Titanic

On our vacation to WI, we spent time on Luke’s grandpa and grandma’s pontoon boat. The past two years when we have gone Luke wasn’t too thrilled to be in a life jacket, let alone on some “weird water vehicle”. It was definitely not his favorite thing to do.


This year, he was able to move his neck around more in his life jacket and therefore felt a little more freedom. In order to get some PT walking in, we tried taking Luke’s walker on the boat. So there we were going along in our boat and Luke would walk about 6-8 feet and then have to turn around and walk back. Then a speed boat would go by, and the waves would come. The rocking got so bad he would just stop and look at me like he was saying “what is that?”

After that happened I got the idea that if Luke just held on to the railing of the boat, he could stand and work on his balance and tummy muscles. Since the boat was riding the waves and rocking back and forth, he would have to really work those muscles to stay upright.

So I tried having him stand at the side rail, but Luke didn’t want to stand there long, he kept trying to bend his knees to sit down on the floor. Then I remembered how much he likes to have the wind in his face, so I walked him to the front of the boat where there was a railing. In this new location he was able to hold on to the railing as he faced the wind. He smiled big and squinted his eyes. He even got to the point he would let go with one hand and use his other hand to wave at the shore as we passed or put his arm up with his fist clinched and say “aahhh….ahhh”. He looked a lot like that scene from Titanic where Rose is on the front of the ship with her arms out in the wind. My husband said, “does he think he is on Titanic?”…so the rest of the week we assumed the “Titanic pose” to work on our PT skills.