In the day-to-day of disability, it’s often hard to see a lot of progress. From January through June 0f 2006, Sarah Kate went from using a walker, to using two quad canes, to using one simple cane, to walking independently (albeit with a distinctively Frankenstein-ish gait). Cerebral palsy dominated every minute of our lives that year, from the tremendous time spent in therapy, to the staggering medical bills, to the desperate push to get every last drop of benefit out of the invasive selective dorsal rhizotomy (SDR) surgery.
For the next year or two, we continued to see steady, but much slower, progress. During the summer of 2007, she learned to bend over and pick up something small, like a coin, and stand up again without falling. In the summer of 2008, she was finally able to stand still without any assistance – just in time for the beginning of kindergarten. Unfortunately, two back-to-back growth spurts during the kindergarten school year caused her to regress, which was deeply disappointing.
For the past few years, we’ve set goals with regard to her therapy – particularly during the intensive three-week sessions. Two of those have included learning to ride a bike and mastering the ability to step up onto a curb without assistance. Year after year, she seemed to improve ever so slightly in those two areas, but it was never something she came close to mastering. The physical therapists all told me that they thought she could do it, but she never did. Deep down, I wondered if it was even possible.
Yesterday, I took Sarah Kate up to her school to be tested for the gifted program (after ditching the IEP just a couple of weeks ago – there’s a bitter irony in that, don’t you think?) We were very close to running late for the appointment and it began to rain lightly on us as we arrived. I parked (not in a disability space) and encouraged her to go on ahead while I extricated Nathan and his various accessories from the car. As I approached the building, she was standing there waiting with the lady who was to give the test, looking at me with a distinctively Cheshire cat grin.
After the testing was completed, we walked back outside, which is when I realized that there was nothing for her to use to steady herself on the curb. My initial assumption was that the Test Lady had helped her step up, but she shattered that notion within seconds by proudly stating that she had tackled the curbs on her own. She eagerly demonstrated her new skill by going down, up, and down again on the curb without hesitation.
A short time later, we went to the dollar store: up/down. After that, we went to the library: up/down. We went home and she demonstrated her new skill for Mr. Andi on the back porch: down/up.
Just when I think we’ve gone about as far as we can go, she surprises me yet again.
Rock on Sarah Kate! I just love when our children exceed our expectations. They (ie therapists) always say ‘be realistic’. However, I say we should encourage our children to shoot high as we might be surprised. Ellie never ceases to amaze me. “oh she won’t walk before she is two”. Uh huh, 17 months. So SK, you just keep on a rocking!
What a lovely surprise!! It is so important that we compare our children’s progress to themselves and not other “typical’ children…otherwise we will go crazy. My son will be 4 in August and is not yet walking independantly (he has Ds). I can visualize him walking and know he will someday. I try not to push him too hard beyond what he is ready for he has made a lot of progress and will get there in his own time. Thanks for sharing. Have fun with that up/down! xo
I love this!!! Thank you for sharing. I can only imagine how you felt when you saw/realized that she had done the curb herself~!!
It was such a wonderful surprise – and so unexpected! We’ve been encouraging her to try different curbs when we were out and about for years. Sometimes she would, but you could always see the fear and hesitation in her face, and the more fearful she was the greater the likelihood that she would fall. I don’t know what caused her to suddenly lose the fear, but she’s always been that way – she rocks on for a long time unable to do something, but being “oh, so close!” then all of a sudden one day it’s no big deal anymore.
The great thing about curbs is that even though it may seem like a tiny thing, it’s HUGE in terms of accessibility. Another thing I’d about given up on was her ever being able to run or jump, but I’m rethinking that now.
What a beautiful clever girl you have. Bravo Sarah Kate and hugs to Nathan too. 🙂
That is awesome!
I was just thinking the other day, and expressed to my husband this morning, that if you have a typically developing child, you don’t realize just. how. much. is involved in doing seemingly mundane tasks, like stepping up on to a curb or rolling over. My daughters are both 2, and I remember her sitting on her own, and crawling, and pulling up and walking – but I do not remember the process of her learning how to do all the little steps – pulling her leg up just so, pushing up on her arms to her knees, etc. You only realize how miraculous all these things that we do are until it doesn’t come easy to somebody and you watch them work toward it in teeny tiny increments until one day, it just all comes together.
And by “her” I mean my non-CP daughter.
So true, Amy. When I posted the video to my blog last year (“The Seven Year Marathon“) that showed Sarah Kate’s progress to learn to walk, our next door neighbor saw it and commented how it had never occurred to her what Sarah Kate had to go through in order to learn to walk. In her mind, Sarah Kate learned to walk just like other kids, but she just walks a little different. I was surprised to hear her say that – it never occurred to me that people WOULDN’T realize what a huge deal it was!