The sooner the parents take care of hardening the child, the stronger will be his immunity to the beginning of attending kindergarten, school, which means that seasonal illnesses will not be so terrible for the baby. The hardening of preschool children has its own characteristics, which we will consider in this article.
Why is this needed?
Hardening has been known to mankind since time immemorial. This complex of physiotherapeutic effects using the capabilities of the environment: air, sun, water, temperatures, was appreciated by doctors of antiquity. At the same time, medicine has not come up with anything new. Everything that involves hardening was created by nature, because once people walked without shoes, drank from natural sources, were not afraid of the effects of the sun and wind, and were much healthier.
The hardening system is an attempt by modern man to approach the natural habitat of the species to which he belongs. The gradual impact of external factors starts a series of processes in the body, improving and mobilizing the work of organs and systems. Every child from birth has a great natural potential to resist diseases and threats from the outside, but parents usually ruin him at the root, wrapping the child, protecting him from drafts, using sterile dishes and nipples.
It is hardening that brings the body closer to natural conditions and trains the child's immunity. The state of health improves, the metabolism becomes faster, the immunity becomes stronger, ready to give an adequate response to any threat in time. The blood vessels in a child who is being hardened are in normal tone, which reduces the likelihood of developing heart and vascular ailments in the future, children begin to get sick less often, and if they do get sick, then the illness proceeds quickly, without complications.
Hardening increases the adaptive abilities of the child, which will be an excellent help when serious changes in life, for example, when starting school.
Types and methods
Hardening can be traditional and non-traditional (for example, winter swimming is included here). And the methods of preschool hardening are divided into special and non-special.
Non-special measures include everyday measures to create favorable conditions for the development of the child:
- a useful parental habit of dressing the child for the weather;
- creating the correct microclimate in the apartment: the air temperature is about 21 degrees, the humidity is at least 50-60%.
But all rubdowns and douches already belong to special methods, and you can practice them both in kindergarten and at home.
Consider what methods exist today.
Air
Exposure to air is considered the easiest way available to absolutely everyone. Tempering procedures can be started from it if there is no relevant experience at all, since air hardening will advantageously complement other methods.
You should not take any special measures, drawing up an action plan and scheduling procedures in time is also not the best solution. It is enough for parents to introduce exposure to air into the child's daily life:
- when changing clothes, leave the child undressed for a few minutes, do not rush to immediately dress him in other clothes;
- take off your T-shirt during morning exercises or gymnastics;
- put the preschooler to sleep in a room that is well ventilated beforehand;
- ventilate the room up to five times a day, even in winter;
- every day the child should take walks on the street, and the longer they are, the better.
When lifting the child out of bed in the morning, take five minutes to exercise, but make sure that it is not hot in the child's room - for gymnastics, the optimum air temperature is + 18 ° C. Gradually lower it by 1 degree over several days until the temperature is 12 degrees Celsius.
Encourage walking barefoot on the floor. In summer - on grass, sand, soil. This will help not only in matters of hardening, but also in the formation of the correct arch of the foot, which will be the prevention of flat feet and other orthopedic problems of the feet. Do not be afraid that walking barefoot will lead to a cold - the vessels of the feet have a property, unique for the human body, to narrow, and therefore there is no loss of internal heat. Sitting on a cold surface is quite another matter, with it, colds are very likely.
By making barefoot walking a habit, you can gradually learn special walking techniques, such as in the snow. To do this, first place the child with one foot on the snow, then with the other. And only then can he get up on the snow with two feet. The procedure begins from 1 minute and bring it in stages up to 10 minutes.
Don't be afraid to get rid of excess clothing. While the kid is out of town in summer, he can play without a shirt, and in early spring, when he is playing outside, you can take off his jacket for a while, and then put it back on.
Remember: the larger the area of the skin free from clothing, the more effective air hardening will be.
Solar
On contact with the skin, ultraviolet rays become a source of vitamin D, which the child needs for growth, metabolic processes, as well as for the nervous system and the formation of bone tissue. But it should be understood thatthe benefits of such hardening can be canceled out by harm, because sunlight has a very intense effect on the body.
