Physically Superb

Early Learning Teaching Your Child - Other Topics
21

Doman 's suggestion is really effective- i am still doing all this physical activities for my daughter-- in Malaysis we have Kids Sports where they have almost all the things stated in DOMAN’S book - balance beam, tunnels for creeping, crawling, high climbing ropes, walking on hilly.

We also have classes where the instrutors are qualified trainers who teach kids to do summersault, backword and forward rolling, skipping jumping, standing in one feet, walking on ladders, balance beam; holding and walking on different kind of items - to improve their coordination and balancing.

i also get my daughter to walk on hilly roads- thats really good for her legs, as well as walking in various surface- grass, road, sand.

doman alos suggests start swimming from birth. i hv not started on this due to time factor…if u able to get his book ,he teaches step by step with illustration how to teach ur baby to swim.

22

Hi AussieMum,

I got heaps out of gymbaroo with my daughter. She started at 3 months by six months she was commando crawling and it has been leaps and bounds since. I suggest getting the book Smart Start by Margaret Sasse who founded the gymbaroo and babyroo program. Its full of exercises that you can do with your son from 0-5. Sophia still goes with my mum at the moment while I full time.

With the grasping, My daughter took forever to do it and then one day she started hanging from the monkey bars at gymbaroo and then the next thing she was then ‘monkeying’ across them. Don’t worry your little boy will do it. He is already lucky to have to parents who care about him and his development so much.

Kimba

23

Thanks so much for the suggestions baba and Kimba15, especially thanks for the comment about how lucky our son is Kimba, it made me smile and feel good about what we are doing for him! :slight_smile: Glad to know that I shouldn’t stress about the grasping and hopefully once we start Gymbaroo, he’ll get into it a bit more. Thanks also for the book recommendation, I just reserved it at a nearby library! LOVING this forum! As a first time mum, this community is an invaluable resource! I am a younger than average mum so my friends aren’t at the same place in life that I am and none of them have kids. At the same time, the young mums in our community, on average are in a difference place to me as well as I am happily married to my partner of almost 8 years and working as an audiologist after 5 loooong years at uni! It’s somewhat comforting to talk about this stuff in a place where you won’t be judged for seemingly ‘pushing’ your child. I am a bit wary to bring it up with the mums in my mums group. I’ve asked for advice about that in another post! Thanks ladies!

Lisa

24

We also looked at making a crawling track but I couldn’t find the right materials for the surface here in Australia.

What we did instead was put pressure on his feet (alternating feet) when he was on his tummy so he would use his stepping reflex to push down on our hands. Later we did it on a yoga mat with a onesie on (the kind where their hands and feet are bare) and he learned to dig his toes in instead. He just loved being on his tummy and preferred to sleep that way (with us beside him).

Now at 13 months I can’t stop him - he even climbs rock walls!!! Looking into kindy gym or gymbaroo for this term.

We also did a lot of the tilting airplane manouvres in the Doman book.

25

Hi AussieMom!

We started at birth, but Zed has GERD, so not much happened after the first week, until we finally got his reflux under control at 6 weeks.

We never stopped letting him hang from our thumbs. And we did the minimum the doctor recommended for tummy time as well. Which is 5 minutes per week of age, per day. So a 17 week old should be doing an hour and a quarter (1:15) of tummy time per day, for example.

After his meds were working, we started with the inclined track. It was the short-side of a double bed long (which I don’t remember the size of at the moment) and it was raised just under 7" at the top. We put him in it 15 times per day (because he was “behind” physically) plus he was on the floor unless I needed to do something in another room (than the living room), we were out, he was asleep, or a grandparent refused to set him down. Outside or doing chores I wore him in a baby carrier that kept him upright (If you get one I recommend either a Beco Butterfly or an Ergo. The Baby Bjorn outward-facing ones are bad for both of your backs.) so he was still strengthening his neck.

Otherwise we did the HSIYB (How smart is your baby? by Glenn Doman and his daughter Janet) program to the letter. Plus we do Itsy Bitsy Yoga, and we sign with him. (And EC, which isn’t really relevant)

He is 9 months old now, just started running on Thursday (eep!). He can swing back and forth on the monkey bars, but isn’t going forward yet. He says more than 10 words, Off the top of my head: Mom, Dada, Gamma (Grandma), Gampapa (Grandpa), at (cat), dog, up, now (down), bye bye, og (frog), nkgoo (like saying the nk-you part of thank you). He signs potty, bird, more, milk, cracker, please, help… and more I’m sure I’m forgetting. He has a wide variety of food words and signs that I can’t even think of right now.

Anyway. My point is not to brag, well MOSTLY not to brag :laugh: , just to show the effectiveness of the program. From birth, or near birth, it does amazing things.

The balance activities seem to be the biggest, active, thing you can do to help your baby. Floor time is important, but you can’t dictate what they will do once they’re on the floor. With the balance activities you know your baby is getting the benefits. Once you have a track built (A piece of plywood covered in linoleum would work in a pinch, it doesn’t need to be padded if you aren’t using it for sleep IMO) an incline track helps a lot.

We always focused on where he was uneven. So we’d look at the chart and say “Well, today he can do everything in green, and 5 of the 6 blue, so let’s work on getting him to say couplets” which is where we are right now.

For you and your son, getting him to hold things would be a good next step, because you know his arms are stronger than his hands. A 3/8" dowel would work, or maybe smaller depending on how big his hands are. Just get him to hold it (with both hands if you can) and then pull gently, he should pull back. This will strengthen his hands, just pull progressively harder until he can hang from it. It might take a few days, or a few weeks, but you should see/feel progress.

Doman suggests doing things 10x per day, or 15x remedially. It’s up to you if you think his hand strength needs remedy, or just the standard program.

Then the inclined track (10 or 15x per day) and the balance routine (just once or twice) and you should be on track physically.

HTH!

26

Wow! Thank you so much for all the info ladies. I now feel more confident that we do need to do something to work on strengthening his hands and will try to focus more attention here! For our crawling track Loren, we just bought some laminated wood from Bunnings and screwed some 2x4 style wood to the sides for walls and are covering it with vinyl that we bought from Clark Rubber. Hopefully it will work, still trying to get hubby to attach the vinyl! Hopefully that will help him strengthen his hands too if he is pushing up on them more. Will keep you all posted on the hand work-outs! Lisa