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M, 22 July 2008
Before I began the RMT course I cancelled the days’ students. But I forgot about M, and he turned up on the doorstep about a quarter hour after I got home in the evening. He has taken SPELD lessons with me for several years (since 2003, apart from a year with another tutor, in which virtually no progress occurred.) As he remarked recently, after his most recent re-test showed he is up his target in reading and almost the spelling “when I came here I was such a retard…” And indeed, it looked like global developmental delay where in fact he was diagnosed as dyslexic. He has both visual and auditory troubles, so literacy has been hard won. And his general co-ordination wasn’t very good either: so it has been a challenge to get him moving along. He is of average intelligence, solid in build, stolid in nature, and what you have to call a ‘real boy’ in his interests. I have done a lot of work on the physical side of things along the way, because he is forever injuring himself in mostly minor accidents. And he has been regrettably naughty at school. Now he is 16, and at last willing to put in some independent effort because he can finally see that he has to achieve certain academic things he must have in order to train as the motorbike mechanic he aims to be. He’s encyclopaedic on bikes. M has been learning to drive for the last couple of years. He got his theory test without needing to resort to doing it orally. Then he got into the practical learning. So he has been driving to his lessons with his mother beside him. His restricted driver’s license test was coming up, and she was concerned that he never seemed to check to the left at intersections unless she prompted him to do so. All his movements seem to be in slow motion. This time we checked his head-turning ability. He could turn less to the left than the right, neither way lining up with the shoulder. Muscle testing was in low gear for both sides. He described his neck as creaky. I remarked that as he was here, he could be a body for me to practise RMT on, and I simply did what I could remember from the day.
- Passive stimulation from the feet (he couldn’t find the motion for himself).
- Passive stimulation from the knees: locked up for pushing, but got a jiggle going by pulling behind the knees. He could get some movement going, but it was mostly up-down hip-flopping.
- Passive stimulation from the hip, both sides: he enjoyed that a lot.
- Passive rolling of the bottom. All the upper body moved until I steadied the thoracic spine. He enjoyed the movement, but was unable to produce it for himself. He just got tensing of the butt and tail bone, central not l-r mvt so far.
There was a lot of giggling and groans as he couldn’t do these simple movements. When he stood up, he could turn his head fully and equally to both left and right.His neck was still creaky.
29 July 2008
A week later they returned, and his mother remarked that what we did seemed to have worked, because he was now looking both ways. So could we do some more? Certainly. I rather thought he might have a retained STNR. Checks from RMT confirmed that, and a quick foray into Claire Hocking’s lists of effects gave him a few things to use as measures of what might be expected to change.He mentioned clumsiness; propping across chairs rather than sitting in them; near-far vision inefficiency, and that Volleyball Sucks. These were confirmed as stressors using muscle checking. We found a menu of
- Cat arches: it was hard to get movement from the thoracic spine.
- Longitudinal body rocking: could manage it from the feet, but not the arms.
- Rocking on hands and knees, after much protest about painful knees needing cushions, and comments of ‘this is so hard…’
- Somersault rolling; the motion was very short and stiff at first, he got a headache, needed to rest and get up for a drink. But he returned to it.
After that he was able to sit normally in a chair, and near-far vision muscle tested ok.
6 August 2008
His head still turns freely, and his neck still creaks. There is more to do there.He reports that his movements are more accurate and less clumsy.He is sitting properly in chairs, including the car seat.He can copy faster from the whiteboard at college.He passed his restricted driver’s test, and at last is allowed to drive alone. (If Mum lets him take the car.) And an unexpected bonus: his slow, neat, deliberate print script handwriting is suddenly speedy, and everyone has noticed! Oh, and Volleyball still sucks.
12 August 2008
Spinal Galant checked and is ok.A quick flick down the list of contents suggested Cerebellum balance. Walking sideways, crawling backwards, and cross lateral crawling sideways all gave low gear responses, and dance? I don’t dance. Even thinking of dance put him into low gear.All the menu was done: and although at 22/7/08 he was unable to produce rocking movements independently, now he could prone and supine. Windscreen wiper feet took a while to get even distance in the movement. He was able to do the bottom rolling job, and vary the amplitude of the motion as he pleased. When done, the sideways walk was done with alternating feet behind. His Mum said, that is a dance step. He said you were supposed to do it in soccer. I remembered it as a line dance step, and he was able to follow the pattern to do ‘willow’, then a little scrap of a dance. He still said I can’t dance. I said he now had the potential to dance if he wanted to, and anchored that into high gear. So he demonstrated juggling (and he has juggled 3 volleyballs recently), and is now engaged in mastering walking forward and back while doing so. Right now he can’t get the rhythm of hands and feet to match: needs to do 2, 3 or 4 hands to one step. He challenged me to juggle too. What, me? Jan Nalder New Zealand
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