{unique therapy challenges}

upon returning from my recent visa run to thailand, i was delightfully surprised to feel cool, fall weather. (fall is my favorite season!) however, fall where i'm at in china is a bit different than in chicago; we have no heat here. so when it gets chilly outside, that same chill is also inside.

for the children this cool weather means they now lie on down-type blankets in their cribs verses the naked wood slats (yay!).

they are also in even more clothes. i say "even more" because they are always over-dressed in my opinion, regardless of the temperature or season; it's a cultural thing. these additional layers add more unique challenges to doing physical therapy. not only do they have their usual cloth diapers, folded and worn 3-thick, tied tightly around their pelvis,

but now they've also got some combination of 3-4 shirts/sweaters/jackets/vests to keep them warm, sometimes a towel tied around their abdomen (it seems the belly getting cold is the root of all sickness), plus a heavy blanket or two over them (when they are in their crib). moving is already tough enough for some of these children, but this must zap any motivation they may have had. wouldn't is be much easier to just succumb to gravity + semi-straight jacket/clothes and sleep all day? unfortunately this is a super easy recipe for general movement delays. and when you don't move/explore and don't interact with people much, this contributes to delays in every area of development.

so what is a therapist to do? i've resorted to putting them in regular diapers at times (you know how challenging it is to get their legs adducted to even neutral for hands and knees position/crawling or flex their hips for sitting with all that diaper?!) or taking off a few layers of clothes so they can more easily reach for a toy in midline or try to roll over.

pray that these little ones get stronger and learn to move quickly so that the nannies will see that my perceived-as-strange, counter-cultural behaviors do have good purpose.  :)