DOES A HARNESS HELP YOU LEARN TO WALK?

We are going to comment today on a complement for motor development in children that can be found in specialized stores in childhood. Its about support harness to develop the march.

This supplement arises from therapeutic care for children with motor disabilities. It is based on facilitating an aid to the child with little strength or much instability to receive external support that allows him to get to move on foot, being unlikely that he could do so without assistance.

And here really lies the most relevant factor to decide the use of this type of support: they are only indicated when it is unlikely that the child can access an autonomous march by their own means in a near period.

As a physiotherapist in the field of childhood disability, I have often considered whether or not to use a motor development aid. The turning point to decide is to know that when we introduce an external element in the development of the child we must be aware that we are conditioning its entire movement scheme, since there is a dependence on the external element.

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There are many everyday examples for this: the weakness of a limb when a plaster is placed, the dependence on the girdle or wristband when used continuously, the change of movement scheme when canes or crutches are used. In this case, in addition, there is the aggravating fact that the child is in maximum permeability to his surroundings, so he immediately integrates this external help as his own element, distorting a normal development.

In conclusion, I believe that these elements are part of the field of therapy and not of daily attention to children. They should only be used when a pathological developmental delay is diagnosed, and not reduced to use when the child has exceeded the statistically frequent age of gait. This can generate a risk of motor clumsiness (even if it is mild) that is not necessary to provide to our children.