Therapeutic horseback riding

Andy and I spend our Saturdays at the barn with a group of fantastic volunteers doing therapeutic horse back riding. This adds a 6th day to our work week, but it is well worth it! Most of the time by the time we get to Friday afternoon, I am done. The thought of working another day just feels tough. But then I get to the barn and see the smiling faces of all our kids and their parents, leaping out of the car to come and ride. All these kids participate in therapies during the week, but none of the therapies compare to what they experience every Saturday at Shelland Place Farm. Every Saturday we have some kind of tiny miracle occuring.... This past Saturday, we had a couple. The first one was a little guy who struggles at school and home with ADHD and dyslexia. I am told that he has mood swings and tends to have a hard time emotionally; except on Saturdays. He jumped out of the car and ran to me with a picture in his hand. He had gone home the week before and drawn a picture of Jedi ( the horse he rides) on one side and Lenny (the giant Warmblood who is a gentle giant) on the other side. The mini miracle was that he had drawn himself with a HUGE grin and his hands in the air in a victorious show. He was so excited about this picture and how the horses made him feel. No medication made him feel like this -yet his Saturdays are his time to shine where there is no pressure to read or write, nothing to have to respond to, except the complete and absolute acceptance that a huge, majestic animal called a horse gives a seven year old who is struggling to find himself in the academic world. It is times like this that I know we have to keep doing therapeutic riding, because these Saturdays change lives.

How time flies

I am amazed at how quickly time flies, learning to blog has taken on a whole new meaning for me. When I first started "blogging" I figured that it had to be educational in nature, then realized that it has to be interesting. Well here we go. This morning on the NBC's Today Show with Matt Lauer, there was a segment on how furniture can hurt our children. As many as 15 000 children get hurt every year. I found that quite amazing that there was an entire segment on this information. It is very important to know, and as parents we have all had that happen in some where in the house. But did you know that 15% of children under the age of 18 have some kind of learning disability. Many of them un diagnosed; leaving parents and children at a loss of how to be most successful in learning. We don't hear alot about this information and yet it is affecting so many families that the numbers are frightening.

There are so many programs available to us today that can truly improve children and teenagers learning ability. I am often as frustrated as parents get when we can see that a child has excellent potential but needs a slightly different way of absorbing the information. Computer technology can be very useful too, we see many new programs flooding the market but how do you know what to look for in a program? Lets have that discussion tomorrow.

Have a great day :)