Improving Your Teenager’s Posture Some Tips

Improving Your Teenager’s Posture- Some Tips

Poor posture, especially during one’s teenage years, has the potential to cause detrimental effects not only on their health but also on their general outlook. Psychologists assert that poor posture tends to make teens look less confident, and it’s a habit that people often find overly difficult to stop especially after it catches on.

Improving Your Teenager’s Posture Some Tips

The Negative Consequences of Poor Posture

Teenagers with poor posture tend to suffer more from muscle strains, which are characterized by back, shoulder, and neck pains.

Health practitioners have also identified impaired lung function as another consequence of poor posture during childhood and teen years. Bad postures tend to limit an individual’s lung capacity.

Other notable health effects of poor posture include poor circulation, spine misalignment, constriction of the nerves, and poor digestion. Therefore, advising your teenage kids to straighten up has far-reaching benefits. But since children can be difficult during their teen years, parents need to approach this issue carefully in order to get the most from their kids.

Promptly identify warning signs

Guardians are required to be in the know with regards to their children’s health. To this end, it is important that parents identify early warning signs before the situation gets out of hand. Case in point, poor posture is one of the early symptoms of scoliosis. 

An early diagnosis goes a long way in preventing severe damage to a child’s back given that the condition usually appears during the teenage years’ growth spurt. As such, parents should never ignore any complaints of back pain. This will help prevent further damage to a child’s spine as a result of poor posture.

Encourage them to exercise

It is a scientifically proven fact that exercise strengthens one’s muscles in addition to conditioning the body. As such, by exercising regularly, teenagers reduce the risk of getting injured. There are specific routines that are better suited for posture realignment. These include:

Shoulder squeezes

                           

Push-ups

                           

Rotational stretches [seated]

Performing rotation stretches while seated allows the body to release tension, especially in the lower and middle back. On the other hand, push-ups and shoulder squeezes help strengthen the back and shoulder muscles which are integral to maintaining good posture.

Teach Your Kids How to Properly Wear a Backpack

Every teenager carries a backpack for school, which is why teaching your kids how to wear a backpack properly is essential for maintaining good posture.

Research has shown that heavy backpacks or those worn incorrectly can negatively affect a child’s balance and posture over time. Teach your kids about good backpack ergonomics such as:

Always wear a backpack with both shoulder straps

Make sure the weight of the backpack doesn’t exceed 15% of the teenager’s weight

Wear the backpack so it’s not dangling below the waist.

Discourage kids from spending too much time on the computer

One of the greatest contributors to poor posture in teenagers is overexposure to technology that have them glued to the screen. This leads to rounded shoulders and neck pain later in their adulthood.

Recent research shows that most teenagers in today’s society spend in excess of 50 hours every week indoors playing video games, watching television, or merely texting. This cultural shift among children has led to a plethora of health issues, including type 2 diabetes and back complications. Poor posture is chiefly among the major side effects as well.

In sum, it is of utmost importance that parents take appropriate steps towards correcting their teenage kids’ posture given the adverse health effects that might arise in the long run. If not dealt with accordingly, this could lead to other complications such as poor digestion, poor circulation, and spine misalignment. 

And given that teenagers can be quite a handful, parents need to use specific strategies to tackle this issue. Some viable solutions include buying a supportive chair, encouraging them to exercise regularly, limiting their time indoors, and identifying the warning signs early enough.