I have just completed my second week in my paeds placement. It is a very different learning experience as the "patients" are between 4 weeks to 7 years old. I have been finding it really difficult to find different ways to treat these children as they do not understand why they have to do these exercises or why they have to do these tests etc.
I have been asked to design an exercise program for this 2 year old child who is delayed in his gross motor skills eg climbing stairs, jumping, climbing over obstacles etc. The first week I designed an obstacle course for him that involved lots of climbing activities and what I thought would be fun games for a 2 year old. What I learnt from the first week is that it does not matter how prepared you are or how good your plan is it all goes out the window when trying to treat a 2 year old whos attention span lasts approx 2 seconds.
I have had one session with him and I hve three more to go. From observation I hve noticed he favours his right side and really has difficulty climbing down the stairs and climbing down the climbing frame which I believe is due to poor proprioception and balance. Does any one have any suggestions of ways to treat this 2 yo with games and activities?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I have never had a paeds placement before but learnt a few tricks of the trade from our labs last year. Here is a few suggestions:
Have a chat to the mother about which two toys the child likes to play with at home and get the mother/father to bring them alog to the next session. Hopefully attention span can inrease and the session run a lot smoother.
Incorporate a lot of colour or visual stimulation - some kids prefer this a lot more to others
Get the mother/father involved in the sessions a lot more
Let the child run the session as much as you go and you have to kind of run with it plus be very flexible with activities and goals of each session
Hope that helps :)
On my paeds placement last year I learnt very quickly that plans go out the window when you're treating kids. I don't know if your placement is in a hospital situation but when I had mine I went out to the childre's home. I had a basic idea of what i needed to achieve and a more detailed plan for the supervisor. But I didn't use it much when treating.
The first session I just observed what the impairments were, what the child had difficulty doing and therefore what i had to focus on.
The best source is the parents. Find out what the child really loves and use it as a reward. Or intersperse these activities with the ones you want to do. They don't have a long attention span so you have to switch tasks quickly but this doesn't mean you can't come back to tasks a second time.
If you want kids to go downstairs put their favourite toy at the bootom and tell them if you want to get it you have to show me how you climb down.
If you're working on LL strength get them playing on a table which is about chest height and put the stuff they need on the floor so without realising they're bending down to pick up toys (quads strenth) and coming up to standing to play on the table.
The key rule is to make it fun, keep activities short and involve the parents...get them playing and talking and interacting with the child.
Talking and advising the parents was the thing I found most challenging but it's amazing how much they actually don't know =)
All the Best!!!!
Post a Comment