Today we say adiós to new and old friends, to therapy partners, to spectacular parents, and to sweet kiddos! It is bittersweet to leave all of these people behind as we return to Arkansas, but we are so encouraged by everyone's determination, willingness, collaboration and the love that was poured out for each child this week. We feel so fortunate to have a partnership with Learning Spot because we know we are all working toward the same purpose of serving these kids.
Some say "all good things must come to an end", but we would like to say that "the good things are just beginning". This entire week we have seen so much progress and we KNOW it is only the beginning thanks to all the dedicated individuals we worked along side at Learning Spot this week.
By the end of the week, Mary (OT) was so excited because Abi was sitting on her own and even showing bravery to reach during sitting to grab toys! Also, she FINALLY allowed Kara to do her oral motor exercises without fussing and even ate a mashed up banana. This was so encouraging to mom and Kara was able to educate her on how to further develop feeding skills.
Juan Pablo progressed in so many areas this week! Not only is he making so many more sounds than the beginning of the week, but he was able to stand by himself for 4 seconds when working with Sherrie. He is a determined little man because he continued to try multiple times after that independent trial.
Angel, a familiar face, has really matured since last year and showed increased understanding and attention to tasks using a token chart. Kara, Katie, and Paige were able to get so much more engagement from him when using a token chart during therapy. BUT! Do. Not. Be. Fooled! He still tries to use his mischievous smile and sweet personality to get out of hard things! He'd much rather be on the move and playing on the trampoline!
Isaac has worked so hard all week and he was very much done with us today. He was so worn out, but it gave Sherrie an excellent opportunity to show the Learning Spot interns how to motivate and work with a child who is struggling. Isaac rallied a bit and was able to work with Sherrie and Mary today on strengthening.
Karla continued to nail each new PECS challenge. We are really so proud of her and just knew when we met her last year that she had a desire to communicate. It is truly such a blessing to see her blossom in this area! We would also be remiss if we didn't mention her fun relationship with our PT Eric! He is basically the biggest kid at heart and Karla must have known she found a kindred spirit in him! They had too much fun together!
Emma really opened up over the week! She easily gets the "Hardest Worker" Award! She worked through challenges like a pro and persevered through things that were tough in order to gain strength, independence, and joy this week! We can only imagine how difficult it might be as a teenager with hemiplegia who is around others daily who don't fully understand the ABILITY in disability. We only hope we were able to help her build her confidence to be the strong, courageous, bright, shining young lady we saw daily during our time at Learning Spot.
At the end of the day, an old friend stopped by Learning Spot! Juanito is a young man we met several years ago when we were asked by Diana to help find braces to aide with better walking. Juanito has significant tightness in one of his legs that causes him to walk high on his toe. Because of the discrepancy between his leg position, no ordinary brace would fit him the way he needed for good positioning. So, several years ago, our PT Charity casted and delivered a custom set of braces, and this year Sherrie and Eric were able to cast him for some new ones! Juanito has a smile and personality that is unforgettable and we were so glad to see him again and serve him in this way!
Our time here always ends with a time of appreciation for those we work with throughout the week. We speak with the parents, interns, and staff to thank them for their willingness to collaborate and work along side us all week. Without them our partnership and collaboration would not have nearly the impact it does on the sweet kiddos they serve daily. It was amazing to share fun times with the staff and interns, and to see them open up, ask questions, get curious and creative, and really engage in the therapeutic process for each child. However, nothing hits home for us like hearing the stories from families we worked with all week and learning what this week has meant to them and their child. We were all very grateful for the time we got to spend together and learn from one another!
We would also like to say a HUGE thank you to our dearest friend Anita for her amazing hospitality!
Until next time Guatemala!
It was another great day at Learning Spot!
Paige continues to have amazing success working with Juan Pablo! Today, he imitated and consistently used 4 new words. His favorite new word was "obo" for globo because who doesn't love to ask for a balloon! Karla continues to rock her PECs system and has progressed to using a sentence strip rather than just single word requests. Kara and Paige were able to work together in her speech session to shadow prompt how to sequence her request to state "I want music!". Karla was able to transfer this skill from Kara and Paige to her family members; how AMAZING is this?! What a life changing skill to have communication with your family! This is something that can be taken for granted so easily, but to be even a small part of an equation that allows a child to talk to their family is a blessing.
Katie (OT) worked hard with our sweet boy Angel to sequence letters to spell his name. He is a little spitfire with a smile that will melt your heart, but getting him to sit still and engage in fine motor tasks is no small feet! Mary (OT) was able to work with Isaac on strengthening and head control. Working on strengthening a child's neck muscles so they can more readily engage with their environment with an upright head position is so important for development and engagement. By the end of the session, Mary was so proud when Isaac was able to keep his chin tucked when pulled into a sitting postion from laying down, with assist from his therapist.
