Child or pediatric physiotherapy is a specialized training, whose therapeutic interventions are very different from the rest of physiotherapy specializations.
It is the discipline that deals with “advice, treatment and care of those infants, children and adolescents who present a general delay in their development or movement disorders (both congenital and acquired) or who are at risk of suffering them or other diseases or alterations that can be healed, controlled or alleviated by expert physiotherapists and the use of specialized equipment”.
Who is the target audience?
Children (from 0 to 14 years old) who require treatment and follow-up to alleviate, minimize and prevent alterations in motor and/or postural development caused by diseases or conditions of origin:
- Neurological: cerebral palsy, cranioencephalic trauma, spina bifida, PBO, hemiparesis, coordination disorders, etc.
- Neuromuscular: Duchenne muscular atrophy, spinal muscular atrophy, ataxia, etc.).
- Musculoskeletal: achondroplasia, Perthes’ disease, congenital hip dislocation, congenital torticollis, plagiocephaly, clubfoot, scoliosis, postural problems, osteogenesis imperfecta, etc.
- Respiratory: bronchiolitis, asthma, cystic fibrosis, etc.
- Genetic: Down’s syndrome, Rett syndrome, Wolf syndrome, etc.
- Children who require follow-up to prevent alterations in their development or to facilitate it: premature or underweight children; children with benign hypotonias; children with maturational delay.
What role does the family play in all this?
Parents and relatives play the main role in the care and development of the child, especially during the first years of life. Pediatric physiotherapy encourages the family to play a leading role in the management of the child.
Good communication with the family is essential to understand their situation as well as possible and to adjust the intervention, the objectives, the child’s needs and motivations.
What about the educational element of the physiotherapist?
The pediatric physiotherapist assesses the child, his environment and establishes the objectives to be achieved with the treatment and therapeutic intervention together with the family.
He also provides support to the family, the child’s educational environment and collaborates with other specialists to encourage the child’s participation in home, school and community routines. In this way, she keeps the child motivated and with an active attitude within the intervention process using play as the main therapeutic tool.
In the field of primary intervention, she carries out educational and informative interventions for parents to favor the good development of the child, such as baby management workshops, breastfeeding management and parenting to favor a good motor development.
What forms of intervention are used?
The most appropriate treatment or therapeutic intervention for the child’s situation is established, taking into account the child’s biopsychosocial globality.
The pediatric physiotherapist has many resources and techniques, such as mobilizations, strength exercises, coordination, respiratory physiotherapy techniques, the preparation and application of postural or mobility aids, the adaptation of objects…, but the main tools are play, symbolic play and the stimulation of movement learning. All this in harmony with the child’s family, school and community.