Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. Always so glad that you've been able to make a few minutes to tune in and just take a little breath and kick back and listen to this brief little podcast. This week I wanted to talk about squeezies, pulley pushies, and how to help a young child and even a little bit of an older child to come into their bodies a little bit more and be prepared for when things get a little bit busier.
Now what I mean by squeezies and pulley pushies is obviously that language is for older children but it's a way of massaging, of holding, of touching a child that brings them not only into their bodies but helps secure them and send a very securing message throughout their whole system. Now let me describe first of all the need, then the simple little strategy, and then why it works, what it's all about. So first of all the need is that very often when children go into the day, into busier environments, there's a lot for them to take in.
I'd say this is true for the little ones, for infants, toddlers, you know right through to the early grade school and beyond actually, but particularly I'll be focusing on that age today where there's a lot of sensory input to take in and there's a lot of social input to take in. The sensory input is that there's a lot to absorb in terms of three turbulences. The first turbulence is visual turbulence, a lot of movement and their eyes are tracking and moving, visual turbulence for them to take in.
Then there's auditory turbulence because the noises that a child hears aren't static for the most part. When the day begins there's noises coming from left and right and up and down and behind them, so it's calling on their spatial understandings of up, down, left, right, front, back, and those noises are coming from all around. So it's actually quite demanding on them spatially, if I can put it that way, and auditorily.
And then similarly in a flow with that there's the movement turbulence. Movement is coming from left and right, above them, below them. Movement is coming from in front of them, behind them, and there's a lot to take in.
These are these three turbulences. Now how can we prepare children for these turbulences that make them just fine, that make it all go completely okay? And one of the ways to do that is if there's movement and sounds and things to take in outside themselves is to prepare them inside themselves first. Begin with the body, begin with the body.
And so I want to show you and speak to you about these, about the squeezes and the pulley-pushes. The squeezes, what I mean by that is by just placing your hand on their fingers and your thumb underneath, your fingers on top, and you squeeze, you squeeze their fingers, you squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Thumb underneath, fingers on top, squeezy.
And then squeezy, you squeezy their hand, so it goes to their hand now. And when you get to their wrist, you can put your hand on their fingers, and this is the pulley-pushes, and then pull very gently the finger joints, very, very gently. It's such fun, children love it, they bliss out on this.
And you just pull maybe just like less than half a centimeter, like a quarter inch, you just pull away and then push, pulley-pushes, pulley-pushes. And then you're opening the joint and closing the joint, opening just a fraction and closing. It's like waving away and waving back.
And then you get to their wrist, and then squeezy, squeezy, Mr. Squeezy is visiting. And then you pull out and push, so you open up the wrist joint and then you push back. You open it up and you push it back, and pulley-pushes.
So Mr. Squeezy is visiting, and Mr. and Mrs. Pulley and Pushy. Or if you don't want to use gender terms, of course, you know, find another way to say it if that's more comfortable for you. But opening and closing, opening and closing, and then squeezy, squeezy, squeezy, all up their arm until you get to the elbow.
And on the elbow, um, now our two friends, Pulley-Pushy, visit again. Pulley apart, Pushy. Pulley-Pushy, Pulley-Pushy.
And then all the way up their bicep, squeezy, squeezy, squeezy. And then when you get to their wrist, squeezy, squeezy, across their trapezius, squeezy. But now you can put one hand on the shoulder, one hand all the way down, down, down, down, down, go.
Goodbye, Mr. Pulley, goodbye, Mr. Pushy. And now you're lengthening the whole arm. One arm is holding the front of the shoulder, the other is pulling down.
And now you're lengthening, lengthening, lengthening the whole arm. And the same on the other arm. You just repeat.
Don't forget the fingers. Squeezy, squeezy, Pulley-Pushy. And all the way up their arm.
And you can do exactly the same thing with their toes. So you go down. If it's a little child, you might call them the cozy toesies.
And you go down and you squeezy, squeezy, Pulley-Pushy, Pulley-Pushy. Right up to the ankle. Squeezy, squeezy.
And now open the ankle and close. Pulley apart. But remember, it's just a very pleasant little separation.
And now a movement back together. Squeezy, squeezy, all the way up their calf. Pulley-Pushy on their knee.
Separate the knee. It's not only really great physically for their body. What's happening here is that you're sending messages to the brainstem, the base brain.
You're sending messages to the brainstem of giving it a feedback loop, a bodily feedback loop. You're saying to the brainstem, the basal ganglia, the brainstem, and more the older parts of our brain, to a child's brain, that all is well. Because a child experiences this beautiful pressure.
But that's also securing them on a level, just to relax the parasympathetic nervous system, as we've talked about quite a lot in these other podcasts, starts to become activated and calming, soothing. Squeezy, squeezy, Pulley-Pushy. For older children, you might not use that terminology if they feel it's too young.
But the principle is exactly the same. For older kids, right through to the early elementary grades, you can talk about how this is getting us ready for the day. This is our rubdown, just like soccer players do, and just like sportsmen and women and sports people.
This is getting us ready. So whatever way it works, what it's doing is it's sending to the brainstem a very important message that inside yourself now, you know where you are, you're experiencing your skin and the boundary of your space, of your bodily, of your body, let's say, not so much space, but of your body. And you are oriented.
