I noticed recently at Little Athletics that my 6 year old son was running with one of his knees turned in. Being an avid exerciser I have learnt over the years the value of preventative care.  I have seen physios for my running and osteopaths for regular tune ups and do pilates weekly for maintenance. It has made an enormous difference to my overall well being and capacity to still exercise hard.

I took my son to my physio and asked him to do a check. I apologised for wasting his time on a non-injury type issue, however I wanted to know why he was running this way and how I could prevent injury. This started an interesting discussion on preventative care and the lack of programmes in place in Australian to review our children as they are growing. There are programmes in other parts of the world, a most successful one in Scandinavia.  The physio commended me for taking the initiative to act early.

I remember when I was at school, I was checked by a Doctor and a Dentist and had vaccinations every year. The Doctor picked up a heart murmur when I was in kindergarten and scoliosis (curvature of the spine) when I was in 5th grade.  This put in place  yearly checks for my heart, a review of the scoliosis  and also a good understanding of why it was important to have your teeth checked every 6-12 months.  I today, still do all these things and more.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could find out potential issues, for our kids, before they turn into real problems.

Megan

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