Everyone knows that exercise is highly beneficial, yet many have trouble finding time to work it into their busy schedules. School days are getting more and more jam-packed with learning activities that daily recess and gym classes are often neglected. Growing up, gym classes and recess used to be daily activities in grammar schools. The teachers gladly sent everyone outside for recess to get some fresh air and run around, whether it was rain or shine. If nothing else, it taught us to dress appropriately for the weather (ha ha), how to interact with others, and gave us an opportunity to blow off some steam. Now, my son is lucky if he gets recess once a week and gym twice a week. As the day gets sucked up with increasing class work, testing, and homework, exercise is becoming more and more important for our children, not only for their health and weight, but amazingly for their learning and behavior as well.
Several studies have shown that exercise can be therapeutic for children, especially those with autism spectrum disorders and their siblings. Gabriels found that irritability, lethargy, hyperactivity, and stereotypic behaviors like hand flapping were significantly reduced after weekly horseback lessons performed for 10 weeks. Motor, verbal and language skills greatly improved with the horseback riding, including using more words with better understanding, increased muscle strength and tone, better sharing with others and compromising, and even fewer meltdowns. Hameury discovered similar improvements in attention, perception, motor adjustment, contact, emotion, and communication after just one hour of equine-assisted therapy. Not only being around calm animals, but also the physical exertion can have a calming effect and help reduce the anxiety or fight-flight response in autistic children. Looking locally, Giant Steps CT is a private state-approved school located in Southport that specializes in teaching autistic children ages 3-21 years and offers a horseback-riding program to its students. Healing with Horses LLC located in Uncasville and Camp Care Inc in Columbia, CT also specialize in helping people with autism spectrum disorders and provide therapeutic horseback riding in a safe environment. If horses aren’t in your budget or bring back your fear of large animals, a study by Prupas found that vigorous exercises reduce stereotypic behaviors. Pan found that autistic children positively interacted with their peers at the highest rate during vigorous exercise like that found in gym class, slightly less so during recess, and least of all when not exercising. Celiberti confirmed this result, finding that vigorous exercise such as jogging significantly reduced “out of seat” or bouncing in the chair in the classroom, hand flapping, finger twirling, and eye squinting for at least 40 minutes after the exercise and that these autistic activities never returned back to their baseline rate during that timeframe. The vigorous exercises were only performed for 5 - 10 minutes. Allison found that 20 minutes of jogging during two week intervals significantly decreased aggressive behaviors in autistic children. These results aren’t just true for children either. Elliot found that 20 minutes of jogging decreased maladaptive and stereotypic behaviors in autistic adults ages 22 – 41 years of age. Rosenthal-Malek found that after 20-minute jogs, autistic teens also improved in their work related performance and correct academic responding, along with a significant reduction in self-stimulating behaviors. This may be due to the increase in adenosine in the brain, which has been found to greatly decrease autistic behaviors, as noted by Masino. Adenosine is a found endogenously, promotes sleep, reduces convulsions, protects your nerves, and reduces anxiety. Interestingly, self-stimulatory behaviors also provide an increase in adenosine and may be the reason why these activities are performed in autistic children. Replacing these behaviors with other exercises that can also increase adenosine, appear to be incredibly beneficial by not only reducing self stimulatory behaviors but also promote REM sleep, decrease seizures, increased phrase speech, and appeared to be even more helpful for Asperger’s syndrome than severely autistic children who were non-verbal. Beyond a general increase in adenosine, water exercises were found to be even more beneficial when combined with assistance from peers or siblings of those on the autism spectrum. The peers and siblings were taught to “be friendly, talk softly, and provide praises” and were trained in how to assist in the swimming lessons. The 60-minute swim classes consisted of a 10 minute warm up, 20 minutes of teacher instruction, 15 minutes of peer or sibling instruction, and 15 minutes of games and were held twice weekly for 16 weeks. Chu and Pan found that these peer- or sibling-assisted water activities significantly improved social and physical interactions in autistic children, lessened their reliance on teacher instruction, and improved their aquatic skills beyond what teachers were able to accomplish alone! It’s amazing how a little kindness from other kids can go such a long way to improve confidence and social interactions! Pan also found that the siblings of autistic children enhanced their motor skills, physical fitness, and swimming ability in these lessons, making it beneficial for everyone involved. You can find special swim classes at Physical Therapy (PT) centers like Faulkner’s PT in Wallingford or the Star Hill Family Athletic Center in Tolland, which hosts “Swimming on the Spectrum”. Check your local area for more swim classes and feel free to bring your other children and their friends! Other types of exercises can help improve health and behavior. Goodarzi found that weight-bearing exercises along with vitamin D and calcium significantly increased bone mineral density in autistic children and reduced risk of fractures. A type of Karate training called Kata, where autistic children learned basic karate moves like punching as well as combination sequences like down block, upper block, middle level stepping punch, and then sword hand block, helped improve behavior. Bahrami found that by training four times weekly in Kata for 14 weeks greatly reduced stereotypic behaviors in autistic children. So it’s important to encourage your child to exercise during gym, recess, after school activities and at home! A quick jog around the block, kicking a soccer ball up and down the field, or running and shooting hoops from basket to basket can be a great diversion and provide that quick burst of exercise needed to release adenosine and create a much needed hour or more of calm! Adenosine-increasing activities included running for 15 minutes, jogging for 20 minutes, swimming for 30 minutes, swinging for 30 minutes, jumping on a trampoline for 10 minutes, and even a leisurely stroll for 30 minutes. Telling your child’s teachers about these studies may help them get excited about exercise as well and help them encourage the kids to run around at recess! If you are concerned about which type of exercise may be appropriate for your child, ask your physician or physical therapist before starting a new class or activity. They may also provide you with some good resources for local activities, groups and classes. Other resources include websites like www.autismlink.com, which allows you to search for providers of summer camps, activities, respite, and different therapies in your area and even in different states if you are looking to travel. Some useful Connecticut-based websites include www.autismsocietyofct.org, www.ct-asrc.org, www.ctfeat.org, and www.autismfamiliesct.org. Most importantly, remember to keep exercising! It will help your child learn more and behave better! |
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