Heavy Work For The Dysregulated Child

Down days are a struggle for my daughter. We returned from a family vacation last night and decided to spend the day unpacking, tidying up, doing laundry, and chilling. Seems totally expected, right? Except my daughter is always a hundred miles an hour and her brain doesn’t do well with the concept of a chill day. 

If we let her have her tablet all day, my daughter would have no issues with a chill day. Alas, while we certainly aren’t against screen time, there’s a time and place for it and that definitely isn’t all day. 

Our vacation consisted of plenty of pool time, a big hike, disc golf, and a trip to the hot springs. For our downtime, I brought some crafts, plenty of toys, and the kids ran around the cabin chasing their balls often. 

My son is the type of kid who is completely capable of entertaining himself. He is always finding something to climb on, jump on, or run around. My daughter loves to do all of those things too but struggles to come up with the ideas on her own and instead would rather ask us to entertain her 24/7. Her other go-to is to antagonize her cat but that is a whole other story.

While it might seem reasonable to think that my daughter could entertain herself with all of her toys in the comfort of her own home, without planned out activities, that is not the case. All day today, she has been getting in trouble for essentially being extra, demanding and obnoxious. 

My realization for the day is that there is so much constantly going on in my daughter’s mind that she cannot force herself to slow down and just be. She does best when she has activities that she can hyper-focus on and physically strenuous activities give Her a chance to exhaust her body and mind. 

Children who have busy minds, need to be given the opportunity to have truly busy bodies. 

Planning heavy work for my daughter is the best way I know to engage her mind and body on days when everyone else needs downtime. Our normal physical outlets that we do as a family (walks to the park, disc golf, hiking, swimming, etc) are great for days when everyone wants to move their bodies. 

“‘Heavy work’ is a term that refers to activities that involve the pushing/pulling of the muscle joints within our bodies. These activities create resistance input to the muscles and this feedback helps to calm and regulate a child’s nervous system. In fact, when children are engaging within heavy work activities their bodies are actually releasing both serotonin and dopamine which are calming and organizing neurotransmitters!” (Kidtherapy.org) 

Heavy work can be as simple or complex as you need it to be, depending on how involved you want to be in the start-up. Obstacle courses or scavenger hunts require some set up but they can occupy a kid for a good chunk of time. 

Other activities like water play can be turned into heavy work without any real parental involvement. Today we were sitting outside and my daughter wanted to play in the kiddy pool. Getting to the point of playing required her going to get the pool, turning on the hose, dragging it over to the pool, and then filling up the pool. She had to plan out everything she needed to get the final result and then she had to put in the work to get it.

Children (and let’s be honest, adults too) can become dysregulated for any number of reasons. 

Your kid could be like my daughter and become dysregulated just from the thousand thoughts and images rattling in their brain. Your child could be like my son who generally is great at inventing his own games but occasionally needs some inspiration because his go-to in dysregulation is to want to be held. Or maybe your kid just needs help getting back to a baseline when their emotions are heightened. 

Anything can be disguised as a game and kids are beautiful architects when it comes to creating fun. 

Despite being masters at creating fun, children are usually adults before they truly no longer depend on us to help them regulate themselves. Children are co-dependent by nature and as parents, we have to have a toolbox to help them move through dysregulation, big emotions, and everyday challenges. 

Heavy work and body movement are fantastic inclusions for your parenting toolbox. 

So the next time your child is dysregulated(anxious, discontent, demanding, bored, etc) have them do one of these things:

-swing

-jump on the trampoline

-hang upside down 

-Carry water buckets to water plants

-have them rake leaves to jump in

-go on a Scavenger hunt

-do an obstacle courses

Even on our chill days as parents, we are still doing plenty of work to keep our children fed, happy, and our household running. Giving your child opportunities to exhaust their mind and body will help them actually relax when everyone is being still.