What is Heavy Work?
As an occupational therapist and parent coach, I get to explain this a lot. It’s one of my favorite ways to calm a child. Heavy work refers to activities that involve pushing, pulling, lifting, or carrying heavy objects against the body. Heavy work creates resisteance input to the muscles and joints, engaging the proprioceptive system. This system is responsible for understanding where your body is in space. The location, the movement, the position of your body, is all sensed by this system.
What are the Benefits of heavy work?
1. Sensory Regulation: Heavy work provides proprioceptive feedback, which can assist with regulating sensory input, helping to feel grounded and calm.
2. Improved focus and sustained attention: Heavy work can bring a feeling of calm to the nervous system, which can lead to improved focus on tasks.
3. Improved emotional balance: The deep muscle pressure that heavy work provides can bring a level of emotional regulation, decreasing stress and anxiety.
4. Improved motor skills: Heavy work activities can help to improve strength, coordination, balance, and physical development.
What are heavy work activities?
Heavy work activities can be as simple as pushing a shopping cart or taking out the trash. Other activities could look like the following:
- Carrying a laundry basket of clothing
- Vacuuming
- Mopping/sweeping
- Moving furniture
- Playing “tug of war”
- Jumping on a trampoline
How to incorporate heavy work into daily routine
Incorporating heavy work into your daily routine can be easy and seamless. Give your child daily chores to complete. Provide opportunties to play outside on playground equipment. Encourage engagement in a sport. Allow your child to build, using household items (ie. using couch pillows to make a fort, or build towers with pots and pans). Click this link for an extensive list of ideas.
Conclusion
Integrating heavy work activities into your child’s daily routine can assist with your child’s overall development. Heavy work is a powerful tool in improving self regulation, building strength, improving coordination, and bringing a calmness for increased focus. Of course, we here at Ottie’s Fun Box are all about learning and growing playfully, so remember to keep the activities FUN!
Please share any ideas you may have. As always, we would love to here from our community.
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