Where has this kid been all this time?

Well, it's Monday, and around here Mondays are for therapy.  John goes to Occupational therapy at 9am and Physical therapy at 10am every Monday morning.  Then he goes to school for the second half of the day.  Which means, he's pretty pooped by the time he gets home at 4:00. So this morning, on this rainy, dreary day, we loaded in the car and hauled ourselves to therapy.

He hasn't been in 2 weeks.  His physical therapist was out last week, so we decided to take the week off from occupational therapy as well.  So I wasn't sure what to expect after missing a week.  Normally, he does really well for OT and then is extremely stubborn with PT.  His OT has been working on him moving food around in his mouth with his tongue, chewing food before swallowing, and drinking from a cup.  He has been doing well with these things even though it is still hard for him.  You never realize how much work you actually have to do with your mouth in order to eat food until you watch someone who can't do it.  His OT is always happy with the work he does and she has seen improvement since we started this past summer.  But today, she said he was in his own world.  It was kind of his way or the highway and he didn't work as hard as he normally does for her.  So I guess I can give him one bad week, since he normally does really well.

When we got to PT at 10:00, I was a little skeptical.  If he was stubborn for OT, what on earth was he going to be like for PT.  He's always stubborn for her, so I can't imagine him being worse.  All of the things she is trying to get him to do for her, he does at home with no problem.  But for some reason, when he is in that room with her, he won't do any of it.  So this past week, I took some videos of him at home.  One was him crawling on all fours with his head up, like she has been trying to get him to do for months now and one was of him walking along the wall in the hallway.  She was so excited to see those videos to know that he really can do those things.  After we saw him last time, I got the impression that she was very frustrated and discouraged with what they have been able to do so far.  But all of that changed today.

The first thing she did was put him in a set of parrallel bars that they have to see how he would stand in them.  Not only did he stand in them, but he grabbed on and started walking.  That was the first big surprise.  Then she wanted to do just some static standing with him to work on his balance and stability.  The PT tech that was with us had a toy that really caught John's attention and he stood there and played with that toy for at least 10 minutes.  The PT sat behind him and held his belt loop and had one hand on his shoulder and John did the rest of the work, without holding onto anything.  He was having so much fun with that toy, and his therapist just couldn't believe how well he was doing.  Then she wanted to see him walk with a walker.  The one we used today was different than what we have at home.  At home we use a gait trainer.  It's heavier and has lots of straps and supports for him.  But the walker is more like what you see older people use.  The bar goes in the back and he just hangs onto the sides and walks, guiding it where he wants to go.  There are no straps or supports for him and it isn't as heavy.  With this, he walked around a section of hallway that was about 250 feet.  He was a little slow, and she had to use her foot to keep him from crossing his feet as he walked, but he made it all the way around.  When we came back into the therapy room, she gave him a short break and then worked with him going from the sitting position to the standing position.  He did pretty well with this as well.  Although going from standing back to sitting is a little more difficult for him.

Overall, it was an excellent therapy session and I think it even rejuvenated his therapist some.  She seemed to be less discouraged now that she has seen all of the things he is capable of.  She has a better sense of what he can do and where to go from here, so I think that will really help us going forward.  I joked with him saying that the clothes he was wearing was his therapy outfit and that I was going to make him wear it every week to therapy.  I really was only half kidding.  Hey, if something is working, why change it, right?  The only other factor we could think of was that he was wearing his hearing aids today.  Apparently, I haven't been putting them on him before therapy in the mornings, but for some reason I did today.  Maybe he was more alert with them on and that is why he was doing well.  Or maybe it's just taken all of this time for him to get comfortable with the therapist and to decide he wanted to do the work.  Whatever it was, I hope he keeps it up.  It's definitely something I have been praying about, for us to figure out what exactly was going to motivate him to work.  It's very exciting to see him do so well.



I'll end this post today with two pictures and a video I took of him at therapy.  He is such a big boy!

reaching for a toy