Why Don't Children Sit Still?: A Parent's Guide to Healthy Movement and Play in Child Development

Insightful answers to common parental questions about balance, clumsiness, and coordination.

Why is my son so clumsy? Why is my daughter's handwriting so messy? My children only want to play video games: will lack of movement really hurt them?

Movement is essential in helping children develop not only motor skills but also intellectual, emotional and social skills. Children learn through 'doing' and play. But a child's journey to learn how to control their body can cause frustration in parents. How often do parents say, "Can you not just sit still?" or treat a grazed knee when children fall over their own feet?

By understanding how children develop sensory motor skills -- that is, get information through their senses and respond with their physical body -- parents can start to address and find reassurance about the issues that concern them.

In this practical and insightful book, Evelien van Dort's uses her thirty years' experience as a children's physiotherapist, and draws on Rudolf Steiner's theories of child development, to outline how children develop skills such as spatial awareness, balance, coordination and telling right from left. This book will inform and reassure any parent or educator about the impact of a child's movement on their wider learning.

Evelien van Dort is a children's physiotherapist in the Netherlands with over thirty years' experience. She has two children, and has written many story books for children. She was knighted in 2016 in recognition of her services to literature and literacy.