What is the impact of a child's "straightening his back" every day?

A while ago, it was near the end of the semester, and OK's school sent a notice for children to take home for autographs. I took a closer look and it turned out to be "abnormal spinal curvature screening".

During the examination, the baby needs to take off her shirt, let the doctor touch the back with her hand, touch the spine, so you need to inform the parents in advance and obtain consent.

In fact, we have been talking about the problem of "scoliosis" several times, as early as 3 years ago I shared with you, the cause is still a friend's child has obvious high and low shoulders, friends are not worried, quickly take to the hospital to take X-rays, after the examination sure enough! There is a slight side bend of about 15 degrees.

So I wrote an article at that time and popularized science with everyone.

At that time, when I checked the information, the statistics really shocked me, and more than 30% of primary school students had symptoms of scoliosis; The number is also soaring by 300,000 every year, and the proportion is frighteningly high!

It's no wonder that in recent years, OK schools have taken the problem of scoliosis extremely seriously. In addition to physical examination and screening, the school has also compiled a set of "positive chiropractic exercises", which stipulates that every child must learn it, and do it once in the morning and afternoon between classes. This degree of attention is already comparable to "vision".

However, I have observed that this exercise is mainly a role of relaxing the muscles and bones, and the most important thing to really solve the "spine" problem of primary school students from the source is:

"Seated"

Now after the baby goes to elementary school, she spends 90% of her time at school in her seat during the day; When they come home from school, the younger children may still have a little time to play, and the older children continue to squat at the study table...

Sitting for a long time is very hurtful to the spine and tired waist, not to mention that 9 of the 10 babies are crooked, either lying obliquely on Ge You's paralysis, or twisting into a twisted shape, or Erlang's legs and even meditating cross-legged... This kind of bad sitting posture for a year and a half, with chest hunchback, that is normal, more serious, scoliosis leads to high and low shoulders, face asymmetry, long and short legs and so on!

So today we will specifically talk about the sitting posture problem, in fact, how to sit to really not hurt the spine, how to intervene to be really effective, we all have too many blind spots!

01

A major misunderstanding: sitting upright is not the most correct sitting posture?

Before formally talking about "how to help children sit in a sitting position", we must first clarify a major misunderstanding, raising your head and chest is not actually the most correct sitting posture!

I think many mothers are like me, as soon as they see the baby "Ge You paralysis", they will immediately raise an octave and throw over a sentence:

Rise! Chest! Straighten your back!

"Straighten your back" is probably also the unified mantra of old mothers across the country! But until a while ago, I watched a speech by Esther Gohare, a professor and posture adjuster at Stanford University in the United States, with the theme of "sitting upright is not the right sitting posture", and the short 5-minute popular science made me empowered!

Why is "sitting upright" not the right posture?

This is actually because the human spine itself is not straight, it has 4 physiological curvatures: cervical lordosis, thoracic kyphosis, lumbar lordosis, sacral kyphosis. These four physiological curvatures equalize the spinal load when the body is upright.

And when we deliberately straighten our chest and concave our backs, the spine will go against its natural physiological curve and straighten up into a stick that loses curvature.

If this posture is maintained for a long time, the muscles of the whole body will be too tense, and the muscles will feel stiff and sore, and the child will definitely not be able to do it, and not only does not protect the spine, but also hurts the waist!

So from a scientific point of view, the correct sitting posture is not to see how straight the back is, but the earlobes, shoulders, and hips are in a line, and the spine has a normal physiological curve.

02

Grasp the 4 key points to develop the correct sitting posture for the ridge protection

But every time we see the child's sitting posture, we always have all kinds of worries, always feel that their body is soft and has no strength, in fact, no one has taught them how to "sit right"!

Keep 4 points in mind.

▐ First, find the ischial bone

The spine of our human body is like a high-rise building, and if there is no stable foundation, the spine of the high-rise building is definitely unstable. And when we sit, the foundation of the upper body is the sitting bone.

The sitting bones are the two large protruding bones on the left and right when the buttocks make contact with the seat.

The correct sitting posture usually uses the sitting bones to bear the force, the kind of sitting posture of Ha waist Geyou paralysis, the bearing point is our tail vertebrae.

So we have to let the child find out for himself the feeling of "sitting on the sitting bones":

First let the baby cock the butt, let them put their fingers on the left and right sides of the butt to touch it, and find the two protruding bones, which are the ischial bones.

