Dear LPG,

I look around me these days at the younger people that I pass in the streets, and see on the television, and wonder if I am the only one who notices their relatively bad posture. I believe that people in general are walking more hunched with more rounded shoulders these days and I put it down to the fact that their parents did not make the same point of encouraging them to form the habit of sitting and standing up strait when they were young. 

I know it is hard because in today’s world, so many parents spend all day at work while so many of their children are at nursery or school, and I can see why it would be hard for them to expect teachers to have the time to continually notice the need for better posture, and remind the children that could do with the verbal prod.  

I strongly feel, and have heard it said many times before; a good posture habit will make a difference to the back pain that so many of us experience later on in life.  I found an article, which I hope LPG will share, that lists the ways in which our health is positively affected by the way we position our backs. 

I think that I am one of a relatively rare breed of elders these days because there are comparatively few people around me, in my age group, who have not started to complain of chronic and painful back ache. I am now 86 years old and nearly all of my friends seem to complain about the ongoing pain in their back.  I have relatively little back ache in spite of my age and have to put that down to those childhood days when my mother insured that her little ones were sitting strait.  She would tell us that we should always stand or sit as we would if we were about to meet the Queen or someone we would like to really impress, and she would tell us to imagine that we were always dressed up to the nines because if we have our best clothes on we somehow position ourselves better without even thinking about it.

I know it is not a fool proof remedy and if you are older and have back ache there is not much you can really do about it now, but when us older people see our grandchildren getting into the bad habit of slouching perhaps it is up to us to do the pestering because we have a little more time than our children, both to notice and make the necessary and repeated warnings an ongoing part of our conversation with them. 

  RS, Beckenham

LPG has shared the website as RS requested and we have found a video or two on the subject of good posture that may help you, but that we hope you will use to encourage the younger ones around you.

(►►►)   (►►►)     (►►►)