Treating the School-age Child: Assessing and Gaining Spinal Mobility

By: Kristen Birkmeier, MSPT Checking spinal mobility with a 13 year old child with CP spastic quadriplegia in the school environment…. Utilizing a bolster that allows the child to sit with hips and knees flexed at 90 degrees is very helpful in that the equipment will fully support the child’s weight while you assess their spinal flexion curve by having them flex forward against the bolster. Spread your hands and place them in the apex of the spinal flexion curvature on the child’s back being careful not to cross over their spine with your hands.  Lean into the child’s back with your shoulders over your hands and use intermittent firm pressure downward to gently decrease the flexion curve by gaining flattening of the spinal curve under your hands.  Gradually move upward and downward from the apex of the curvature with 4-5x downward pressure through your hands. Help the child to sit upright and prepare for lateral bending over your thigh to elongate one side of his trunk as seen in this photo.

Hold the child’s thigh down with your leg and elongate one side of his trunk by taking his arm up overhead in external rotation of the glenohumeral joint and bring his rib cage down towards his pelvis with inward/downward pressure through your open hand and palm placed on and shaped to his Read more