Reasons Why You Should Never Let Your Child Sitting With ''W'' Position

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What is W-sitting?

W-sitting is a sitting position in which children sit with knees bent, feet tucked under, bottom resting on the floor between their legs, and legs out to either side.

The child’s knees may be close to touching or may be splayed apart. Parents and therapists usually notice children W-sitting between ages 3 to 6, but you may also observe it with younger or older children.

W sitting can be a more stable sitting position for children. However, this is because in the W pose, children do not have to work quite as hard to engage their core and hold their trunks upright.

Instead, they spread their lower limbs to create a wider base of support, relying on their joint structures (and not their muscles) to hold them up.

In this position, the muscles are not stabilizing the hip joints.

This causes increased posterior pelvic tilt (the front of the pelvis rises and the back of the pelvis drops), which can result in poor sitting posture, decreased core activation, reduced trunk rotation, and delayed fine motor development.

According to Rebecca Cohen, DPT, PT, increasing the inward rotation of the hip while decreasing the outward range of motion can contribute to a pigeon-toed gait pattern.

This walking pattern is correlated with excessive tripping, clumsiness, instability when walking and running, and decreased balance and body awareness.

Probably, most of the parents aware the bad effect of w-sitting position for their children. There are several reasons and explanations why you should never allow them to sit in “W” instead encourage them to sit in a proper way or to do some other physical activities. Furthermore, here are the lists of common reasons why children W-sit that should addressed:

Limited core strength: The W-sitting position gives kids a wider base of support. This may be used to compensate for weak belly and back muscles that make it tiring or challenging to sit in other positions.

Muscle tightness: Tight muscles of the legs (particularly the hamstrings on the backs of the thighs) and hips can lead a child to prefer a W-sitting position over long sitting (legs stretched out in front) or tailor sitting ("criss cross applesauce" position).

Low muscle tone: We often talk about muscle strength, which refers to active, contracted muscles. Muscle tone is the resting state of the muscles and is controlled by the brain. Some kids have what's called hypotonicity, or low tone. When they aren't actively firing their muscles, these kids have floppier, softer muscles that have a harder time holding their bodies upright. W-sitting is very often seen in kiddos with low muscle tone.

Poor trunk rotation skills: If a child is lacking the ability to twist the torso adequately, he will struggle to transition into and out of a sitting position on his bottoms and may compensate by W-sitting.

If this sitting position causes your children of having problem their motor skills, balancing and if they cannot sit other position, you may check with pediatric therapist that may help you to work out with this issue.