How Is Your Engine Running Today?

How is your engine running today?

We live and work in a culture that is  increasingly fast paced, high-tech, and more sedentary.  We are living in an area of the country where cold winters prevent many of us from getting outside and moving for months!  Our bodies and brains are not designed to sit for hours at computers, in meetings, or in classrooms.  

We have all experienced working diligently to meet a deadline or sitting for hours at a conference and encountering the moment when we “hit the wall”.  We need to move, take a walk, get a cold drink, get a crunchy snack, do something active to help us “power through” to the end.  

In Occupational Therapy and in many of our classrooms, we use terminology and concepts from the book “How does your engine run?”, the Alert Program for Self Regulation. Children are taught “if your body is like a car engine, sometimes it runs on high, sometimes it runs on low, and sometimes it runs just right”.  Through the comparison of our bodies to an engine, children and adults learn a variety of sensorimotor strategies for self regulation (methods to change our levels of alertness through what we see, hear, feel, taste, and how we move).

There is a range of alertness that can be considered optimal for learning.  In “optimal alertness”, children are attentive, they have a “sparkle” in their eye, their muscles are not droopy, and they can concentrate with little effort.  As educators and parents, we want to support children to find their “just right” range in which their brains and bodies function best for different tasks.

Using the concepts of the Alert Program, children and adults learn how to adjust their “engines” with “engine tune ups”.  Examples of tune ups we teach and use are yoga poses, breathing exercises, animal walks, seat push ups, sitting on a ball, rock or spin in an office chair, chew gum, crunchy or chewy snacks, fidget tools.  

It is helpful as adults to first identify our own strategies that we use for self regulation.  Once we understand what our own adult nervous systems need and use for self regulation, it is easier to consider how to support our children.  I invite you to explore the concepts of the Alert Program (www.alertprogram.com), examine your own self regulation strategies, and help your child discover their own favorite “tune ups”.

My favorite family winter tune ups:

• yoga
• twister
• Hullabaloo (commercial game by cranium)
• indoor obstacle courses (cushions, blanket tunnels)
• ice skating
• sledding
• building a snow fort
• swimming (*check out nearby YMCAs)
• rollerskating

Have fun, stay warm, and look forward to warmer weather, spring, and outdoor recess!!!!!

Ellen Sullivan, M.Ed., OTR/L

Occupational Therapist