Special Needs Mama: Three-week physical therapy intensive with LEAP Pediatric

If you have followed along our journey, the whole reason I write about clean living is because of the transformation I’ve seen in our daughter Jaxlee. (More about her story here!). Because the special needs community, especially all my other special needs mama’s, have made such a huge impact on me, I wanted to share more details about our experience with LEAP Pediatric Physical Therapy. 

This is our second “intensive” program here at LEAP. The intensive program is a 3-week long session where we take Jax every single day Monday-Friday for 3 weeks. 

Each day she completes two hours of Physical Therapy: one of those hours is CME Therapy and one hour of Speech. For more about the theory behind their approach, click here. The benefit and draw of the intensive therapy format is the projected progress and gains from the (relatively) short amount of time commitment. Studies have shown the expected outcome of a 3 week intensive is equivalent to the expected outcome of 1 hour 1x a week session for an entire year. 

You know the Enneagram 3 in me loves the maximization of time but also the accelerated progress. For that alone, I am all in!!

Speaking of my Enneagram 3ness, here are the goals we have for Jaxlee in this specific intensive: 

Speech:

Sentence formation on her AAC device. Streaming multiple words together to communicate wants and needs. For example, right now Jax has mastered “water” on her device. We are now working on expanding and asking her to say “I want water” or “I’m thirsty”

Physical Therapy:

Increased independent walking and control of her body. Balance, coordination, stamina. Forward walking with successful change in direction. Ideally she will graduate to walking with canes in the near future.

Those are our specific goals, but I wanted to zoom out and share a bit more about the program itself. 

For those of you who are reading this and wondering if LEAP is the right choice for your child, here’s what I would want to know if I was in your shoes:

• LEAP Pediatric opened up in January 2021 and have had clients from all over the country travel in for their program. It’s extremely specialized and hard to find.
• Another amazing aspect of the 3 week intensive is not only the visible amount of progress in the 3 weeks, but the progress of the client can/will continue to unfold for the 6 months following the intensive. This is called the recovery period (think muscles recovering and regenerating). 
• In short, you put in 3 weeks of really hard work, you get a year worth of therapy under your belt, plus continued gains for at least the next six months! 
• The cost ranges from $5-7k depending on insurance coverage etc. It’s best to contact the clinic for further details. 
• My only regret is not getting Jax into an intensive program sooner. 

Click here to read more about their AMAZING program! 

Let me tell you, we have seen incredible gains happen in Jaxlee! Watch this video to catch a glimpse of her first day with LEAP this winter, and her first day this summer. 

Our therapist recommends 2-4 (max) intensives a year, so when another opportunity opened up in August, we were all in!

To say we are incredibly grateful to have this amazing opportunity and resource for Jax so close to where we live is just another testament to God’s provision in our lives. 

xoxo,

Emily