Amazing Grace

It’s not always immediately visible, but an early childhood health concern can have ripple effects through later stages of adolescent development. In situations like this, it’s vital to address foundational development that may have been obscured by physical needs.
 
Grace was born with hip dysplasia. By the time she was10-years-old, she’d already had five surgeries to correct the issue. Following her last procedure, she was confined to a body cast for six weeks. The surgeries and subsequent immobility affected Grace physically, causing her to struggle with side-to-side movement, going up-and-down stairs and stunting her gross-motor skills. Grace underwent physical therapy throughout her childhood, but her mom, Anna, a special education teacher, noticed that Grace’s cognitive development was delayed as well.

“As she got older, I noticed she couldn’t connect what she was learning in school,” said Anna. “I saw that she was easily distracted, struggled to read and had difficulty picking up normal social cues.”
 
Upon relocating to the Twin Cities, Anna learned that Grace’s IEP did not apply to the Minnesota public school Special Education model, and that it was being revoked. Anna set out on a quest to discover the best long-term approach to help Grace reach her full potential.
 
Anna was referred to A Chance To Grow by a friend and scheduled an appointment for an audiologist to evaluate Grace. “We learned that Grace had an auditory processing disorder,” said Anna. “She had difficulty comprehending auditory information which was causing some of her learning delays.” Instead of treating the auditory processing disorder with traditional therapy, the audiologist at A Chance To Grow referred Grace to the agency’s occupational therapy team to address her foundational level motor skills. After these skills are developed and strengthened, higher-level functions like auditory processing could be treated more successfully.

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Shortly after Grace’s evaluation, she started coming to A Chance To Grow every other week for occupational therapy sessions. “She bonded immediately with her therapist, Alyssa,” said Anna. “They began doing a combination of therapies that focused on Grace ‘crossing the midline’ to help the left side of her body and brain better communicate with the right side.” Alyssa observed that Grace had low endurance, poor reflexes and core strength. To address this, she created a treatment plan around the archetype movements of MNRI (Masgutova NeuroSensory Reflex Integration), yoga and a few activities, like belly crawling, from ACTG’s S.M.A.R.T. approach. Anna even attended the S.M.A.R.T. workshop to implement the activities in her own classroom, as well as for Grace at their home.
 
“Over the last two years I’ve seen amazing progress from Grace,” said Alyssa. “When we first started, she was hesitant to participate in any physically-active functions. She dreaded going on field trips at school because of the physical limitations she had. As we’ve worked together, though, and strengthened her reflexes and foundational levels, that anxiety has begun to fade away.”
 
Anna says she’s also seen great strides in regards to Grace’s memory retention and executive functioning skills. Recently, Grace moved to a new school with better resources for students with learning disabilities. Anna says that the curriculum has been very complementary to the therapies provided by ACTG.
 
“Despite her struggles, Grace is a happy, healthy kid who’s on the right track,” said Anna. “Alyssa understands Grace’s personality and Grace really looks forward to her therapy sessions. She’s always been a free spirit, and with Alyssa’s help, she’s gaining more confidence every day.”

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