Constraint therapy?

irishdo

My son is 18 mo old, 15 adjusted.  He was born at 24 weeks and suffered a grade IV IVH in the right side of his brain within the week after birth.  As a result he has a left hemiplegic CP.  We are starting constraint therapy with him to strengthen his left arm.  Just wondering if anyone has done it, especially in a child this young. 

All of his therapists are on board and think it will be great for him. he just is really frustrated and does not understand why at this age.  He was very cranky this weekend but seemed ok when I dropped him off at daycare and put his splint on, hopefully he will be distracted by his friends. 

If you have done this with your child, how did they tolerate it and how long during the day were they constrained.  There is not a set protocol as the research is still emerging so we are sort of going by trial and error. 

MaxandRuby

Hello! DS2 has CP also (spastic quadriparesis). We are not doing any sort of formal constraint therapy but we do lightly restrain DS2's right hand to get him to use his left hand. This is done only occasionally though for just a couple of minutes at a time and his right arm is typically restrained by either a hand or the right side of his body may be smooshed up against ours which confines the right hand. He tolerates it quite well and uses his left hand for the most part immediately. I think it, in part, has helped to make some progress with him using his left hand more. I am not sure how much or well he would tolerate being formally constrained by a splint or anything else though.

irishdo

Thats great that he lets you restrain him. Finn is, shall we say, strong willed?  He would break free and fuss when we tried to do that. 

The original goal was for us to start him at 3 hours a day but he has done really well so far with it at daycare that they ave been putting the splint back on after his naptime.  They say he is only really frustrated with mealtimes and will sometime try to eat like a dog instead of using the left.  I am interested to see what the OTs think and what ideas they have.  He has EI OT on Friday and outpt on Thursday. 

Ill keep you posted on how it goes.

MaxandRuby

My son definitely lets me know when he is not happy or doesn't want to do what you want him to, but amazingly enough just lightly holding his right arm doesn't seem to tick him off too much. I'm rather surprised but I'm definitely going with it because he lets us (me, DH, therapists). We don't use it anywhere near an extended length of time though so maybe that is why he lets us do it! LOL