Wiggles! Our new physical therapy tool

Our Land Physical Therapy will be directed for a new Physical Therapist (PT) because our actual PT is in maternity leave. Our Land PT looked for her replacement, who was her professor at the University. The new PT is very passionate about helping kids with Hypotonia (decrease muscle tone) to walk. She, better than anybody else, can understand what having Hypotonia means because she has Hypotonia.

The new PT confirmed that Tommy is holding to walk off because he has most of the skills to independently walking. According to her, It is very common that kids with Hypotonia, regardless what diagnosis, tend to take the minimum support to not make an effort and try get around by themselves; which is what happens with Tommy. Before getting into this conclusion, our new PT tested him. She stood Tommy on an rocker board and she was putting her finger tips on different part of his body while she was racking the board. Tommy leaned toward where he was feeling the finger tips and his legs got loosed. He also had a better posture and kept his balance when he was on the rocker board. Our first PT and I noticed Tommy did better when he learned to crawl on the couch and when he learned to cruise in the crib. The couch and the crib have unstable surfaces. But I didn't pay much attention to it until now. According to our new PT, the wiggle creates awareness in his muscles and joints. Making easier for him to get stabled while he is on unstable surfaces. That's why he enjoys so much roughhouse play and any type of extreme movement such as, the turbulence on an airplane. Now, we understand better our son's physical needs.

I feel a relief because I finally got an answer about why Tommy needs more sensory input. Last year, Tommy had a sensory evaluation to make sure he wasn't having a sensory processing disorder or autism. We did this evaluation because he had some type of sensory play, which are behaviors that a child engages in that are “odd,” repetitive, sometimes obsessive, but they are all inputting information into the “broken” sensory channel. The evaluation showed he doesn't have any type of sensory processing disorder, he just needs more sensory input. Even although, our team and the evaluation said he doesn't have a sensory processing disorder, I didn't get a reasonable explanation until now.

The techniques will be working on are:

• Climbing to strength his upper body, which we are currently doing.
• Not more hand supported to walk. From now on, he has to walk holding our pants while we walk backward.
• Improving his hips weight shifting. Put our hand on lateral position on his hips without holding the hips. Our hands will work as a guide for the weight shifting on his hips.
• Increasing opportunities for standing alone with his hands on a vertical flat surface.
• Working on independent standing on a bench. Practice independent standing on a high bench to make it easier for him. When he masters independent standing on a high bench, we will introduce a lower bench until he is able to independent standing from a lower bench.
• Sitting and standing on an unstable surface to create more awareness on his muscles.

We are very excited with this news strategies because Tommy is responding really good and we have just a few days working on this techniques. From now on, we will provide Tommy with more opportunities to play in an environment with a lot of wiggles. I am glad there is an inflatable play center close to our house that I was thinking to take Tommy when he independently walks, but I have changed my mind. These play center has open play days during the week, which we will star to attend. We are going to have a lot of fun with our wiggle time!