Emma walking and playing ball
Emma has been working on walking at school in a Rifton Pacer gait trainer. Her PT really thinks that Emma will take off on walking once she gets the hang of it - if she is motivated. The common theme with Emma is that she does what she wants when she wants to - my Emma, she's not really a people pleaser like Julia! She is motivated by silliness, roughhousing, flying through the air, slides and playing ball. I know her PT has figured her out by now because she mentioned at her recent IEP meeting that Emma isn't the delicate flower she originally thought when she met her. No one that knows Emma well would call her a delicate flower!
To help with her walking goal at school I've been giving Emma more time in her KidWalk gait trainer at home. When used "as is" she tends to get herself "stuck" in it with her legs forward and then she doesn't know how or isn't able to pull her legs back to propel herself forward again. To combat this, I've started tying a scarf around her thigh to the back of the KidWalk to prevent her legs from going all the way forward. This is working really well and letting Emma walk around more without me helping move the walker from the back. It's also making it easier to give her more time in the gait trainer for exploration because she can do things like walk around the kitchen and check out things while I'm cooking and I can help her when she gets stuck in a corner of bumps into a cabinet but I don't have to stop everything I'm doing to help her walk.
Today we were playing ball in the kitchen. I had an empty box for her to toss a small ball into and she LOVED this game. We did it different ways - her holding the ball and walking, walking to the ball, kicking the ball to the box, etc. Here is a short video I took of her walking in the KidWalk and having fun. You'll notice that she is able to walk without me holding the back of the walker to assist and that she has the scarf tied around her left leg. Emma really is making a lot of progress in so many areas and I sometimes forget to toot her horn.
So here is me tooting the Emma horn - toot toot! Enjoy!
2 Comments from readers:
Looks like Emmas doing well. I'm pretty sure there is a leg wrap accessory that can be added to the kidwalk, but hey if a scarf works thats great too. Cody has that same problem sometimes. I find myself repositioning every now and then to move his bottom back. My boys like to play soccer sometimes when Codys in his kidwalk or we make towers out of those big carboard blocks and let him knock it down.
oot, toot, toot. That was simply super.
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