Balance exercises after Neurosurgery
Your child may have balance problems caused by the tumour, the surgery, or both. You can help your child to do some exercises to improve his balance when he goes home from the hospital. Check with your child’s physiotherapist before doing these.
A few points to remember:
Make sure that an adult is always present do these activities a few times a day; pick two or three activities to work on at a time. These exercises are generally suitable for children aged five and up:
Exercises
- Practise walking on a curb with one foot in front of the other. Or put a piece of masking tape on the ground/floor and practice walking with one foot in front of the other. When this is easy, try this with the eyes closed.
- Practise standing on one leg. Count how long your child can hold this position. Try to beat this record each time.Once your child can balance on one leg easily, stand on the right leg and
- Practise bending the right knee five times. Repeat with the left leg.Play catch with your child. Once he can do this, make it more challenging by throwing the ball to the right or left side, up high or down low.
- Practise kicking a ball with your child. Make it more challenging by kicking the ball to your right or left side so that he has to step and reach for the ball.
- Practise walking backwards or sideways.
- Practise walking upstairs or downstairs without holding onto a railing.
- Practise walking on the toes and on the heels.
- Practise grapevine walking — crossing over the feet.
- Practise playing “Simon says” with your child. Use different movements to make it harder as it gets too easy.
- Practise hitting a balloon back and forth with your child. Make sure there is lots of open space to avoid tripping.
- Practise drawing numbers or letters in the air with the arms or legs.
- Practise stepping up onto a step and back down again. When this becomes too easy,
- Practise stepping over a small object and then back over it again.