Physical Therapy Eval

For those of you who read yesterday's post, you know that at B's 15-month check up, the doctor suggested he start doing some physical therapy. She didn't seem concerned that B isn't walking yet, but she did think he should start working on strengthening his core muscles since he has never crawled, pulled to standing, and can't get to a sitting position from lying down.

Today was his first session. The facility is only about a 6 minute drive from the house, so that's really nice. I had to fill out some paperwork upon our arrival today, but it didn't take long for Ms. Jen to come get us. She led us to a room that looked a lot like I expected. It had a large mat on the floor, several large exercise balls, a trampoline, some large building blocks, and a table with toys. I just helped B walked around while she talked to me a little and got a history about him.

She tried to get him to cruise along the table by coaxing him with a toy, but he wouldn't do that. He also showed how he won't crawl, but just rolls over from his belly to his back instead of trying very hard. He can almost pull himself to standing if he really wants to. Once he is standing up (while holding onto something stable) he can stay there with only one hand on the object.

The main thing the therapist wants him to work on is what is called "rotations". Basically they are the movements necessary to transition from one position to another: lying to sitting, sitting to lying, sitting to crawling/standing. While sitting I can work with B on getting him to lean over to the side far enough to end up in a crawling position. The same is true for getting him to stand. He needs to rotate and get his knees under him instead of just trying to go straight up to his feet.

We are going to go back and see her once a week for eights weeks and see how much progress Brennan has made. She said she can tell he has motivation to move because he gets so frustrated when he can't.

Overall it was a fun experience. Thankfully our next appointments are a little bit earlier than today's. He was getting pretty tired by the end of it. I think it'll be good for B and before long, he'll probably be tearing through the house!