Give The Gift Of Hope This Holiday Season
By giving today, you give hope for kiddos to reach new heights tomorrow. Thank you for your support of children with disabilities, and ensuring access to the transformational outcomes hippotherapy provides.
Move Possibilities Forward: Support Children's TherAplay This Holiday Season
By giving today, you give hope for kiddos to reach new heights tomorrow. Thank you for your support of children with disabilities, and ensuring access to the transformational outcomes hippotherapy provides.
James is a happy and social 4-year-old who is lit from within! In a lot of ways, James is your typical four-year-old, and his diagnosis is just one little piece of him. James likes riding the school bus, watching Sesame Street and Daniel Tiger, looking at books, and listening to all kinds of music to wake him up.
James has Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS), which is a rare genetic disorder affecting about 1 in 15,000 births. He was diagnosed very shortly after birth, following an otherwise typical but quiet pregnancy. Corey, my husband, and I had no idea what PWS was. James is missing a little bit of his 15th chromosome, and while it is the tiniest bit, it’s pretty impactful. The hallmark symptom of PWS is hyperphagia, which means James will never know the sensation of feeling full. In addition to hyperphagia and its health risks, PWS presents with low tone, developmental delays, sleep-wake imbalance, and difficulty regulating pain, emotions, and body temperature. It is a spectrum! We are so grateful to have connected with the PWS community early on and to have gotten James started in early intervention as soon as possible.
About 2 years ago, we moved from Chicago to Indiana, and then I attended 
TherAplay’s open house, and the rest is history. James started with speech and occupational therapy at TherAplay a year and a half ago and has since added physical therapy. He took to it quickly and is thriving! In speech, he came in not saying anything, and now his speech is really coming through. In OT, he’s had many opportunities to develop his fine motor skills, emotional regulation, and naming his feelings. And the leaps and bounds James has made in PT are extraordinary! While we are still working on walking independently, he has gained so much physical strength. He continues to work each week on gross motor skills, independent mobility, and clarity/intelligibility in communication. But overall, the biggest progress we have seen is in his confidence. Once he found his footing, he blossomed, and it’s been a joy to watch. Hippotherapy is highly recommended for people with PWS, and it feels incredible to get that in such a wonderful place.