Brushing tool

When Ryan first started walking he would occasionally walk on his tiptoes, which was not cause for concern since he quickly outgrew it. About 4 weeks ago he again started walking on his tiptoes which seemed odd to us & after a few days even started to worry me. Toe walking can be a sign of several things including cerebral palsy or a short Achilles tendon. Dean and I realized his shoes were too tight so we got his feet measured & bought him new shoes since he had grown one shoe size. We also started massaging & stretching his legs and feet to ease any muscle tension. While, these things helped somewhat, his toe walking did not go away completely. When the therapist came 2 weeks ago my mom let her know what was going on and last week she brought a “tool” with her. This tool, was a soft bristled vegetable scrubber.



Of course, this seemed very odd to us but we were open minded...ok, well we tried to be. Several times a day we were to run the brush down the front & back of his arms and the front & back of his legs down to his toes. Doing this would help stimulate his senses and make him more aware of his feet & toes. After just the first day of doing this, he was walking less on his tiptoes. We have continued to use this tool several times a day and after one week we have only seen him walk on his tiptoes a couple times a day. I have even noticed on the days we don’t do the “brushing” as often, he will walk more on his toes. So, it is now a running joke with Dean saying, “time to scrub the potatoes!” Hopefully, Ryan will outgrow this and we won’t have to scrub the potatoes for too long.