Top 7 Reasons to Supercharge Your Child’s Physical Therapy with the Spider Cage

There are so many reasons why the Spider Cage is a powerful therapeutic tool to integrate into your child’s physical therapy program. If you worry about your child not having all possible opportunities to develop new movement skills, you should try out the Spider Cage during a trial session at our office to see firsthand what your child can do!

Why is the Spider Cage so powerful? Let’s look at 7 reasons that the Spider Cage gives children access to developing new skills and abilities, by supporting them to increase strength, balance, motor control, endurance and sensory processing, all while having sooooo much fun. Remember, fun is really important when it comes to children- if they’re having fun, then they’re LEARNING! Let’s get into those 7 reasons now.

1. Exploration of New Skills

The Spider Cage is setup where the child wears a belt and the bungees connect to the belt. There are 8 bungees that can be attached to the belt with 2 on each corner.The child can be sitting, on hands and knees, standing, walking on a treadmill or moving between positions. The bungees in the Spider Cage provide support, but they’re also dynamic, so it is a different experience for a child that has been in a stander or a gait trainer. It is also different than having a parent or therapist helping. The child can try out new skills with just enough assist, but they are initiating the movement and responding to what worked and what didn’t work to learn from the experience.

In the video below, you can see the boy practicing standing up by himself without using his hands, which he can’t do outside of the Spider Cage. Over time the bungees can be lowered or only 4 bungees can be used to build more independence, which can then generalize to outside of the Spider Cage.

2. Confidence Building

Many children with movement delays or disabilities develop a learned helplessness from frequently experiencing things being difficult or impossible. Learned helplessness is when you have learned that you can’t do something, so you stop trying. It is an understandable reaction, but one we have to mindful of when guiding children to develop new skills and abilities. The Spider Cage is a fantastic tool for children to experience that they are capable of doing, with just the right support. This can be basic gross motor skills like sitting, standing and walking, or it can be more advanced skills, like hopping and balancing on dynamic surfaces.

The boy in the video initially needed hands on help to perform this motion. He didn’t try to initiate it on his own and needed help to complete the motion. After several times in the Spider Cage, he learned how to transition from hands and knees to standing with the help of the bungees alone. He was so proud of himself and this transferred to him helping more with transitions off the floor outside of the Spider Cage.

3. Safety to Try Higher Level Balance Skills

Children will limit attempts at new skills if they know their body isn’t going to be able to do it reliably and safely. Knowing they can’t fall, the Spider Cage gives the opportunity to try all sorts of challenging balance tasks without the risk of falling and hurting yourself. This way, the kids can work on those advanced skills, flood their brains with novelty and develop more advanced movement control.

In the video below, she challenges herself to move from standing to half kneel while standing on a bolster that rolls side to side. What a challenging task! This would be a risky thing to try holding maybe a trapeze overhead and would have allowed her to rely mostly on her arms, instead of her hips. Doing this activity in the Spider Cage let her work on a high level of hip and balance control and no rely on her arms for help.

4. Sensational Sensations

As we said before, the Spider Cage is a DYNAMIC place to be! The bungees provide resistance and assist to movement, giving intense proprioceptive/deep pressure input to the children’s bodies. All of the movement is very stimulating to the vestibular system in the inner ear as well. The Spider Cage is a great place to put together the postural system with the eyes, vestibular (inner ear), and proprioceptive (information from joints and muscles) to work on improving body awareness and regulation skills.

In this video you will see a boy doing intense jumping, having a BLAST, and regulating his system to do focussed work afterwards!

5. Hands Free Movement

Children who use crutches or walkers for mobility are always using their hands to help manage the rest of their bodies. The problem is that they then become limited in using their hands for other activities, such as carrying something, and they rely on using their arms to initiate movement, rather than using the pelvis, the cornerstone and powerhouse of our bodies.

In this video you’ll se a boy playing basketball where he typically needs a person to help or his hands on an assistive device to be able to do an activity like this.

6. Speed & Power

The Spider Cage gives the support a child needs to be able to work on moving at increased speeds than they could do outside of the cage. It also lets them work on their power with jumping and leaping. The dynamic assist on the bungees give greater access to new skills while decreasing risk of falls at the same time. This allows motor control, strength and endurance to build to support the use of increased power and speed outside of the cage in the future.

In this video, the boy walks 2mph, when he usually walks at a slow pace with crutches, he’s able to explore increased speed. You can see how proud he is at his acomplishment!

7. Play

Play is how babies and children learn! Play in the Spider Cage gives access to children with a limited play repertoire to develop more advanced play skills. Children can jump, kick a ball, throw a ball, and knock down towers. There are so many games children with limited play skills can try out in the Spider Cage!

In the first video below, the boy initially needed assistance from the therapist to stop on the target. With practice he was doing it all on his own and laughing so hard each time!

In the second video, we used the Spider Cage in a completely different way to make a ninja obstacle course with the bungees! The boy is working on his midrange postural control to move over and under while trying not to touch the bungees.

In the 3rd video the boy is playing t-ball! He has the opportunity to be hands free using the support of the bungees to play the game!