TMR TOTS: Week 1

Its been 3 work days since I came back from the TMR course. I’ve been trialing it out with many of my kiddos. Its definitely taking less time to do the assessment of the 7 positions and to determine which is the hard vs. easy side for each motion. I do get consistent improvement in mobility by doing the TMR method. I am still waiting to see the functional changes before I know whether this is going to be a new tool in my toolbox or not. I plan to do some videotaping in order to look at the subtle changes that may be occurring.

The TMR treatment approach has many counter-intuitive components. You work into the “easy” side, rather than stretch or strengthen the weak or short side. For example, I see a 15 year-old with significant deformity of his back. He could shift to his left side, but not onto his right hip. After several minutes of exaggerating the shift to the left he was then able to shift to the right. He was also able to sit up much taller afterwords. I take back that I haven’t had functional changes, because this boy did have immediately better posture. I’m looking forward to seeing him again tomorrow!

I was armed with many good metaphors from the creator of the method that has helped a great deal in describing to parents this new approach. They have all been pretty excited to try something new, especially the parents who have had their kids in therapy for a while. One of these metaphors is that if you were trying to loosen a knot in a rope or a tangled necklace, you wouldn’t pull it tighter. Instead you would slacken it first to get it untied.

I have sent many parents home with new homework this week. Its nice to be able to give them homework that is as simple as snuggle your child in a specific position. I’m not adding more work to their day, just asking them to do therapeutic positioning when they’re hanging out with their child.