If the preschooler has no contraindications to being in the sun, you need to start hardening by being in the shade, and only then expose individual parts of the body to the sun - first the legs and arms. Sunbathing begins with 2-3 minutes and gradually increases to 10 minutes. When sunburn appears on your skin, you can increase the time you spend in the sun.
Important! Preschoolers should take sun baths at a time when the intensity of UV radiation is minimal - from 8 to 11 in the morning, and after 4 pm. Do not forget about the headdress for the child - the panama hat should be made of light natural fabric, and you should always have a bottle of clean drinking water with you so that the child can drink at any time.
Aquatic
Water hardening is the most popular and effective hardening method for preschoolers. Water treatments activate the immune system and help the child to adapt better. The procedures have a vasoconstrictor and vasodilator effect, they train thermoregulation, and therefore the child becomes less susceptible to hypothermia factors, and is less likely to get sick.
For a preschooler, parents should enter the daily routine daily hand washing, but it differs from the usual in surface area and water temperature. You need to wash not only your hands, but also your shoulders, neck, and upper chest. Use warm water at first, and then gradually lower its temperature by 1 degree every day, and so on to 16-17 ° C.
It is very effective to harden the oropharynx after eating with cool water. For this use boiled water cooled to 16 ° C.
Such rinsing will be very useful for preschoolers who are often sick, but the parents of such children should understand that they should lower the water temperature for the baby more slowly - not by a degree a day, but by a degree every four days. You should start at 35 degrees for any child. Rinsing does not stop even in case of illness, if the attending physician does not object. But for such rinses, water is used, which is a couple of degrees higher than usual.
If the child was not hardened before, and only at 3-4 years old they decided to start preparing his health for school days, start water hardening gradually, with rubdowns. They are carried out with cool water from the hands, neck, and then to the body and legs. Be sure to rub the child after wiping with a hard towel, so that the skin flushes a little. The temperature of the rubdown water at the initial stage should be above 35 ° C, and then it is gradually reduced to 22 ° C in the summer and 23-24 ° C in the winter season.
The next step in the hardening scheme is pouring. Here it is important not to rush and follow the main recommendation - to do everything gradually. The legs are poured first. In some nurseries and older groups of kindergartens, there are specialists in tempering and exercise therapy who carry out such procedures with parental consent, provide consultations, and help to master the basic techniques.
Suitable for starting douches water with a temperature of about 30 ° C, every week it is lowered by a degree, and gradually brought to 14 ° C.
Important: if the legs are cold at the beginning of the procedure, the goal will not be achieved, only warm legs are poured. Therefore, it is wise to douche after sleep. Then the legs are rubbed well with a hard towel.
Contrast douches are the next step. And they also start with the legs. If the child is generally healthy, the contrast between warm and cold water can be from 14 to 32 ° C, if the baby is often sick and has weak immunity, the contrast should be less pronounced - 25-32 ° C. The body is doused with water from 36 ° C, gradually reducing its temperature to 19 ° C. The first douche should last no more than 15 seconds.
The time of the water procedure can be gradually increased. The procedure for dousing is as follows: legs, arms, back, chest, abdomen and sides. After dousing the child, rub it with a hard towel until the skin becomes red.
The child definitely needs to swim: in the bath, in the reservoirs, in the pool. In this case, you also need to follow the rules that state that inexposure to water, air, sun should be reasonable, step-by-step, gradual.
Tips & Tricks
When planning hardening of a preschooler, it is important to know the basic rules and principles, which should be observed regardless of the selected hardening method.
- Before starting, be sure to consult your pediatrician. Sunbathing has contraindications, for example, they can harm children with dermatological diseases, oncological problems, nevi, photoallergy. Exposure to cold is contraindicated in children with a cold form of allergy, and water procedures are limited in children with an aquagenic allergic reaction.
- Any impact should be gradual, smooth, the time of procedures is increased little by little, the temperatures are also reduced gradually. If it is difficult to draw up an action plan right away, ask your doctor for help - he will give you a memo-table in which you can indicate the main stages of your wellness procedures.
- Hardening is not a feat and not an event. This is an everyday and familiar way of life, which should become natural not only for the child, but also for the whole family. It will be strange if parents begin to demand from the baby something that they do not do themselves.
- If the child is sick, tempering procedures are canceled only for a period of high body temperature. After its normalization, they gradually return to hardening.