Mary also had a big day of educating! This is a very important part of our trips with TEAMworks. We love to educate those involved in a child's care so that progress can be made once we leave. All of the parents and staff at Learning Spot have been so eager to learn and collaborate with us on each child's care. Today, Mary was able to show positions for continued head control with Isaac's family and educate Emma's family regarding coping strategies and confidence building activites. Emma's mom had voiced concerns about Emma's frustration tolerance when faced with a challenge, and Mary was able to help Emma make a list of coping strategies and list out all of her strengths to use as a reference when she was feeling challenged. We are pretty sure all of us could benefit from this activity!
At the end of the day Eric and Sherrie were able to help out Diana! They took on the special project of adjusting Diana's mother's wheelchair. Diana's mother's health has been declining over the years and she now uses a wheelchair for her main means of mobility. Diana is like family to us and we love being able to use our skills to help out when we can!
Lots of laughing, smiling, and tired kids, parents, and therapists after Day 2!
Wow! What an eventful and busy day!
Abi, a sweet, yet quiet little girl, finally opened up to us today! She giggled through many of our sessions, but had the biggest belly laugh during our PT group session! It was such a delightful sound to hear and joyful sight to see! She also made some great progress with Kara during her speech session by making a new "g" sound, which we had not heard yet before. Seeing so much progress in such a short period of time is so rewarding and just blesses us during our trips here to Learning Spot.
Emma, a beautiful young girl with hemiplegia, learned how to tie her shoe! Katie, her OT, taught her a new way to tie her shoe using primarily her dominant hand. Sometimes, two hands are overrated, and determination and desire for independence can override any hurdle when given the tools! Emma is older than some of the other children we are seeing here at Learning Spot and we are so proud of her perseverence to be more independent with her self-care skills.
Paige has been working hard to get more speech production for our spunky Juan Pablo! Yesterday, Kara was able to get some bilabial speech production and, today, Paige was able to add to those sounds with varied vowel sounds. Using a reinforcing ball, or pelota in Spanish, she was able to prompt the "o" sound to request his desired object. Using even small variations of sounds is so reinforcing for children and promotes an increaed desired to communicate with others, especially when they realize it can get them what they want!
Each discipline had the chance to present for parent and staff education. The speech therapists were able to present to Learning Spot staff about feeding and oral motor skills for the children they work with daily, while OT was able to give the parents at home activities they can be doing to help promote their children's progress and development in conjunction with their therapies. Finally, all the disciplines got together to present on impulse control, developmental motor milestones, and speech production.
Everyone was wiped out at the end of the day, but what a productive day it was! Definitely worth every moment!
After a day of evaluations, we spent our first full day working at Learning Spot Guatemala! We were blessed to work with seven amazing kiddos, their parents, eager interns, and the staff! We are priveledged to have a working partnership with Learning Spot Guatemala where we return yearly (if not sooner) to update treatment plans and help with new kiddos.
That being said, we were able to see several familiar faces, including sweet Karlita. She had very little communication last year and became frustrated easily because she had no way to tell others what she wanted or needed. Our speech therapist, Paige, worked very hard with her last year to develop a picture exchange system of communication. She was happy to see that Karla was still using her PECS book to communicate and her mom had continued to work with her in our absence. Kara, our other speech therapist, was excited to work with a sweet little boy on his oral motor skills. He was not much of a talker before she did the oral motor exercises, but after Kara worked with him he began making a lot of bilabial sounds and babbling more!
It was a busy day in for the physical therapists! Their room was filled with interns and Eric and Sherrie got a chance to teach them about each child's gait pattern and what could be done to correct some of their issues. Thanks to Diana, the founder and owner of Learning Spot, Sherrie and Eric were able to use videos of each kiddo to analyze gait patterns. Eric also got to work with Learning Spot PT, Gabby and intern Alejandra to build an orthotic for a sweet girl named Emma. Together, they were able to build an orthotic she liked and felt comfortable in to help correct and compensate for her leg length discrepency. Eric was also able to relay the importance of how gross motor activities can coincide with sensory activities for Karla, an idea he will expand on when he is able to collaborate more with Katie and Mary, the TEAMworks OTs.
Difficult behaviors are something that effect parents across the world, from small temper tantrums to uncontrollable, unsafe meltdowns. On Saturday, Katie (OT) evaluated a sweet kiddo whose mom's main concern was behavior. On occasion, the methods used to address behavior can be difficult to understand and seem counterintuitive to your traditional responses to behavior. With this in mind, Katie was apprehensive, yet hopeful, about how today might go! She used the trampoline as a reinforcer for good work and every time he placed a puzzle piece in, drew a line, etc. they bounced on the trampoline. He loved it and worked great for the entire session!
