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.
Lillian is a vivacious 5-year-old who loves to dance, sing, act, and ride horses. She is very active and willing to try anything! She has done gymnastics, dance, swim therapy, and more.
Lillian has Spina Bifida, which is a type of neural tube defect and a condition where her spine did not form properly. As a result, Lillian has partial feeling from the waist down and has had to navigate the world differently. For example, she had to learn to walk without having full sensation in the bottom of her feet. One of the hardest parts for kids with spina bifida is those early years because they have to do so much more catching up. Other kids are born and may instinctively know to crawl, but we had to help Lillian connect those dots.
When Lillian was 1 year old, I remember asking our orthopedic surgeon, “How can I support her?” and they asked if I would be willing to try hippotherapy. I said "absolutely,” and as soon as she was old enough, I signed her up for TherAplay. We started with physical therapy (PT) and have since switched to occupational therapy (OT). When we first started PT, Lillian wasn’t crawling, but pretty quickly we started working on standing and using a walker. She had little goals of being able to walk down the hallway; then we gradually increased it to make it out to the car, and then when she was 3 years old, Lillian upgraded to arm crutches! In OT, Lillian has improved a lot on daily tasks like getting dressed and having her hair brushed. Every
part of getting ready for the day used to be a struggle, but she has come such a long way. It has been amazing to see her progress because we didn’t really know what Lillian was capable of. Right now we are focusing on her letters, getting more strength in her handwriting, and using scissors, which she enjoys. If there is something she can’t open by herself, she’ll say “I’ll go get my scissors,” and I love that because even just holding scissors used to be a struggle. TherAplay has been a special place of growth the past 4 years. Lillian has become a social butterfly, learned to let people help her, and is flourishing.