Help Your Child Calm and Focus with Heavy Work

Judy Benz Duncan, Occupational Therapist

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Many children benefit from taking part in “heavy work” that can help to calm their bodies, help them self-regulate and organize, helps them to make more sense of the world around them, and provide lots of great sensory proprioceptive input that lets them become more aware of their body movements, coordination, and motor control.

Heavy work sensory activities include any activity that requires your child to use their muscles and joints, putting pressure on them as they move, providing necessary sensory proprioceptive input that helps your child self-regulate.

Heavy Work Calms and Helps Children Focus by providing deep proprioceptive input into a child’s muscles and joints. The use of “Heavy Work” helps them self-regulate in the same way that exercise may help an adult deal with stress. Heavy work helps your child to re-center, re-focus, and lets them expend energy into appropriate outlets.

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Proprioception refers to an awareness of posture, movement, balance and a basic understanding of position, weight and resistance as they relate and impact the body.

Children often seek out proprioceptive input when they are looking for a way to calm or organize their nervous system, and if they do not have appropriate or acceptable ways to obtain this input, they may run, jump, climb, display negative behaviors, become overwhelmed and have a sensory meltdown.

Scheduling in “heavy work” time and “heavy work” sensory playtime can help to improve your child’s ability to focus on other tasks (sit-down tasks and activities), manage and self-regulate at more comfortable levels, and just make for a less anxious and stressful home life.

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Heavy Work Activities and Chores

o Remember that not all children are the same, and will react differently to each activity.

o You may want to take the time to introduce each new activity or chore one at time, give good training and instruction, letting your child choose which one(s) they want to start with, and make the sessions for no more than 5-10 minutes at a time.

o Pick and choose from the list – one or two different tasks a day is great!

o If there are activities that frustrate or overwhelm your child, just leave them off the list.

o Giving your child a choice helps to get them to take part and gives them confidence as well.

o Slow, steady resistance, along with effort that needs to be exerted, can be just what a child needs!

o Short time frames (of 5-10 minutes at most) is all you need! Set a timer if you want to give your child a visual, auditory, and another way to help organize their time.

o Return to 5-10 minutes of heavy work as needed throughout the day, especially if your child needs to work on a sit-down, meal-time, or other task that requires focus and attention.

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Heavy Work Sensory Proprioceptive Input

to Help Calm and Focus

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Take a “Heavy Work Break!”

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