The solution: protect your baby’s spine and “co-learn” healthy posture with your school-age child
Parents and teachers can learn how to protect young children from losing their natural alignment in the first place and work with older children in helping them—and themselves!—return to natural, relaxed and easy posture.
In light of the current epidemic of learning disabilities and the growing incidence of “unexplained” pain and health problems plaguing many children today, the fact that natural, healthy posture is thoroughly ignored represents a serious oversight. We currently have a good understanding of the necessity of a healthy diet, a moderate level of physical activity and a safe, nurturing environment to a child’s wellbeing. However, we have yet to understand the importance of inhabiting the body according to the natural human design, a factor that is essential to overall good health.
What is the natural human design?
Healthy babies, wherever they are born, come into the world with a capacity for a lifetime of easeful movement and pain-free living.This is true for all other species, as well. Unfortunately, in places that are more technologically-advanced, growing numbers of children are losing this capacity at younger and younger ages.
Most children in previous generations were far more easily supported by aligned bones than children are today. Although moreformal in dress and lifestyle, such children were more “at ease” in bodies that matched the “architectural” integrity required by the human design and provided the necessary elements for easy flexibility, relaxed, authentic strength and overall vibrancy and good health.
Not many years ago, children inhabited their bodies as intended by the human design. School-age children stood on two legs, that served as aligned pillars of support, just like the vertical posts of support that hold up buildings.
These days, it’s rare for children in America to have the support of aligned bones. A growing reliance on certain types of strollers, car seats and other sitting devices appears to disrupt the natural alignment of the legs, hips and pelvis and how they relate to each other, retraining muscles to develop differently than that intended by the natural human design.
Such disruption of a naturally aligned skeleton sets the stage for a host of problems such as the development of chronic pain and long-term consequences that only grow worse throughout one’s lifetime.
The key to the success of working with children in returning to natural, healthy posture, is for adults to learn alongside them. “Walk your talk” and “practice what you preach” are the actions that determine what kind of influence, if any, we will have on children’s behavior. They see very clearly when we are being hypocritical and setting a different standard for them than we set for ourselves, yet thrive with enthusiasm when they are included as equal partners in an adventure of self-discovery—the discovery of not just having a body, but being a body. Learning how to inhabit this body according to its natural design is as important to children as eating well, enjoying moderate physical activity and knowing how to have a healthy relationship with their minds and their emotions.
