When you first have kids you think, “oh we have to get this toy or that toy. It will help them so much”. Then the day comes, you get the present all wrapped, all the family comes over and you celebrate that first birthday. Then you help him or her open their precious gift and you show them the new toy, “look, isn’t it great…it lights up and makes all this music.” Then your child turns away from the toy you got them and starts playing with the box! Yes, a box! Who cares about this fabulous toy that cost so much money, when you have a box!
I’m sure most of you who are parents out there can relate to that memory. I’ve learned to not be upset when my kids rather play with a box, after all they are developing their imaginations…right? I’ve also learned that you don’t have to spend lots of money to make your kids happy when they play. One of my new favorite places to shop for toys and clothes is our community garage sale.
Last night as Luke and I were working on his walking, I realized that the concept of cheap entertainment really comes in to play with so many parts of our lives. With Luke we get certain toys to work on his OT or PT skills, or buy a special book to work on his Speech. But, once again here I have learned to improvise with what we have…and get a little creative.
Instead of buying some fancy gadget to attach to the treadmill, my husband used 2x4’s and a wooden rod to build something that we use with Luke on the treadmill. It allows Luke to walk at his height, which is wonderful…especially in the winter months when we can’t walk outside.
Over Thanksgiving my husband and father-in-law used 2x4’s and plywood to build a ramp so that Luke can walk into the house from the garage with his walker. These things aren’t fancy, but they do the job...and they definitely benefit Luke in his therapy.
Why did all of this come to mind last night? Well Luke was walking along on the treadmill, and kept losing his focus. He didn’t want to walk. It reminded me of when we first tried getting Luke to walk with a walker at Easter Seals. Back then the goal was to get him to walk 10 feet with a walker on his own. We also had to sing while he walked in order to get him to go anywhere….otherwise he would scream and scream.
So last night I remembered the singing and I also remembered something that Luke’s old PT did to get him walking on the treadmill. The PT used to use pieces of a flat puzzle to put down on the treadmill so that Luke would look at his feet and it also served to keep Luke happy because Luke thought this was funny, of course.
So I combined these two old tricks. I didn’t have flat puzzle pieces, so I used junk mail. It’s flat and it definitely won’t hurt anything if Luke tares it up with his feet. Then I started singing “the ants go marching one by one….” I also added in some “stomp….stomp” action.
I would sing and when we got to the “hoorah” part of the song I threw a piece of mail down and helped Luke “stomp” on top of the mail. The result? Luke walked 20 minutes straight and was happy to do it.
Cheap entertainment at its best. The only problem was Luke could only walk about 3 minutes before I needed to pick up all the junk mail on the ground so that I could start over. Who can say they don’t have enough junk mail? So keep the junk mail coming credit card companies! I’ve got some use for you!!
No comments:
Post a Comment