Tummy Time!

Nine (Baby) Steps On How To Give Your Child The Absolute Best Start In Life - Baby Step #2

In the first of the “Nine (Baby) Steps On How To Give Your Child The Absolute Best Start In Life”, we talked about building functions by keeping her horizontal until she’s ready to go vertical.

A really important aspect to building those functions is by allowing your child time on her tummy as much as possible.

From about the age of two months is when a baby is usually ready to roll over on her own. If it hasn’t happened by then, don’t force it… She’ll do it when she’s ready – the important thing to remember here is that a child’s rate of development is as individual as the child itself.

There is no ‘right’ time to be crawling, or ‘right’ time to start walking or any other ‘right’ time… Everything will happen in the child’s own good time.

When your child does initially go on to her tummy, as she tries to pull herself forward, she’s unlikely to get very far and will probably become a little frustrated. It’s at this point that well-meaning parents often feel sorry for their little one and turn her onto her back again…

That frustration is very good for her and will cause her to ‘dig her heels in’, which is going to build strong and healthy muscles. We’ll talk more about the importance of this in tomorrow’s post.

Play gyms and other such devices, while great for keeping the little one occupied while Mum and Dad tend to other necessities, aren’t very conducive to ‘Tummy Time’. By their very nature, they tend to require babies to be on their back, which is great some of the time… Just so long as there’s enough tummy time to balance things out.

One important aspect of tummy time is that it helps to create a healthy spine with curves in all the right places. Given what many people’s spines look like nowadays, you could be forgiven for thinking that they are designed to be shaped like a ‘C’ or an inverted ‘J’…

However, your spine, my spine and everybody’s spines are designed to be a beautiful elongated ‘S’. They are designed so that there is an arch in the lower back, an outward curve for the upper back and a sweeping curve in for the neck.

Remember, strong and healthy muscles built today mean a far greater chance of a life without back, hip and other joint pain tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, that’s when we’ll be back with the next instalment. We’ll be talking about the importance of building strong and healthy muscles.

Talk to you then.

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The Straw That Broke The Camels Back

If you've ever suffered from muscle or joint pain, there's a good chance you blamed it on a specific event or activity (or maybe even your age).

It's not uncommon to hear runners, for example, blame running for their knee pain. Just as it's not uncommon for folks to blame bending over for their back pain.

Now, while running can certainly trigger knee pain and bending over can trigger back pain, neither of these activities are the cause of the problem.

Let's illustrate the point to make it a little clearer...


Let's say Alex were to come along and throw a bucket of water over you and your friend Sam. You'd both get wet, right?

In fact, it doesn't matter who Alex throws the water over, it will always cause a person to get wet. Water causes wetness - it gets the same result every time.

Now let's say that when Alex threw the water over you, you found it cool and refeshing. But when Alex threw the water over Sam, s/he became angry and clearly wasn't amused.

The two reactions to the same event were different. Therefore, we can say that water was the trigger for your refreshed feeling and for Sam's anger... It didn't cause those feelings.

A cause gets the same results everytime. A trigger produces results that vary.

So, while running can trigger knee pain and bending over can trigger back pain, neither knee pain nor back pain are caused by running or bending over.

The knee pain and the back pain were both "accidents waiting to happen" due to postural misalignment. The running and the bending were "the straw that broke the camels back".

It's your posture - the position of the joint, not the condition - that causes the problem. Change the position through posture realignment, and you can enjoy running, gardening or any of your other favourite activities without pain!

(More about the cause of back pain here...)

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