Learning to Walk With Tactile Defensiveness

After our son was diagnosed with tactile defensiveness, we had so much to learn. Neither my husband nor I had ever heard of it, and no one in our families had either. We also had to educate our families on it, and honestly, the warning signs are easy to miss when you don’t know what you’re looking for. On top of that, we needed to figure out what we could actually do at home to help him. If you’re just starting out, my earlier post explains what tactile defensiveness is and how we first discovered it. Here, I want to focus on the practical steps we took to help him learn to walk.

After his diagnosis, helping him walk became our number one priority. From the day we got his diagnosis to the day he took his first independent steps, almost five months passed. These are the steps we took as parents to make that happen.

1. Physical Therapy

Regular physical therapy was essential. We never would have known where to start without it, and many of the therapy activities we eventually did at home were inspired by what we saw there. If you’re looking for ideas to try between appointments, that post is a good starting point.

One technique they used was hanging beads. The therapist would have our son place his feet beneath a strand of hanging beads, then gently swing them across his feet. He hated it at first, but over time he adjusted. It became a staple of his sessions, and they always sent us home with it to practice.

2. Brushing His Feet

One of the primary activities the therapist would have us do at home was brushing our son’s feet. It sounds a little weird, and you probably wonder what that is. Our therapist gave us this little sponge that was soft on one side, and on the other side, it had tiny bristles. All we would do would take his feet, and with the bristle side of the sponge, we would brush his feet. We would constantly brush up and down across the bottom of his feet. He did not like this feeling at all. It took a couple of weeks to get used to the sensation on the bottom of his feet.

3. Going Barefoot

We only took him outside in his bare feet for this one. We would have him touch his feet on different textures. We put his feet on the cement or in the sand. We would try anything we could think of that would feel foreign to him. The one he hated the most was the grass. It took him a long time to be comfortable touching the grass with his feet.

4. Using a Walker

The last thing that the therapist had us do was use a walker. He needed the walker to get strength in his legs. You have to realize that he had never stood up on his legs at this point. When moms take their babies, hold them up on their laps, and stand up, you look at the baby while helping them stand. My son never did that. You never realize how that tiny little thing was such a big deal. Since he had never stood on his legs, they were weak. We used the tiniest little gold walker you would have ever seen. It only took him about a week to learn how to use the walker, and then he was off. We couldn’t slow him down after that. He used the walker for a couple of months.

After months of doing these things, our son finally started walking independently. It was the best day of his life when he could finally walk without any help. Walking hasn’t been his only setback. He also had to learn how to touch things with his hands. Walking wasn’t his only setback. He also had to learn how to touch things with his hands, and eating has remained our biggest, most persistent challenge. I’ve written a whole post about what that looks like day to day. Please read my other posts about the strange things we would do for him to get used to touching things and eating.