Children learn to walk by observing those who are closest to them.
Prevent your children from complaining of foot and leg pain and experience growing pains in the feet from creeping up later on in life. It may start out during their toddler years when the first symptoms of heel pain if felt, which they can continue to have when they become teenagers. So, it is important to start working on your feet weekly with your children. The more you improve your feet the better their feet will develop. Be a strong example for your children. They do listen and especially when you are doing it all together.
Most children do not have any pain in their feet yet. However, this does not mean that they are using them correctly. When you look at children’s feet you can already see differences in their two feet. It is common to see one foot turning out more than the other and the child feels leg pain in one leg. It is also common to see one ankle weaker with the arch already dropping and the child will most likely feel pain on side of the foot. This is the perfect time to start working with kids.
It is a great activity to do as a family and get children to become mindful of their feet as young as possible.
Try implementing these 6 things:1. As a family start with the walking test and practice it for 5 minutes several times a week. This starts getting the mind involved in the way the feet can walk and will stay with children their whole lives. The Yamuna® Walking Test retrains the mind and feet!
2. Another daily activity can be to keep the Foot Wakers by the bathroom sink and have them stand on them each morning when they brush their teeth. A little bit of circulation into the feet can boost their energy and concentration at school. Learn how to use Yamuna Foot Wakers and Foot Savers:
3. Use the Foot Wakers leaning against a wall and work the lateral, middle, and inner lines of the feet wearing socks. This will be quite fun and easy for most children because they still have flexibility in their feet. Several repetitions of molding the feet forward into the toes and then back towards the heel in each line are enough to wake up their feet and begin to build tone and strength
4. Stretching out the toes using the Foot Wakers might be hard for little toes so you can use the Foot Savers to stretch and strengthen each toe.
5. Practicing rocking from the heel to the ball of the foot to the toes on each foot several times is also good for getting them mindful of how there is a natural transfer of weight in the foot. The idea is to get them to not slap their whole foot down as they walk or to shuffle, or to step weight bearing strongly into the big toe. This practice can also get toe walkers to begin using their feet more fully.
6. Teach them how to work with the black balls down their legs from below the knees out to the toes. This is important so they keep the balance between the top, (dorsal) and bottom of the feet (plantar) and is helpful if ankle pain is felt in a child with no serious injury to the foot.