First things first—what is weightbearing and how can it benefit your child?

Weightbearing is when a person puts some or all oftheir own body weight through a certain part oftheir body such as an arm or a leg. Examples of weightbearing may be leaning through your arm in side-sit, using your arms to push up from a chair, or standing on one or both feet.

Now that we have the basics down, let’s talk about what it can do:

• Helps strengthen muscles and improves joint and bone integrity
• Improves coordination and balance
• Strengthens proximal muscles to facilitate better movement from distal musculature (proximalstability = distal mobility-this helps with building fine motor skills!)
• Reduces tone and improved range of motion
• Elicits sensory awareness
• Provides proprioceptive input (this allows your child to move around space, play, and participatein everyday activities in a morecoordinated way!)
• Assist in reflex integration
• Calming down the nervous systems to help improve attentionto facilitate cognitivedevelopment

You’re probably thinking “OK great! But now what? How can I work this into how I play with my child?”

No need to worry! There are so many easy, time-efficient, and low-cost ways to incorporateweightbearing into your everyday routines and during play. Here are some of my favorite activities:

• Animal walks
• Yoga poses
• Hanging on monkey bars/playing on the jungle gym
• Assisting with chores (pushing vacuum cleaner or grocery cart)
• Tummy time propped on forearms
• Tunnel crawls
• Extending elbows on a therapy ball
• Climbing up slides
• Pushing heavy objects across the floor (fill up a laundry basket with heavy items and haveraces!)
• Any type of isometric holding: wall push-ups, planks, pushing against heavy objects

By Sarah Stevens, OTR/L @theotmethod

Sarah Stevens, MSOT, OTR/L is a pediatric occupational therapist in the Greater Philadelphia Area. Sarah has experience in pediatric acute care, rehab and early intervention settings. Sarah specialises in pediatric cardiology with expertise in infant handling, neurodevelopment, physical rehabilitation and stroke recovery. She loves utilizing a holistic approach to provide her clients, patients and families the best possible care and support.