Can Physiotherapists Treat Children?
Does your child suffer from conditions and injuries that affect their activities or movement? Are you looking for ways to improve their well-being without using strong medication? If so, physiotherapy may just be the solution that you’re looking for.
In today’s blog article, we’ll be delving into whether physiotherapists can treat children. Keep reading to learn more!
Can Physiotherapists Treat Children?
The short answer is yes. These are paediatric physiotherapists who specialise in providing physiotherapy services to children. Paediatric physiotherapists are trained and focus on treating children from infancy up to the age of 19 years. Their training and scope of treatment include orthopaedics, neurology, congenital malformations, prematurity, neuropsychiatry, breathing, and much more.
While the goals of physiotherapy treatment will vary with every patient, most physiotherapy treatments are designed for pain management, strength improvement, endurance enhancement, and according to the child, learning opportunities to enhance their motor skills and control involved in standing, sitting, and walking.
Conditions That Physiotherapists Treat
There is a wide range of problems that physiotherapists can treat for children. These include:
1). Cerebral Palsy And Other Movement Disorders
Early physiotherapy intervention improves general function among young patients. Physiotherapy helps children overcome the negative health effects of cerebral palsy such as joint contracture and muscle stiffness.
2). Down Syndrome
Early physiotherapy intervention has been shown to help improve overall function. Combined with other therapy treatment programs, including speech and occupation therapy, physiotherapy helps young children to live productive, fulfilling, and happy lives.
3). Coordination
Is your child uncoordinated? Does he or she struggle to catch a ball or run straight? It might be a coordination disorder affecting their ability to perform everyday activities. Consider working with a paediatric psychotherapist to help your child improve their coordination.
4). Sports Injuries
Paediatric physiotherapists are vastly knowledgeable and experienced in treating musculoskeletal injuries that children attain while engaging in sports. A physiotherapist will assess your child’s injuries and develop a safe and age-appropriate intervention to ensure your child heals well.
5). Posture
Bad posture, whether in adults or children, can cause neck pain, back pain, and shoulder pain. If your child has poor posture, physiotherapy can help them overcome it and its effects. Additionally, physiotherapy can help mobilise joints, overcome fatigue, and optimise core alignment and breathing.
Other conditions that physiotherapy helps include neuromuscular challenges, spina bifida, autism spectrum disorder, hypotonia, torticollis, low tone (or floppy), toe walking and much more.
Depending on the reason and need for the physiotherapy, paediatric physiotherapists will use a wide range of treatment approaches, such as motor learning, the Bobath approach and techniques, the Kabat-Knott-Voss technique, the temple fay physiotherapy technique, the Margaret Rood Technique or any other technique deemed effective for your child’s condition.
Benefits Of Paediatric Physiotherapy
There are numerous benefits to involving your child in a physiotherapy program. The actual benefits your child will accrue throughout the program will depend on various factors, including the program structure and length and the condition the physiotherapist is treating. Nonetheless, you can expect your child to experience the following benefits:
- Improvements in the child’s range of motion and mobility,
- Improvements in coordination and balance,
- Improvements in your child’s motor skills,
- Improvements in your child’s posture,
- Improvement of your child’s muscle tone, and much more.
Whether you sign up your child to a physiotherapy program as an early intervention or to help them recover from an injury and/or surgery, you can rest assured it will benefit home or her immensely.
Final Thoughts
With that, can physiotherapists treat children? Yes. You’ll need to work with paediatric physiotherapists who specialise in identifying, assessing, diagnosing, and treating physiological and movement disorders in children.
At Upwell Health Collective in Camberwell, we address all of the above problems and more. We will ensure that your child gets the best possible treatment for a speedy road to recovery.
Please get in touch with us at Upwell Health on (03) 8849 9096 or book an appointment today.