When my son Forrest started physical therapy at just five months old, everything felt uncharted. I was not new to motherhood, but I was new to all of this: my first experience with a feeding tube, my introduction to feeding and therapy, and my first steps into carrying therapeutic care into our home.
Fortunately, Forrest was supported by an extraordinary therapist who guided us through every stage. Looking back, the three most vital principles she taught me were:
- Growth comes through gentle challenges. Kids build strength and new skills when they are invited just past what feels easy, in small and playful doses.
- Document the work. With your therapist’s permission, video recording clinical sessions creates an invaluable reference point for at-home practice.
- Engage the whole family. Incorporating his sister, Woodley, into daily routines turned therapy into a natural, shared experience.
While these principles sounded straightforward in theory, putting them into practice required time and adaptation. Initially, I tried to force a highly regimented structure, which only heightened stress for all of us. Despite my professional background teaching special education, applying structured instruction to my own child felt fraught with pressure. The stakes felt so high that every exercise had to be executed perfectly.
Through months of trial and error, I realized the approach needed to be far more intuitive. The key was keeping it engaging and joyful. By letting kids be kids, allowing Woodley to demonstrate activities, and simply fostering natural play between siblings, the pressure dissipated. There was no single “perfect” method. Bringing Woodley into the fold transformed hard work into meaningful family fun. It also boosted Woodley’s confidence and leadership skills. It gave her purpose and a role in his therapy.
Therapy stopped looking like a clinical checklist and started looking like childhood. Woodley would sit right in front of Forrest, chatter away, and dangle a favorite toy just above his head, encouraging him to stretch his neck and look up. Soon, our living room transformed into a daily playground. Woodley built elaborate obstacle courses, turned physical exercises into high-stakes games of “the floor is lava,” and hosted impromptu dance parties just to get her brother’s body moving.
What started as therapeutic exercises quickly became the foundation of their relationship. Fostering those active moments didn’t just build Forrest’s physical endurance. It strengthened their bond as brother and sister in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. And wouldn’t you know it? All that hard work paid off: today, Forrest is the one initiating the action, constantly trying to wrestle with Woodley right in the middle of the living room floor.
Simple ways to involve a sibling in at-home therapy
Every family finds its own rhythm, but these are the ideas that worked in our living room:
- Let the sibling go first. Watching another kid demonstrate an activity can make it look like play instead of work. Woodley showing Forrest how to do something was always more convincing than me explaining it.
- Hide the movement inside a game. Obstacle courses, “the floor is lava,” dance parties, and made-up challenges can carry the same movement goals as a structured exercise. Kids will repeat a game far longer than they will repeat a drill.
- Give the sibling a real job. A sibling who builds the course, holds the toy, or leads the dance party has purpose, not a seat in the audience. That role can matter as much to them as the activity does to their sibling.
- Follow the kids’ energy, not the script. If the game drifts somewhere unexpected, movement is usually still happening. Some of our best sessions were the ones that stopped looking like sessions at all.
- End on fun. Short, joyful stretches of activity kept both kids coming back the next day. That willingness to come back is what makes home practice sustainable.
Your child’s therapy team can help you match games like these to the goals they are working on. For us, the biggest shift wasn’t any single activity. It was realizing that the play was the practice all along.
