Low muscle tone question

taryn30 · May 2013

Does anyone have children with low muscle tone? My doctor recommended physical therapy. Do you go to physical therapy? Is it helping? What kind of exercises do they do? How often? Thanks so much!

wither16 · May 2013

My son has low muscle tone- mainly in his upper region, combined with torticollis. I'm not sure, but I assume that excercises with PT would vary based on where the hypotonia is located and age of child. We have been in PT since our son was 3 months old, he will be one year next week. What is the age of your kiddo and where are they stating the low muscle tone is?

wellfleet04 · May 2013

My 5 yo has received PT for low tone in her core for 3 years now. Yes, it's helping. As does the horseback riding and swimming she does for her extracurriculars. I put her in things that were fun for her, but also targeted her weaknesses without it being "therapy." My understanding is that low tone is forever--it's not something that you can fix--but you can built muscle strength to compensate for it. DD will probably always be less coordinated and tire more easily than other children her age, but we've done a lot of work to "catch her up" to the point where her tone issues are not apparent to a layperson.

gremaud07 · May 2013

My DS has low muscle tone in his legs and his core strength could be stronger.

In the beginning when he was little , around 9 months old, he wasn't putting any pressure on his legs. He wasn't crawling or getting on all fours. He did receive PT and it took time with many practices in between that he got on all fours, never crawled but did roll. He walked when he was about 17 months old. After that he graduated out of PT after about a year.

Now at 4 years old the doctor thinks he could use some PT for his core strength but the school won't implement since his been doing real well with all the activities at school.

kcisthebombdotcom · May 2013

My dd does. Surprisingly, she has never had any sort of motor delay so she does not get pt. we do aquatic therapy for social/speech skills and it has helped with the low tone though.

earlyspring1 · May 2013

My dd gets PT for torticollis (due to one sided neck weakness rather than tightness) and low abdominal tone (although strangely her back is very strong). It is mostly like PP said, activities and positions that naturally work her muscles. For example, when she is doing tummy time, I have to place her toys to the right so that she will turn her head in that direction. Or when she's on her back, I place her feet in her hands so she learns to start lifting her legs and grabbing her feet, thus working her abdominal muscles (she starting grabbing her own feet yesterday!). She doesn't even realize that she's "exercising".

st.augbride · May 2013

We started ds, who has mild low muscle tone in PT through the county at 4 months old and switched to private PT at 6 months old, 2 times per week. We did that until he was able to walk at 16 months, then dropped down to once per week, until we officially graduated 2 months ago as ds is doing great. He is still unbalanced and somewhat clumsy, and is still slightly behind, but has really done well. Our PT did all kinds of things with him, and we worked on what she did at home too.

lite-bright · May 2013

I asked about this at out last IEP meeting, actually. DD1's OT at school focuses mostly on fine motor issues, but her general tone is also on the low side. She's just not quite as strong or coordinated as other kids her age.

However, it's relatively mild and doesn't limit her. Mostly what I notice is that she tends to crash out quickly at bedtime if she's been moderately active, and she also tends to be more limp and want to sit on my lap for support towards the end of the day. It's not a major issue, so we just take her swimming frequently, have her ride a balance bike, etc. as part of our activities.

It is something that we're keeping an eye on once she goes to full-day kindergarten in the fall, in case she starts to get overly fatigued.

macchiatto · May 2013

My son has hypotonia (low tone). For him it caused a delay in gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and also oral motor skills (at almost 3 he was still drooling, overpacking and choking while eating, etc.). He had private PT once a week and OT once a week for a year and a half, plus he had PT from the school district 90 mins/mo for about 15m and OT from the school district 60 min/mo for one semester. It all helped quite a bit. They had him do a wide variety of exercises to build core strength, balance, etc. They would work a lot on specific skills like climbing stairs, walking on a balance beam, etc. but they also had him do things like lie on his belly and support himself on his hands while doing a puzzle to build core and arm strength, or games that involved a lot of squatting to pick things up and then standing again.

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