pick up those that might start struggling when they start school days. So let’s go with jump. A few months back, we did a show just on jumping and hopping. Can these little fiddle farts jump off the ground?
So you want to see, can they come up five, six inches off the ground and jump forward? Okay. Bending their knees, flexing their ankles. bending their arms to get some momentum and can they jump forward? Can they do that three to five times, three to five jumps forward, not jumping up and down, straight up and down with their arms, this side like a pogo stick.
Okay. So that’s number one. They should be able to do that. Number two, can they hop? Can they hop on just their right leg? And just their left leg. And they, again, can they hop with momentum, hopping forward, hopping backward, hopping side to side? And can they do that, five or six hops? Again, bending their knees, flexing their ankles, giving some momentum.
Skip. Can they skip? Skip involves a thing called bilateral coordination or asymmetrical bilateral coordination. because the right leg and the left arm are moving forward at the same time. It’s this asymmetrical action. And that’s required for a lot of things, especially visual motor processing.
Visual motor is going to be involved in what reading and writing a lot of catching balls, being able to do activities in the jungle gyms at school, et cetera. So you’re skipping. Now, pick up sticks. Back in the day. Depending how old you are. I don’t even know if pick up sticks are a thing anymore. But anyway, you can get, we used to have these, literally, it’s a game we used to play, and they probably still have them at the dollar store.
But you can use either actual pick up sticks, you can use little skewers that you would put, use for barbecuing kebabs or something like that. Basically what you’re looking at is a pincer grasp. By about a year of age, we should be able to see a pincer grasp. Again, bilaterally. Right hand, left hand. You can also use things like Cheerios whatever to see if they can pick it up with a pincer grasp.
Right hand, left hand. Now, with the pickup sticks, Pick up sticks. You would put them in a bundle and let them fall. And however they landed, it’s like match, taking a bunch of matches and just letting them fall on top of each other. And this involves a little bit more hand, eye, fine motor coordination.
So this you’ll get a little bit more information is how, what’s the integrity of their fine motor system. So that’s your jump, hop, skip, and pick up sticks. Okay. More easy. Pass to do, doesn’t take you much time. Now, Superman pushes a wheelbarrow. Have them get up have them lying prone, get up into a Superman position.
Here’s the catch all. So we talked about taking a keen eye with jumping and hopping, right? Knees bent, ankles flexed, arms engaged, swinging them forward. You want to look at all these little these little neuromotor patterns to make sure they’re doing it properly in a proper neurological manner.
Same thing with Superman. Both arms and legs come up off the ground, head and shoulders come up off the ground. They’re able to maintain that position for at least 20 seconds. Now, The lat, the distal lateral third of the thigh should also come up off the ground and knees should stay straight and not bend.
Okay, I’ll say that one more time Superman position Arms and legs, head, chest, neck, I mean up off the ground Maintain the position for 20 seconds Distal third of the thigh up off the ground Legs straight Not bend in the knees. Okay. That’s a Superman position. Then wheelbarrow, the old fashioned wheelbarrow game that we used to play as kids and relay games, right?
Can they maintain a wheelbarrow position? That’s where the arm, the hands are flat and planted on the ground. They’ve got good proximal joint stability of the shoulders to able to hold themselves up. You grab their legs. They’re able to main, maintain a good trunk control, not hyperextension in the spine.
Okay. They’ve got good core trunk control. They’re not sagging like an old gray mare, right? And they can walk forward about eight to 10 feet and maintain that position. So what does this all mean? One, you’re looking at gross core stability. Gross motor control. Gross control needs to be on board before fine motor can come on board.
If they can’t, if they don’t have a good pincer grip, they can’t pick up sticks, if they don’t have good proximal joint stability when they’re doing the wheelbarrow walk, it’s going to be very hard for them to control their upper body movements for things like riding. And it becomes very difficult and laborious for them to do these tasks.
So when you’re doing these quick screens, and it literally can take you five minutes in the office to do this, do it before they’re adjusted. By the way, if you’re doing it in your office, do it before they’re adjusted. And it can be really fun to do a before and after gauge. What you want to look for is, A, can they do the task?
Are they able to carry it out or even attempt it? B, how easy, how accurately? and see what’s their fatigue factor. Can they do one or two jumps and then they just fatigue out or their their control, the way they carry it out gets sloppy because a kiddo is sitting in school from anywhere from three and a half, four hours in kindergarten up to six hours or longer.
Okay. They don’t just do the task one time. They’re doing it repetitively over the course of the day. We need to see is their nervous system able to handle that or does it fatigue out? Because that’s when they’re going to start. Their brain’s going to start to short circuit. They’re going to get frustrated.
They’re going to give up. And that’s the last thing we need is to compromise their confidence and being able to carry out a task. So can they do it? Can they even attempt to do it? How easy, how accurately. Can they do it? And what’s the effort it takes? Do they fatigue out? And this is a very quick screen.
The other thing you’re going to look for is when they’re doing these tasks, do they have, do they employ any overflow movement? What overflow movement is, it might be movement of the lips, their tongue hanging out. When they’re working with one hand to do pence or grasp, the other hand is moving as well.
These are called neurological soft signs. These shouldn’t be there by the age of 5 or 6 anymore. If they’re still employing those overflow movements, that means they’ve got weak neurological integrity. Okay? The other thing you can do is if you really want to go bonkers in your brain, you can do what I call boom booms or baby sharks, is where you can do sequential finger touching.
And that darn song, Baby Shark, da, that’ll get you crazy. But you can also see what their, how well they do sequential motor movements and fine motor movements. Again, they can’t do these tasks, they’re not neurologically ready to sit in a classroom all day. Because the same area of the brain that helps to carry out these tasks.
is the same area of the brain that is required for learning, attention, behavior, emotional regulation. If there are motor tasks that are on board, their ability to modulate and learn is not going to be sufficient. And then we get the kiddos that maybe appear to be ADD, ADHD, behavioral issues, etc. And they’re more inclined to be screened for those disorders and put on medications.
So as chiropractors, where do we fit into this whole scheme? If the brain isn’t receiving messages from the body, especially from the spinal muscles, joints, ligaments, etc., in a proper fashion, if there’s vertebral subluxations that are limiting movement within the vertebral column, this information is going to be blocked from getting up to the brain.
In turn, the brain can’t process this information and send down messages just to start controlling some of those motor movements in a proper fashion. So that’s where really the rubber hits the road with our incredible profession, allowing the brain to receive those messages from the body, and in turn, the brain to turn around and direct the messages and employ and engage those muscles.
So there you have it. There’s your five screen. And next month, we’re going to talk about what’s the role of primitive reflexes in learning attention and behavior. And what do we see with kiddos in the classroom that have a hard time learning? And what’s the connection with primitive reflexes. So that’ll be up in August, but until then, me and Elizabeth wish you a fabulous rest of July and ChiroSecure, again, thank you for allowing us to bring this information to the public and to help change more lives.
We’ll see you in August.
Today’s pediatrics show, Look to the Children, was brought to you by ChiroSecure.
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