I’ve posted before about how we do Masgutova Neurosensorimotor Reflex Integration for Everett’s cerebral palsy. The home program has been pretty overwhelming for me. I have previously written (HERE) about how we had Barbara (who also helped me around the house – what a blessing it was to have her here!!!) doing the home program on Everett and how that worked really well for us. Well, it worked really well until she left the country to get married. She’s been gone for about a year and we’ve since filled the gap by taking Everett to a physical therapist who is also an excellent Anat Baniel Method practitioner (HERE). She lives an hour away, but somehow the daily two hours of driving plus the almost three hours at her house (two 45-minute sessions with usually a 45-minute break between) seemed more doable to me than doing the MNRI home program by myself (which should take no more than two or three hours total). Well, we recently attended our second MNRI family conference and, with the new baby coming, I am not going to want to drive to therapy as often if I can help it. All that to say, I have been desperately trying to find a way to make this home program work for Everett and for me.

When I have done the home program in the past, Everett would be playing on the floor with his toys and I would pick him up and put him on the massage table to start doing his therapy. Well, I think he resented being taken away from his toys and didn’t really like the therapy either, so he made it really hard to work on him – lots of spasticity (tightness) and fighting me in addition to screaming and twisting. It was the last straw when he bit my hand.

Finally, I had the idea to do the therapy in chunks throughout the day – whenever I could. I grouped the reflexes into three groups: when he’s on his back, when he’s on his tummy, and reflexes that require two people (i.e. wait until Derm Dad gets home). I decided to try doing the “on the back” reflexes at Everett’s changing table because he’s already in that position and I could just add a little bit as much as he would let me. At first, I just taped up all the sheets from my home program notebook, but that looked awful and it was too much to read with a squirmy baby who didn’t really want to be there anyway.

What, you don’t have a disco ball at your changing table? I bought it for Everett’s CVI (it’s good to connect vision with touch – i.e. see it and then reach to touch it) and it’s really fun when the sun reflects off of it during the day. The main reason it’s there is to distract Everett during diaper changes (and now during therapy) and to keep his hands out of his dirty diaper (TMI?). You just have to be careful because he can get that thing going pretty fast and I did get a fat lip once when I wasn’t paying attention. And did I tell you we’re back to cloth diapers? I had been doing disposables for about six months (I think) because his PT thought it would give him more mobility in his hips, but I didn’t want to do cloth for the new baby and disposables for Everett (and I didn’t want to pay for both of them in disposables!), so we switched back. I don’t think it makes a difference for his hip, but we’ll monitor it.

So back to my therapy sheets, in order to make them more concise and also more user-friendly, I typed out the essential instructions for each reflex pattern. Just the basics: where to put your hands, which way to push/twist/etc., how long to hold, how many times to repeat, etc.. And then (the key for me) I cut out the pictures and pasted them next to the corresponding reflex. I didn’t cut up my actual notebook that I have with the tabs and everything, but I have been to two family conferences, so I have two notebooks. I just cut up some pages from the first one. Derm Dad and I both appreciate having the pictures right there as a quick reminder. I figure, if I can just do one or two pages at each diaper change, we’ll be in business! At this point, I am not worrying about how many times per week I am supposed to do each one (except never more than twice a week for Fear Paralysis), since I am just doing as much as I can.

Much cleaner-looking, right?  I think they’ll look even better once I put them in matching frames.

And here are the sheets I’ll use downstairs:

My thought is that I can just sit on the floor while he’s playing with his toys and do whatever he’ll let me do. I won’t be taking him away from his toys, so maybe he’ll be a little more willing to let me work on him??? The partner ones should be pretty doable since we’ll have two people available to sing, and otherwise entertain him.

If you are a Masgutova family (i.e. you’ve been to a family conference and you already have a family notebook with the reflexes), and you think this would be helpful to you, please contact me and I’ll be happy to scan them and send them (unblurred, of course) to you. However, it would only be helpful if your child is not ready to actively participate because I just used the instructions for passively doing the reflexes. And of course I didn’t include the reflexes that aren’t part of our home program.

So, everything I need to do the whole home program (not including any of the other protocols like tactile, archetype, etc. – so just neurostructural and the reflexes) is on only seven sheets of paper (including all the pictures). That’s doable for me! I think this is really going to work!!! If you try something like this or you have any home program tips PLEASE let me know!!!

P.S. I blurred the images that show or describe the therapy, because it’s copyrighted material. However, if you already have access to the material (you’ve been to the conference), then I have no problem sharing the part that I worked on (making it more concise) with you to help you implement your own home program.