Thursday’s Child – Therapeutic

This summer we took a break from Ham’s therapy. We were getting a little burned out, okay mostly I was getting burned out. He had physical therapy every Monday and every other Monday we added Speech to that. Then on every Wednesday he has another therapist that visits. Don’t get me wrong I am very grateful that he has been in this program and we have seen amazing progress, but I we just needed a break. So this summer was the perfect time to take a breather and let him just do his own thing.

So Monday was our first therapy session since May. It’s always more fun to have a session with all the other kiddos here to get in the way help.

We were trying to get Ham to walk across wobbly board with his hands on his head. It ended up just looking like a conga line.

Then his therapist wanted him to stand on the board sideways with his hands on his cheeks. Of course everyone else joined in the fun.

The therapist wants him to stand with his hands on his head or his cheeks so he doesn’t use his arms for balance and instead strengthens his core muscles for balance.

The next challenge was to reach high up the wall. He didn’t want to do it until the other kiddos were doing it first.

He had to have a little help reaching the Roo mark.

And therapy always includes a fun game of catch.

It’s so bad at this point that it doesn’t matter who comes over Ham thinks they are here to play catch with him.

You notice in all these pictures LaLa is right there, I really wasn’t kidding.

The therapy sessions ends with a little stretching. This is one of the areas where we have seen huge progress. Notice that she is able to flex his ankle up towards his shin. That is major. For the longest time his ankle didn’t have any flexibility to it.

It’s crazy to think just a year ago he was still getting around on his knees. His legs weren’t strong enough or his ankles flexible enough for him to walk.

Since it had been so long since he had seen his therapist she did a quick assessment during this session of the little things like running, jumping with both feet off the ground and throwing the ball over-handed. The little things that seemed like such big things not that long ago.

After the therapist finished her assessment she looked at me with a strange look on her face and I was a little nervous. Then she said those words we have been waiting for, “He scores in the normal range on physical abilities for a 2 year old, he just does them a little quirky”. Well quirky is just fine with me. Don’t we all have a little quirky?!? If not we should!

So now we have changed our therapy schedule to just have physical therapy once a month.

I don’t know what I will do with all that free time. Oh yeah…I will try to keep up with a 2 year old that runs around like a crazy little man!