How Can Physiotherapay Help Your Child?

Physiotherapy is often thought of as a therapy for adults following major trauma, such as whiplash after a car accident, for ‘bad backs’, or as a sports medicine to help athletes on or off the pitch. However, physiotherapy is so much more! One of the areas of expertise within physiotherapy is the treatment of children.

Children’s physiotherapists can help your child develop coordination and strength in the right places, giving them confidence and supporting your child’s body by correcting alignment and promoting balance.

So what are some of the signs that seeing a children’s physiotherapist may be helpful:

Balance and coordination

When a child is accident prone, it might be caused by lack of balance and/or coordination. There are many reasons children fall over, but a physiotherapist can help to work out what the underlying problem is and assist in retraining the body with specific games and exercises.

Pains that keep coming back

It can be difficult to decide which pains should be taken seriously, because there can be so many different ailments and aches. However, if the same pain keeps coming back, a physiotherapy assessment might bring some clarity as to whether the pain is coming from muscles and/or joints, along with suggesting strategies to help reduce your child’s pain.

Sometimes the pain may be coming from another joint not functioning properly, causing the body to compensate. This can develop into a ‘referred’ pain. Working out where muscle imbalances, altered gait, and other compensations come from can resolve a pain elsewhere.

Delayed milestones

Children develop at different rates, but what if you worry that your child’s milestones are reached long after other children? A children’s physiotherapist can assess motor development and movement and teach you to understand how to help your child develop their movement patterns.

Reduced stamina and fatigue

When the school day is over children can do their own thing. But what if they are too tired and struggle to join in with their friends? Tiredness and fatigue on a regular basis should not be limiting your child’s interaction with friends and other social events. A children’s physiotherapist can help address the problem and increase your child’s fitness and stamina so that fatigue doesn’t hold them back.

Disturbed sleep

If your child does not wake up refreshed in the morning, or wakes up complaining of pain and discomfort, the lack of energy can have many repercussions such as attention levels at school or not wanting to play with friends. There are many reasons why your child doesn’t sleep well, but a children’s physiotherapist can help establish whether poor sleep is something that can be addressed relatively easily.

Key Message:

There are many ways in which a children's physiotherapist could help your child. If you're worried about anything or feel your child may benefit from an assessment, give us a call on 07702 847036 and speak directly to a Senior Chartered Physiotherapist or click the ‘Book Online’ button to make an appointment. Both in-clinic and virtual video appointments are available. We have two clinicians who treat children: Himanshu Sood (any age) and Sarah Massey (children aged 10 years and older).

The Nebula Physio and Wellbeing Team