Therapy Applied

Reagan struggles with low muscle tone.  This is not the same a not being strong.  The simplest explanation is that her brain doesn't properly tell her muscles when to engage, so no matter how strong they are they don't always help her do what she needs.  Gross motor skills have always been an area of weakness and she has had physical therapy all her life.  She has never walked long distances...until now.

The difference that physical therapy can make (especially when coupled with targeted nutritional therapy) is asstonishing.  Today we applied her five years of therapy to the real world.  We went for a 2 mile hike!

And she walked pretty much the entire trail.  Uphill and down.

 Over rocks.

Along logs.  These are all skills that she has worked hard on in therapy.  Until recently she didn't have the endurance for this long of a walk,   We applied her sensory therapy too.

The mushroom was "cold and squishy".

The moss was "soft".

The lichen was "scratchy".  By the time we reached the end of the trail I think she may have collected her weight in rocks and acorns in her pockets.

"look Mama, nother rock, put it in pocket?'  See,  speech therapy, applied.  Driving the car over the bumpy rutted road..."careful Mama".  And when her poor little flat feet just could go any farther..."Mama I can't,  foot hurt".

 She wasn't so worn out though that she couldn't join in the creative imaginary play while we waited for Papa to go back down the trail to retrieve the keys that Mama might possibly have airheadedly left in his car.

 We played  Hot Stick, which is a lot like hot potato except, you know, with a stick.

 We played pine cone soccer.

 We roasted pine cones over a pine cone fire and played telephone.  We built pine cone and leaf castles.  It was a good day.