Why Can’t Children Sit Still?
The Importance of Movement and Play for Attention and Learning
Nature designed children’s bodies to move, touch and connect for proper development, but teachers think children should sit still in order to learn. 21st century ‘techno’ and sedentary lifestyle is not healthy nor is it natural, and is resulting in what can only be described as ‘behavioral chaos’ by struggling parents and teachers. Remember 25 years ago, before satellite TV, cell phones and videogames, when children use to engage in rough physical play, create imaginary games, and get lots of exercise and fresh air? Today’s child is different, and so are today’s homes and schools. Children use on average 6.5 hours per day of TV and videogames, with over 50% of children having TV’s in their bedrooms, and parent misperceptions that the world is not safe is keeping kids indoors. School and community fears of litigation have dramatically changed how children access movement and play. Slides and swings are shorter, merry-go-rounds non-existent and jungle gyms unchallenging. Street hockey, tree houses and sidewalk chalk paintings have been outlawed. Videogames have become the New Parent and Wii the New Sport. Children are physically moving less, and as a result are not getting the necessary motor and sensory stimulation to their vestibular, proprioceptive and tactile systems, resulting in developmental delays and attachment disorders that the health and education systems are only beginning to detect, much less understand. Inability to attend to teachers and parents, and focus on academic tasks, makes learning difficult for even the brightest of children.
Workshop Goal – Why Can’t Children Sit Still raises awareness about the importance of movement and play in the every day lives of our children and home and school, and how the sensory components of movement and play actually promote attention and learning.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify three critical factors for child development, and list five ways to achieve these critical factors in classrooms and at home.
- Recognize how misperceptions of safety and fear of litigation limit achieving critical factors for development.
- Recognize the evolutionary need for human movement, and describe five reasons why children need to move to learn, pay attention and develop properly.
- Using provided Foundation Scale for Children, rank individual performance levels, and using the Nature and Child Development Directives, list three creative intervention strategies to improve access to nature and enhance child development.
- Identify government, university, health and education system initiatives (one of each) to increase movement and play, and reverse the sedentary trend to not move.
Foundation Series Workshops are designed to be introductory level for therapists, intermediate for teachers and advanced for parents, child care workers and teaching assistants. Foundation Series Workshops course content includes the following AOTA Classification Codes for Continuing Education Activities: performance skills, areas of occupation, evaluation, intervention and outcomes.