Carla Hannaford Ph.D., biologist, author, educator with more than forty years teaching experience, including two years teaching high school, twenty plus years as a professor of biology, four years as a counsellor for elementary and intermediate school children with learning difficulties and over twenty years as an international consultant to

more than fifty countries, doing workshops and keynote presentations.

 

She was selected as a guest educator with the AHP- Soviet Project in 1988, has been recognized by Who’s Who in American Education, has received awards from the University of Hawaii and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has in-serviced schools throughout the U.S. and in 2006 was a distinguished lecturer for the National Association for Elementary School Principals.

 

She plays a pivotal role in the latest research film “Moving child” in which a team of child development specialists have formed together to produce a piece of work that educates the parents, children and families with regards to the importance of movement.

 

The Moving Child Films teach about the interrelationship of children’s physical, emotional, social and mental development. Our stories explore the importance of dynamic movement in a child’s wellbeing and offer best practices for parents, caregivers and teachers of children. Most folks do not currently have much knowledge of movement’s importance in child development. That is why the message of these films needs to be shared!

We invite your greater awareness of practices negatively impacting children’s sensorimotor development. Kids these days are getting stuck! Let’s help them to move back into flow and have the opportunity to develop their moving body’s full potential.

Integrating approaches from diverse movement therapies, The Moving Child Films share best practices to support children’s naturally unfolding movement ability from in the womb through elementary school.

 

By moving, children learn to communicate, express feelings, heal trauma, make friends, and thrive in the world. How a child moves indicates their developmental stage and communicates their needs. Healthy neurology, shaped by important early sensory and movement experiences in relationship with caregivers, is what supports a child in all learning and developmental tasks. This neurology is significantly shaped by movement and touch in our early years.

 

Children must learn to move dynamically, with full bodied, three-dimensional feelingly movement, to be able to cope with different environments and challenges at different ages. By exploring dynamic movement, a child learns to switch easily from accelerating to decelerating, big to small, loud to quiet, angry to happy, up to down, tense to relaxed, side to side and all other movement potential. This is a part of their ability to self-regulate. Dance is particularly helpful for self-regulation and for a multitude of physical, emotional, cognitive and social learning.

Kids are getting “stuck.”

Statistics show that not only are children not moving enough, they are not moving in the ways they need to move from early infancy onward, dynamically. Research indicates that this contributes to an increase in rates of coordination disorders, learning disabilities, hyperactivity, sensory disorders and emotional disturbance in children. Though these issues may be visible, many are not easy for caregivers to identify. Lots of kids are getting “stuck,” but they need not stay that way

 

The first Moving Child Film: Supporting Early Development through Movement is not just about the moving child’s early development, it’s also about adults in Western culture reclaiming their connection with their own body and movement as a resource for parenting and teaching and how that impacts children. We can help get ourselves and our kids “unstuck”! Everyone has a birth right to movement. As we accept the invitation from children to move with them, and to revive dynamic expressive movement in our families, we reclaim the relationship between our body and our full humanity, and in doing so our children will thrive

 

The Moving Child Films draw on interviews with experts in developmental movement, psychology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, neurology, psychiatry, dance/movement therapy, and cognitive science, including Dr. Carla Hannaford, Dr. Annie Brook, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Susan Loman, Myrna Martin, Dr. Martha Eddy, Kalila Homann and Dr. Bruce Perry, among others. The films also features diverse parents and children inspired to do things differently and discover new ideas!

 

Please CLICK HERE to find out more….