Then hold the sitting bones with both hands and do not let go, put the little butt on the chair (the seat is better to be harder), and then slowly withdraw the hands, at this time, if you can feel that there are two pointed bones under the butt are struggling, that is the feeling of ischial support.

▐ Second, hold your stomach

We always think that children have no muscles, not blindly shouting that he sits up straight, what we really want to hold is their stomach.

If they don't understand, we put our hands a little above the child's hips and give the child's waist a push, and the effect is immediately visible.

▐ Third, shrink the chin

To know that the heaviest upper body of the human body is the head, just sitting on the chair, it is a little difficult to maintain the head upright and not shrugged.

So if you are writing homework and reading books, more or less, you will involuntarily send your head forward, which is too normal.

Instead of yelling at them, we should teach them to move their gaze down by closing their chins, so that they can avoid moving the center of gravity of the head forward and will not put too much pressure on the cervical spine.

The key point of moving the gaze with the chin is that the muscles of the chin should be relaxed as much as possible, zoomed in a natural state, and reminded themselves to use their eyes to chase objects, rather than sticking their necks to probe their heads.

▐ Fourth, use three 90° principles to adjust the height of tables and chairs

Finally, there is also a very important point, the child is still in the growth and development period, must remember to help them adjust the height of the table and chairs every six months or so, so that the baby's sitting posture can present three 90 degrees in a natural state:

(1) The knee is naturally bent at 90°:

The child's thighs and calves can be at a 90-degree angle, and at the same time, the feet can be comfortably flat on the ground, so that sitting up has a sense of stability and the feet will not be sore. If your feet can't be comfortably laid flat on the ground, you can buy a small pedal to make up for the drop.

(2) The thighs and torso are at 90°:

When the butt is full of chairs, the body and thighs can be about 90°, and if necessary, you can take a backrest cushion to help the child sit well.

(3) The elbow can be 90° when resting on the table:

People always don't know how to adjust the height of the seat and the table, in fact, it is very simple for the child to sit on the seat, when the hands are placed on the table, the elbows can be naturally bent to 90 degrees ~ 110 degrees, which is a good desktop height.

03

3 widgets to make it easier to stay seated

In fact, sometimes, it's not that the baby doesn't want to sit well, it's that the lower back muscles don't have strength, and they want to lie down directly after only five minutes. Therefore, for babies with weak back strength, it is especially necessary to do targeted exercises, such as swimming, parallel bars, rings, gymnastics, dance, which are very helpful sports.

There is more free time during the summer vacation, and these sports must be carried out as much as possible.

In addition to targeted exercise, we can also use appropriate tools to make the baby "support" more durable. The sitting orthodotic mats, sitting orthoses, and reading shelves that I have reviewed with you before are all good helpers that can assist sitting posture.

1. Sitting posture correction pad:

Use the principle of leverage to give a thrust to the back, and you can stand up naturally when you sit down.

2. Sitting posture corrector:

The principle is to give the baby a place to rest its head, but there are quite a lot of shapes, and not every one is very good to use. I have done reviews of several common ones on the market, and I personally prefer this T-shaped top chest model.

3. Reading stand:

Among the 4 key points mentioned above, I personally feel that point 3 "relax the chin and retract and let the gaze move down" is the most difficult, because stretching the neck to get closer to the target is an instinctive response that the brain will naturally make in an unconscious state.

Therefore, we can use the reading frame to raise the angle of the book and electronic screen placement, so that the eyes can directly look at the object in front of us, and the neck will be much easier.

As for the "marching crosses" and "good backs" that have been popular on the Internet, they have been asked privately by their mothers over the years. So after reading today's sharing, I think everyone should be very clear in their hearts that these "equipment" on the baby's body are contrary to normal physiological curvature, and this kind of deliberate straightening is a huge injury to the spine!

The use of tools is temporary, and the real way to cure the symptoms and the root cause can only be to let the baby develop a good sitting habit. At the end of the article, I will give you a few mantras, you can silently recite it again and again in your heart and do it:

Take a deep breath, lower Erlang's legs, rest your body on your sitting bones, tuck your abdomen and straighten your waist, relax your shoulders, retract your chin, and let your gaze naturally move down and stay on the book on the table.

Do you feel that your posture is suddenly straight, as if there is a "hanging thread" on the top of your head, pulling the joints of your body up one by one, and the problem of hunchback with your chest is also swept away in an instant!

Okay, then remember this feeling well, go home and urge yourself and your baby to consciously practice from time to time.