And the word for that, as most of us, you may know, is proprioceptive. And it gives a proprioceptive, I know where I am in space. Now, if a child knows where they are in space, because now they have had this message sent to the parts of the brain that are partly responsible for that, then the turbulences, the up, down, left, right, front, back type of turbulence as they experience through a busy day, through what's to come, they actually have a point to the periphery, they have a centeredness to the activity.
So I am here, and that's all there. But it's okay, because I am here. It's not getting drawn out into the periphery, or, and just becoming goofy and crazy and, and flailing around and not going with it.
Or it's, it's not getting very, very scared and withdrawing from it. It's like, I am here, and I'm okay. And out there is out there.
And that's okay. But it begins with the point, I am here, the centering, helps a child center, and then they can cope much better with what's going on out there. And if that message gets sent to the brainstem, to the basal ganglia and the brainstem, then there's a soothing and calming that doesn't activate the part of a child's brain that most of us know this, this amygdala, the lizard brain.
And that's the we know it's the fight-flight. Some of us know that it's also the freeze, fight-flight-freeze. I add to that three other Fs, actually.
Fight-flight-freeze, but flock is another one. Flocking means when they're with other children, they form cliques, they're exclusive friendships, or their play gets very rambunctious, even aggressive in groups. That's flock.
And then there's another one of fawn, the children fawn. In other words, they won't leave mom, they won't leave the teacher, they are very overly sensitive, reactive in that way. And then for very little children and teenagers, funny enough, it's flop.
It's just like they flop on the ground. Why not? It's all too much. Just flop.
And you try to pick a little child up and they've put on like 10 pounds, like kilos, when you try to pick them off the ground. It's like, wow, they're so heavy. Fight-flight and freeze, yes, but also flock.
And also fawn and flop. And doing the squeezes, the gummy yummies, the yum, yum, yum. Sometimes I call it gummy and yummy.
Two old toothless crocodiles, gummy and yummy. This helps a child come into their body. Okay, now when to do it? There are three times where this can really be helpful.
One of them is rhythmical. So you do it each night. Each night at bedtime, a child gets their squeezes, poly-pushies, or just their rub down.
If they're a little older, it's like you've been in a busy day today, just like a game, just like a soccer game. And now we have our rub down. If you're doing it at night, then what you're doing is not so much from the outside in, you're doing it from the inside out.
It's like allowing a child just to move out and excarnate, move away. So the movement now, the gesture is exactly the same, but the movement is outwards rather than inwards. The next time you can do it, if you can do it every single night, perfect, because it brings a child into their body and helps them.
And in two ways, it helps them relax because here is my body, but it also helps them release because the parasympathetic nervous system, calming, soothing has been activated. The brain stem, the amygdala doesn't have to be on hyper alert, not quite so much. And it can help.
It's not a miracle, but it can help a child be a part of how to help them release into sleep. Because remember, sleep is a release. We'll be talking more about that in future podcasts.
The second time you can do it is proactively. So there's rhythmically and proactively. Proactively means that if you know that cousins are coming around, or if you know it's going to be a busy day at school with a school play, and the child, you know, your child's a little nervous about it, or you're going to the playground, and it's very, and they tend to flail and get goofy and, and get out of themselves and note the term out of themselves, then you can be proactive and bring them into themselves with, with this muscle, this muscle conformation, and joint compression, the squeezes, pulley pushes.
So in the morning, or what just before you go, and you're getting in the car to go somewhere, or the cousins are coming over, then you bring the child in, give them a taco hug, put them behind you, like a taco, they're the filling, you're the shell. And bring them in and pulley pushes, squeezy squeezies, and just bring them in just for a minute or two, and embody them before the cousins burst through the door and the game on kind of thing. And the third time you can do this is not so much rhythmically, it's not so much proactively, it's situationally.
And situationally, what I mean by that is if you're at the playground, or the cousins and friends have come over, and it's getting out of whack, it's getting crazy, or a child's getting scared and moving away from it, and won't play or is crying or whatever, is being overwhelmed. And they've lost their center, do you see they've, and now the amygdala, the lizard brain is waking up. And now they're hypervigilant.
And now they're scared. And adrenaline is starting to run through their system cortisol isn't is you can do it situationally, bring them in, give them a big old taco hug. And do some squeezes, pulley pushes, squeezes, just rock them a little bit if they're younger.
Even if they're older, actually, you can very subtly rock them. So they don't feel like they're being treated like a baby. But squeezes, pulley pushes until you feel that.
And you will feel it. You know, almost certainly, you'll feel this little relax, little relax, calm them down, let them sit beside you. Let them now you can just let them be for a moment, and then back out they go.
So this, this form of this everyday form of what occupational therapists call, as I mentioned, joint compression, and, and muscle conformation. It's not really that the OTs are absolute experts, and they do this in a in a way that is altogether another level. But for us as parents every day, we can we can take this, this beautiful way of embodying our child and and help them know where they are in space.
Now, one last quick piece around this, I mentioned proprioception. Now, I wanted to give a little heads up that in the next podcast, we'll be we'll be talking about intrioception, and how we can use this very same technique and that that's to come. Okay, I sure hope that was helpful.
Bye bye for now.
