Posting a few more videos to show Ryder’s progress along this Constraint Induced Therapy journey!
In this first one you can see him painting. The strength he has gained in his left arm has given him the ability to do more controlled movements with his left hand. He never would have been able to aim the paintbrush at a specific color before and then make it onto the paper to draw!
In the next video he is trying so hard to take his slippers off. It seriously is a miracle to see him reach across his body, land his hand on what he was aiming for, then use his strength to pull the velcro. The best part is how hard he is concentrating and trying to succeed, without getting frustrated!
And last, he’s getting so much better at picking up food with Lefty and actually getting it in his mouth. Of course he still insists on eating off of our kitchen floor, but now it’s just because he thinks it’s funny, not because he has to!
Ryder really has come so far, I can’t believe we’re coming to the end of our 3 weeks with the cast on! On Thursday before therapy they will be cutting off the blue sword! I can’t wait to get him home and scrub his arm that night. We will be watching him closely at therapy on thursday & friday and over the weekend to make a decision about whether the 3 weeks was long enough. If he goes immediately back to only using his right hand and fisting and ignoring his left hand then we will be putting the cast on for another 3 weeks. We’ve all seen the progress he has made, we know for sure his brain is forcing signals through and we don’t want all of these efforts to be wasted. As bad as we don’t want to have to do the second round, we know that if he needs it for reinforcement to get these new skills that he has gained to stick, it is what we will have to do. We definitely expect him to use righty as his dominant hand when we take the cast off, but hopefully he will still engage lefty and use two hands more appropriately, showing off his new skills and we can be done with the casting for now!
Ryder has come SUCH a long way! That video of him taking his slipper off and not getting frustrated is such a big step! I bet you can't wait to scrub that arm and he probably can't wait for bath time without Mommy holding his arm up! Haha.
ReplyDeleteWow, he's doing so great Brandy. I hope he contiues using and working with lefty like this once the cast is off!!
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome!! Future Picasso :)
ReplyDeleteHe has come so far!! I seriously talk out loud at my desk, 'Come, you can do it... good job.' lol. not kidding. i love that kid! <3
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