Our blogs are inspired by our passion for enhancing childhood development and pediatric physical therapy. We write for both parents and professionals and work to provide a mix of education, activity/treatment ideas, and our favorite toys. Because we write for you, we would love to know what topics you are interested in or what questions you have that we can answer!
Single Leg Stance with a Ball and a Wall
Was walking through the clinic the other day and saw this great idea for working on single leg stance. I’ve also tried it with a few other kids and it’s great! Start with a softer, squisher ball to make it easier. We like to use a Gertie style ball. Have the child stand next to […]
Encouraging Balance Reactions
One of our therapists was recently working on balance reactions with a child and I thought it was such a great simple idea. You take some Squigz and put them on a surface. We don’t have a good child height surface so we use a wedge. The goal is for the child to pull them […]
Encouraging the Non-Dominant Leg
We will often have kids who have a very strong preference for one leg over the other when they are doing functional activities. Because they rely so heavily on the one leg, it gets stronger and that continues the cycle of them wanting to use just that leg. While it would be great for them […]
Torticollis – Can I Wait and See
We have discussed torticollis a few times over the last several months. We highlighted the 5 common signs of Torticollis. To recap, those are as follows: Always looking in the same direction Head tilting Feeding difficulties Flattening of the head Facial asymmetry As stated in the last article, torticollis has become more prevalent with babies spending more […]
Ball Throws For Core Strength
One of our therapists recently used a ball activity to work on core strength. To make it even more fun, we did an experiment to see what was easier and what was more challenging. We took a variety of different ball sizes and then played catch with them. What made it into a core activity […]
Using a Therapy Ball for Torticollis
We have talked a lot about torticollis recently thanks to the new guidelines that were recently published. Here we talk about 5 signs of torticollis, and here we talk about ways to prevent torticollis. We also have a great resource handout for parents and caregivers that we will gladly pass along (please email us for […]
Crab Walking
I love when I walk around the clinic and see some of the creative ideas the therapists come up with. This was one I just saw. They were using a puzzle and would crab walk the pieces from one side of the mat (or room) to the other. The puzzle piece rested on their stomach […]
Progressing to Independent Walking
We seem to have a bunch of little ones right now that are working on taking independent steps. They have cruising down and are walking with a push toy. They just don’t like to let go of the support surface, or sometimes, even shift their weight forward. We have a few techniques we have been […]
Stability Circuit
We have so many kids who are working on stability with functional mobility. So recently for this one kid we created a circuit just for him to work on his stability! Here are some of the tasks it included: Balance Beam – We chose a tall narrow one so that this child would have to […]
Planks
We have been doing planks with a few kids recently. There are lots of ways to work on them to make them harder or easier. We show you a few in the video but we will also talk about a few other ways as well. Using hands and toes is more challenging than using hands […]