Starfish Therapies

A pediatric therapy company operating in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area. We provide physical, occupational, speech and aquatic therapy services in the most beneficial and convenient setting for you and your child, including our clinic, currently located in Burlingame, your home, school or daycare.

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What does High Tone mean?

January 14, 2013 by Stacy Menz

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I wrote a post a while back describing low tone so I thought I would try to do the same with high tone.  Tone is the resting state of your muscles.   When someone has high tone it means that their muscles are getting more input than is necessary, even when they are at rest.  Where kids with low tone tend to melt into you, these kids tend to be on the ‘stiffer’ side.  One thing I often hear from parents is that their child likes to stand all the time (even before standing is a milestone they should be hitting) and they don’t like to sit. (PS- for these kids it is not better to put them in an exersaucer alot because it doesn’t help them learn how to use their muscles differently)  This is because it is easier for their muscles to work all together.  When they are standing they are able to use extension all together, they can keep all of their muscles turned on at the same time.  When they are sitting they are asking their muscles to do different things.  They need to keep their trunk muscles turned on without turning on their gluts (tush muscles) at the same time.

Many people think that kids with higher tone are stronger because they are able to keep their muscles turned on.  This is a common misconception and these kiddos often have the same amount of weakness as kids with low tone.  The just look strong when they are able to do a task like standing when all their muscles are on.  If you ask them to sit or go onto hands and knees they often have a more challenging time because they have to isolate their muscles to have them do different things.  When a child goes onto hands and knees they need to keep their head, neck and trunk extensor muscles turned on but they need to relax their gluts/hip extensor muscles so that they can bend at the hips and again at the knees.  Often they will hold this position for a short period of time before they turn their gluts back on and come up into high kneeling.  This is because its easier for them to maintain head, neck and trunk extension with hip extension then it is to have hip flexion with their head, neck and trunk being extended.  Just like in sitting they need to keep their trunk upright while keeping their legs bent at their hips and knees.

Its important to remember that these kids need to strengthen individual muscles so that they become more efficient at isolating out movement and don’t need to rely on using all their muscles doing the same thing at the same time.  The earlier they start developing isolated muscle strength the easier it will be as they progress through their milestones where they need to be able to use each  muscle differently.  In addition, as they grow or have growth spurts you may see some ‘stiffness’ return because their muscles have just been stretched and need to adapt to the new length.  Maintaining isolated strengthening will help your child to move through these growth spurts with increased ease.

I know this is a hard topic to explain so I hope I made it a little more understandable for you.  Please don’t hesitate to ask any questions that this may have raised and I will do my best to answer.

Related

Filed Under: Developmental Milestones Tagged With: gross motor development, hypertonia, sitting, standing, strengthening

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