Rifton Activity Chair Rocks!

We picked up Annie's totally awesome Activity Chair yesterday.

Now she can sit up to the dining room table with us at dinnertime.

...who knows, maybe she'll even eat!

Adaptive Equipment

I spent the first year after Annie's brain injury feverishly--no, insanely--trying to do everything in my, and her therapists' power to return her to her pre-brain injured self. You know, the walking, talking, eating, singing, dancing Annie that we all knew and loved. The second year I calmed down somewhat and realized that her recovery might take longer than I had originally planned, and that this would require a large degree of patience on my part, and some adaptive equipment.

Practically, what this means is I need equipment that will help her access stuff--like the dining room table. Back in the 2nd year, I bought something called a Special Tomato Height Right chair, that is guaranteed to grow with your special needs kid until they're a teenager. Trouble is, the tray that goes on the thing is the size of a tomato--wonder where they got the name?--and Annie's arms dangle over it. And the foot rest is tucked under in such a way so that a child needs to bend their knees to rest their feet on the footrest. Well, Annie's legs and feet don't naturally bend, they dangle. Over the foot rest.

So I went back to navigating the black hole of online special needs equipment suppliers to look for the perfect high chair for my disabled 7 year old, because, shockingly, Babies R Us does not carry high chairs for 7 year old kids. And, of course, since there's no such thing as a typical special needs kid, a chair that will work for one kid, won't work for another. This means there may be 6 types of adaptive high chairs, each with 14 optional footrests, headrests, pads, straps, and abductors. The chairs all look orthopedic, usually take up the entire square footage of a standard dining room, and have a base price equal to the GNP of Lithuania.

In the next few weeks we're going to try out one of these chairs. I just hope it'll fit inside the front door.

Jean