Maya and Her Spectrum

Ok let’s have some messy play sometimes 💦 🎨 👩🏻‍🎨

Then learn the cleaning up after🧽 🧼 🧹
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Children are definitely much affected as well during this pandemic. Closed school and online learning is one thing, play date and socializing limitation is another thing.

Parents overwhelmed with working from home, supervising and dealing with children school or therapy works, meal time, house chores, etc…. yes the struggle is real.

I try to set time twice a day to do activities with undivided attention to Maya. Don’t have to be long. 10 minutes of undivided attention is good enough. This time in the video I got Maya’s cousins to join the activities through online. Everybody needs some undivided attention time for our well being. And I got mine when you finished reading this post, thanks ☺️🥰
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💕 .khalil

Maya must have been missing Tommy and her hippotherapy for the last 2 weeks. We are so lucky therapy is back on again tomorrow and cannot wait to see Tommy again.

In the last post I promised to write about how horse improved Maya’s focus and emotion. Let me start with, whatever you’re doing, to achieve good result, you need consistency.

Being on horse, Maya need to focus on her balance. She’ll be given little help and push here and there and eventually the balance gets better and the focus on balancing has becoming subconscious act.

The added task given by therapy eg: lacing or put coin in a coin box is additional effort for Maya to focus. Good therapists knows their jobs in encouraging, prompting, distracting and even manipulating to get Maya to finish the task. There is where the emotional growth builds.

There will be avoiding, protest, achievement, happy, proud and all moments within the session. So yes, therapists that know how to deal with their clients will develop better result in emotional growth. And they always include Tommy’s feeling too. Tommy may get grumpy, he may want a hug or a pet, and Tommy has a shower too.

This video, Maya was giving a shower to Tommy. I totally see focus and emotion there. She was focus on Tommy and still looking at me like “look at what I’m doing mommy!”.

She can’t verbalize. And emotions aren’t verbs. Emotions are feelings. And it’s enough for me that she shows them through body/visual language 💞
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This video was 2 days ago. Maya was so happy to see it was Bambi that arrived to greet her. The session went well. Thank you Bambi for boosting the mood. And I brought home one excited happy girl.

Some has asked how horse / hippotherapy helps with Maya’s condition. I don’t know where to start with the answers..

• In dealing with Maya’s GDD low muscle tone, horse riding helps build strength and stamina. Whole body are engaged when you’re on the horse. And when the horse walks, it walks in the same style and movement as human lower body moves. Subconsciously creating input to Maya’s nervous system on how to move her lower body when walking. Maya’s open gait is now have closing a bit. And yes she’s walking so much faster now. Especially for something she wants, she can almost run 🏃🏽‍♀️ 🐎

On the next post, I will share how horse helps with Maya’s focus and emotion 🧘🏽
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