Down Syndrome & GymClusion

Down Syndrome is a genetic disorder caused by the addition of an extra chromosome. For children with Down Syndrome, studies have shown that these children are at a higher risk for physical activity and obesity.

For this reason, it is so important that therapy services directed towards supporting children with Down Syndrome understand their unique challenges. This is to ensure they are supported to have equal access to sporting opportunities and outdoor physical activity for their health and wellbeing.

For children with Down Syndrome, they are born with:

Low muscle tone:

Children with Down Syndrome typically have “floppy” muscles, also known as hypotonia or low muscle tone. Low muscle tone makes it more difficult for a child to move their arms and legs for more refined movements. This can have a big impact on the child’s development of their gross motor skills, like rolling, sitting up, crawling, pulling into a standing position and walking as well as moving their body into different positions smoothly. As a result, the child’s development of their fine motor skills can be affected, impacting their independence in using their hands during feeding, dressing, playing and writing.

Hypermobility:

Children with Down Syndrome who have low muscle town can be flexible. This is often described as being double-jointed, having lax muscles or having hypermobility. With hypermobility, the muscles do not hold the joints together as tightly as people with normal muscle tone. For children with Down Syndrome, hypermobility can impact the child’s control over their own arms, hands and legs, making typical everyday tasks more challenging, e.g., increased tiredness from the muscles trying to work harder to create stability, clicking joints, pain and difficulty with coordination.

Reduced muscle strength:

Research suggests that children with Down Syndrome have reduced muscle strength by up to 50% compared to their peers. This can mean that the child may have difficulties in their strength. They might also have difficulties in their endurance, meaning their ability to keep going during an activity.

Shorter arms and legs:

Compared to the length of their trunks, children with Down Syndrome have short arms and legs. This makes learning certain gross motor and fine motor skills harder, like climbing, bike riding, playing with toys and accessing playground equipment.

Why GymClusion is the perfect program for your child:

Here at GymClusion, we pride ourselves on helping children with Down Syndrome become the best versions of themselves in our fun therapy programs alongside our caring therapy team.

Our team of Physiotherapists, Exercise Physiologists and Allied Health Assistants can:

promote achievement of gross motor skills such as sitting, crawling and standing
build on your child’s postural strength and sitting balance to sit up for longer periods of time during learning activities
support your child’s balance and coordination skills
help your child improve their confidence to try different motor activities, e.g., bike riding and swimming
assist with your child’s participation and access to age-appropriate physical activity for increased socialisation, e.g., making friends while playing sport

Our team of Occupational therapists and Allied Health Assistants can:

promote early development of your child using their hands in play, e.g., grasping and pinching
support your child’s ability to engage in important everyday activities e.g., dressing and feeding
improve your child’s arm, wrist and hand strength, control and coordination
support your child’s cognitive development and school-readiness skills through play and learning

Thinking about GymClusion for your child? Click the ‘XXXX’ link on our website to register your interest for GymClusion or email us at mail@adelaidehydrotherapy.com for more information.

References:

Jobling, A. (1994) Physical education for the person with Down syndrome: More than playing games?. Down Syndrome Research and Practice , 2(1), 31-35. doi:10.3104/reviews.27

Shields, N., Taylor, N.F. & Fernhall, B. A study protocol of a randomised controlled trial to investigate if a community based strength training programme improves work task performance in young adults with Down syndrome. BMC Pediatr 10, 17 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2431-10-17

Why GymClusion is suitable for kids with Autism

Children love to play and be active! For kids, regular physical activity not only helps them to develop healthy hearts, strong muscles and support their mental health, it also helps them learn about the world around them.

For Autistic children, physical activity is equally as important. While each Autistic child is different, Autism is characterised by difficulties in verbal and non-verbal communication, social awareness, moving away from predictable routines and difficulties with gross motor strength and coordination. These underlying skills mean that some of the day-to-day activities that are taken for granted, can be an extra challenge for autistic children. Not only does exercise help autistic kids develop their health and fitness, mental health and provides important moments of social connection, physical activity helps autistic children build social connections to thrive in everyday life.

Here at GymClusion, we pride ourselves on helping Autistic children become the best versions of themselves in our fun therapy programs alongside our caring therapy team. In this article, we’ll take a deeper look at all the things GymClusion offers to your child.

Gross motor skills:

Gross motor skills are the groups of skills that require whole body movements or larger, core-stabilising muscles to perform actions. This includes walking, running, jumping, sitting upright, bike riding, skipping and much more. Recent research showed 87% of children with ASD aged 5-15 years were at risk of movement difficulties. The same study found children with more severe problems in other areas, such as communication and social skills, were also at higher risk for movement problems. Exercise-based therapies with our team of occupational therapists, physiotherapists and exercise physiologists can help to build your child’s postural strength and practise important balance skills through motivating activities and games. That means your child will be working on important foundational skills whilst having lots of fun!

Fine motor skills:

Fine motor skills are the groups of skills that require smaller, more refined movements of the hands and fingers. This includes grasping, holding, pinching and manipulating tools, like cutlery and pencils. It’s important for a child to have stability and control in their bigger muscle groups before they are able to make smaller, more controlled movements with their hands and fingers. This can mean that for Autistic children, they have difficulty with hand strength, moving objects around within their hand, reduced grip strength and difficulty coordination small movements like beading, threading, tying shoelaces and using a pencil. Our team or occupational therapists help to assess your child’s fine motor skills and engage your child in a range of different activities to strengthen the muscles in their hands and fingers.

Social skills and developing confidence:

Research suggests that autistic children who participated in physical activity programs showed increased development of their social skills. Group therapy sessions at GymClusion focus on your child achieving their goals alongside others. This provides important moments of teamwork, sharing encouragement and taking turns in the exercise-based activities. As you can schedule weekly or fortnightly sessions for your child, GymClusion offers a supportive and caring environment where your child can make friends outside of the classroom.

Building resilience and flexibility:

Flexibility and resilience are important skills that help children move through challenging situations with greater ease. For autistic children, flexible thinking can present as a challenge. This can often cause children to feel “stuck” or triggering meltdowns if things don’t go according to plan. Group therapy sessions at GymClusion focus on your child learning to see different perspectives, consider different options and readjust when activities do not go to plan. As a result, your child will develop their flexible thinking in games with others and practice “changing up” their therapy session activities over time.

Thinking about GymClusion for your child? Click the ‘XXXX’ link on our website to register your interest for GymClusion or email us at XXXX for more information.

References:

Licari, M. K., Alvares, G. A., Varcin, K., Evans, K. L., Cleary, D., Reid, S. L., Whitehouse, A. J. O. (2020). Prevalence of Motor Difficulties in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Analysis of a Population-Based Cohort. Autism Research, 13(2), 298-306. doi:10.1002/aur.2230

Flatters, I., Mushtaq, F., Hill, L. J. B., Holt, R. J., Wilkie, R. M & Mon-Williams, M. (2014). The relationship between a child’s postural stability and manual dexterity. Experimental Brain Research. 232(9): 2907–2917 doi: 10.1007/s00221-014-3947-4

Zhao, M. & Chen, S. (2018). The Effects of Structured Physical Activity Program on Social Interaction and Communication for Children with Autism. Biomedical Research Institute. doi: 10.1155/2018/1825046