A few years ago, before the start of the pandemic, Miss Emily and I were trying to work with Tony to improve his tricycling skills during a habilitative therapy session. At that time, we were still experiencing easily a dozen or more attempts from him to run off per any type of outing. There was zero directional flexibility from him (if you asked him to go anywhere but where he wanted, he could easily at that time engage in 30 minutes or more of a sustained effort to use his full body weight to push to what he wanted), and we had zero compliance from Tony with a verbal request to stop from anybody at that time, even me.

Even with the both of us, we felt like it was too much to safely manage and help him improve his skills given the size of his tricycle (he’s needed an adult-size tricycle for several years now) and we were worried that it would roll in front of a car or something worse would happen while we were trying to keep him safe. So with a pang of sadness, I mentally pinned it on a list of goals for “some day.”

Some day is now. He’s generalizing requests to stop and directional flexibility during community walks to his new RBT quite well. Attempts to run off are dramatically reduced to the point where many outings won’t have any. Any attempt to push past me now just looks like a minimal lean into my upper body that doesn’t use his full strength or weight before he pulls back with a verbal prompt, and even those, they are on the path to total extinguishment within the community. So I decided now was the time to dust off the Dirt King, reinflate the tires, and hit the sidewalks.

Because it has been a few years, he needed help initially remembering how to place his feet, how to pedal, how to steer. In less than 2 minutes, pedaling was back. In under 15, he was doing better with steering than he was last time we tried to help him improve his skills. By day two he was able to pedal uphill with minimal assistance by me, albeit frequent breaks certainly were needed.

I have to jog now to keep up with him on flat or downhill stretches of the sidewalk.

He pedals with focused glee, giggling, whooping, and laughing as he hauls past people out for a stroll. I watched his eyes light up and he gave a verbal “yeah,” his face practically split from grinning as he passed a group of cyclists recently. Almost I could hear him thinking “I’m one of them now!”

He gets off the trike sometimes to rest, or to flap and look at cars driving by. He’s thrown one tantrum at a street corner I wouldn’t let him cross yet because of the volume of traffic, but his overall cooperation with directional instruction equals what he demonstrates on community walks (though he’s been having so much fun he usually doesn’t like being told it’s time to go home). He calmly takes denials for parks we pass that he would like to go to, literally all of the elements for him to maintain this as a leisure activity within the community are present.

Helping him improve these skills and his stamina for uphill portions is easily a one person job now, and I am thankful every day my POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) has improved enough that I can do that jogging to keep up with him. Kind words from people we are passing about how well he is doing have fueled the joy in my heart. Maybe some day there’s a bike in his future. But for right now, the Dirt King rides again…and we’re both having a blast with it 😀

Some additional therapeutic strategies I am using:

-always bring the skittles. Tony doesn’t care about praise, he cares about candy.

-gently pushing down on his knees at the speed he needs to go when he needs to start slowing down, paired with verbal instructions and reminders of why. He has motor planning deficits, so his muscles need help feeling the motion of the desired outcomes.

Why could this still be a useful activity for an older kiddo with developmental disabilities? (you can click on the title for a link if interested)

Moderate cycling exercise enhances neurocognitive processing in adolescents with intellectual and developmental disabilities, by Vogt, Tobias