We are off to a great start and look forward to what the rest of the week has to hold!
As we sit and wait for our ride to Kigali and start our journey home, we are reflecting on our last day of work at HVP Gatagara.
Here are some of the highlights:
* We were able to spend the entire morning playing with the children in both the physiotherapy and occupational therapy areas.
* We gave away the remaining pairs of braces and shoes to some sweet kiddos, one of who had walked to the the hospital only days before with his mother.
* We donated some equipment to the new Physiotherapy Spinal Cord unit and we are so excited to partner with them in their endeavor to build their program.
* We donated some toys, school supplies, and a large corner chair to the occupational therapy department.
* We were able to go see the school children and give Ivan his very own shower bench! The school children are always so warm and welcoming! They grab our hands and run up to us with their sweet smiles. I think it is something that all of us will miss greatly.
At the end of the day we were invited to a special dinner in our honor with the physiotherapist and Brother Kizito, Director General. This was a very special time of bonding with the people we have spent so much time with this week. We were able to get to know everyone on a more personal level and deepen the friendships and relationships we hope will last forever. We ate dinner, shared drinks, and played games! It was a great night among, not just colleagues, but friends.
In a speech by Brother Kizito, he said “you may arrive in this country as guest, but you will leave as friends.”.…and indeed we did. It is difficult to leave a piece of ourselves behind, but we will return to be connected again. We are immensely blessed and humbled to have met the joyful children, courageous and devoted parents, hardworking and caring therapists, and the visionary leadership that keep HVP Gatagara pushing forward to be the best in serving those with disabilities.
Before heading to the airport we were able to visit another Gatagara center in Kigali where they were participating in music and dance therapy. Who doesn't love to end the week with a dance party! Each member of the team jumped right in! The children at this center had some MOVES and were great teachers!
Our final stop before the airport was the Genocide Museum and Memorial in Kigali. With heavy hearts we were educated about the devastation of the genocide in Rwanda (1994), but also reminded of the power of forgiveness and redemption. It placed a conviction in our hearts to put forgiveness first; to rise from devastation; and to truly LOVE your neighbor. This is Rwanda. The culture of FORGIVENESS and REDEMPTION, the culture of SUPPORTing one another, the culture of LOVE. What a blessing and humbling experience. We are forever changed.
“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”
― Miriam Adeney
Day 3: “Enable the disabled, Translate disability into ability”
We began day 3 in the physical therapy gym with more orthotic fittings and treatment of children. We were greeted by one of the sweetest smiles and hugs from a boy, Divine, that we have been loving on the past few days. Later in the morning, we got the opportunity to give him a new pair of tennis shoes, and you’ve never seen a bigger smile. His dad was present throughout the morning and he was so grateful and supportive! One of the highlights of the day!
Kelly, Cara, and Tiffany got the opportunity to fit an older girl with a possible spinal cord injury. They worked hard to make sure the braces fit perfectly, and girl and her mother were so happy afterwards! They shook Cara’s hands and smiled so bright as they walked out of the gym.
Maggie and Katie spent the morning with 3 siblings in the physical therapy gym. The two sisters and brother (Faith, Paul, and Emahappi) loved playing with our donated playground ball, taking turns catching/rolling to us, and imitating words. They were so sweet and loved snuggling and hugging on Katie and Maggie.
Right before lunch, all 5 girls headed to the occupational therapy building. We walked in and there were five kids with parents present who all wanted shoes. Somehow, we had a matching pair of shoes/orthotics for each kid in that gym. We only had a few pairs of shoes left in our duffle bag, and it was a miracle that each shoe fit a child requesting a pair of shoes. We feel that this could be nothing less than God's hand working out such small details and we are completely amazed that we were able to have shoes and braces left for each of these kids!
We have quickly learned the term “Murakoze” which means thank you. Parents and children are constantly telling us “murakoze” after helping or giving them shoes.
The lead physical therapist, Betty, asked to do a presentation over speech therapy, occupational therapy and autism, and spinal cord injury. We presented today to the occupational therapists, physical therapists, doctors, nurses, and master of education. Everyone was grateful and asked great questions at the end. They were all so curious about each topic. After our presentations, a boy wandered up to us when we were on campus. We handed out a pair of shoes to Jean, the sweetest boy with cerebral palsy, who left us with sincere gratitude and walking much better thanks to brand new tennis shoes and socks.
We are LOVING our time here. It’s been filled with kindness, the biggest smiles, warmest hugs, sweetest personalities, and welcoming hearts. We are already sad about tomorrow being our last day here with these amazing people. Friday we will be going with Brother Kizito to Kigali to spend the day at the HVP sister center in the city before flying out Friday night.