When most people think of skateboarding, their first thoughts are usually something along the lines of misfit teens, punk rock, or maybe even guys like Tony Hawk. What they don’t think about, is just how amazing skateboarding is for kids who need occupational therapy. Kids like Everett, who are on the autism spectrum. Kids like Finn, who need help with impulse control. So today I’m going to highlight the awesome benefits of skateboarding for kids with special needs.
Surprising Benefits of Skateboarding
From the time children with autism are toddlers, they are placed into Occupational Therapy which is needed to develop motor, proprioceptive, vestibular skills and more. Skateboarding offers nearly every component of Occupational Therapy, which is why many of these children “crave” to skateboard. It stimulates parts of their brain that trigger focus, hand-eye coordination, and more. Here are just a few of the health benefits:
- Coordination – Skateboarding improves hand, eye, leg and feet coordination. When skateboarding, you need to alter your movements so you skate smoothly and accurately.
- Pain Tolerance – Other sports improve your pain tolerance, but learning how to skateboard includes constantly falling, tripping, cutting your knees and elbows, etc. Believe it or not, this helps to improve your tolerance and build up resilience.
- Stress Relief – Stresses consume people, even kids, all the time. Skateboarding is an avenue to relieve some of those stresses or frustrations.
- Precision – Skateboarding takes a lot of precision to master. You are constantly adjusting weight from one direction to another, switching your speed, and, when good enough, perfecting tricks.
- Reflexes – This one ties together with coordination. When falling or stopping quickly, you need to have quick reflexes to brace yourself or prevent a collision from happening. You learn quickly that running into a railing is not ideal.
- Patience/Behavior Management– Skateboarding, like other sports, requires an immense amount of patience. You will not be the next Tony Hawk after your first time on the board. Falling countless times, missing that tricky bend, and hitting that awesome trick will test your patience time after time. When a skateboarder is having a bad day, annoyed with the world, feels like he could punch through a brick wall what does he do? He skateboards. Same as kids with autism, when their impulse control is almost lost, their anxiety is through the roof, and the screaming and crying is about to begin, break out the skateboard and you’ll find that it helps them work through their current behaviors.
- Social Development- skateboarding allows those who struggle with normal social interaction interact with peers on the level the individual feels most comfortable with.
Skateboarding offers many components similar to occupational therapy such as focusing on motor, vestibular and proprioceptive skills. Saturday skateboarding lessons are quickly becoming one of the boys favorite things to do. Both boys have a weak core and crave high impact activities. Everett has poor motor planning and balance issues, while Finn has poor impulse control and anger issues. Skateboarding is helping tremendously with both. Learning self/impulse control and behavior management is a huge part in why I decided to start the boys with lessons. And perhaps, most importantly, it’s also pretty freaking fun!
Skateboarding has had such a amazing impact on kids with autism that there are several nonprofits that have been created to help connect and introduce skateboarding to those the spectrum. There are even studies that have popped up specifically to research the correlation of brain activity and heart rate between autism and skateboarding. It’s even been approved as an acceptable form of occupational therapy in several states.
Hopefully, with these studies and nonprofits, skateboarding will no longer be looked at as a rebellious pasttime by those who don’t understand it and more funding would be available for using skateboarding as a therapy rather that funding just another information autism organization out there.
I know that right now, the boys have found an outlet they both love and I couldn’t be happier with their awesome teacher and their continued progress. I hope they continue to find joy in skateboarding and that the benefits continue to carryover into other aspects of their lives.
