An obsticale course, really?

Now that Luke has mastered the regular walker and we are working on mastering “swivel wheels”, we are trying to teach him how to fine tune his turning skills. So now that he can navigate around his Therapy building pretty well, meaning he goes until he hits a wall….then he pushes through until he goes straight again. (Leaving a mark where he has been, like he wants to make sure someone knows he was there). In order to “fine tune” his skills his PT started setting up an obstacle course for him to try and navigate in the hallway.


He doesn’t really like this, you can imagine why. Before he would get mad when he hit a wall, because he didn’t know what to do. Now there are so many “walls” he starts to get frustrated and upset. The funny part is that his PT uses what they call Bolsters, which are like cushy cylinders. They have various weights and sizes. She staggers them throughout the hallway on their sides so he has to go around them. Yesterday he thought enough was enough, and he tried going over one of the smaller ones. The PT was holding it in place with her foot (because they would just roll away otherwise) and Luke came square into it and tried stepping on top of her foot. It was like he was saying, “get out of my way, I’ll show you how this is done. Why go around when I can just go over it.” He tried this two different times, but neither time did the mean old PT or his mean old mommy let him go over.

At home now instead of going in circles, which wasn’t working great anyway since he was always trying to go down the hill to the neighbor’s house, we are trying an obstacle course as well. Although we don’t have the fancy “Bolsters” like they have at therapy, so mommy uses what she can find. The Last time I set up a course I used our single stroller, double stroller, two garbage cans, and two Mud (plaster) 5 gallon buckets.

Of course I usually have to do this while his baby sister is awake. So I put her in the baby swing in the front yard’s tree, push her off and then focus on Luke and a round of obstacles. Well this day while I was not watching Luke and pushing our baby girl, Luke decided to try to keep going in and around the obstacles on his own. Only he got himself in “a pickle”. He tried to go straight through one of the 5 gallon buckets of Mud. It didn’t work so well (as you can see in the picture on the left).

So we keep working at it, and hopefully one day he will be a pro at getting around all these obstacles.