Today we had our first appointment with James from Kids on the Move, the physical therapist assigned to Bennett's team. We wanted him to come evaluate Bennett to make sure there wasn't any physical abnormalities or issues getting in the way of his development as far as walking and balance go. He's been cruising along furniture by himself since he was about 11 or 12 months old, but we're now at 15 months and he still can't really take independent steps. He can take about 4-5 "falling steps", but he's struggling to stay standing on his own very long, get from a sit to a stand on his own, and take steps where he's in control long enough to actually get somewhere. We've been at this point for about a month now, and we expected to see more progress once he took those first independent "falling steps".
We really liked James, and Bennett took to him immediately. As far as evaluating him, he was really thorough watching him walk and crawl and bend down, etc. all over the kitchen and family room to get a good sense for his muscle tone and abilities. Overall, he said he didn't see any glaring physical abnormalities or issues--a little low muscle tone (which we already knew), some hyperflexibility (seems common with SCN8A kids), one of his feet turns outward when he takes steps, but other than that he didn't think there was anything physically wrong with him--he thinks he's just mostly afraid to walk on his own.
Bennett doesn't squat down like typical toddlers do to pick things up, or go from standing to sitting. He always puts his knees down and kneels first to go down and pull up to things. James showed us how to motivate him to squat down to reach for things instead of popping down immediately to his knees, he also showed us an exercise to work his squatting muscles which should help him with his core strength, and he introduced us to the doll stroller, which they call "Dumbo's Feather", haha.
It's just the frame of a little doll stroller and the point is to make Bennett feel like he's holding on to something while he's walking, but it actually doesn't provide any resistance at all, so he's walking on his own, he just doesn't realize it. He did incredibly well with it! His balance was WAY better than Dave and I thought it would be! He was able to walk about 10 foot stretches, it was amazing! Hopefully we can keep practicing and get his muscles a little more developed so he can start to feel more confident in his walking unassisted.
It was a great first visit, and hopefully we can keep this momentum going and help him develop his gross motor skills more quickly now!
No comments:
Post a Comment