What are these?

During Luke’s PT time we continue to work on his walking and balance. One thing the PT also focuses on with Luke is his ability to bend his legs and be able to walk stairs. He has come a long way with this. Back when we first started stairs, probably a year or so ago, Luke would lock out his knees….which you can imagine would make trying to walk up or down stairs pretty hard. He reminded me of watching one of those pirates in a movie who had a wooden or peg leg…so when they went up or down stairs they kind of swung their wooden leg and hopped along.


Anyway, we would have to force him to bend his knees. Now he has a lot more confidence in handling his own balance and weight and he will bend his knee, but he is still learning to plant his feet flat and hold on to a railing so he can do the stairs by himself.

Well last week to help him be more “aware” of his feet, Luke’s PT put some ankle weights on him. They were probably a pound each and reminded me of the 80’s wrist bands. The weights were bright orange, fuzzy, and formed an enclosed circle. We had to take Luke’s shoes and braces off in order for us to get them on his ankles.

Luke didn’t know what to think about them, they definitely got him to look down towards his feet though. By the time we got to the stairs to practice going up and down, he was pretty fed up with those weights. I don’t know if he was too tired or if he was just starting to develop some fashion sense. Either way the PT had to battle with Luke to get him to go up and down those stairs, not once but twice. He survived and I think was pretty happy to get those weights off when we were done.