Kids Therapy - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Kids Therapy

This week kids are playing not knowing they are actually working hard.
   Sanford Health's pediatric rehabilitation department moves outside this week -- where kids are learning how to just be kids...  
Reporter Arielle Johnson has the story.

  Playground equipment is pretty "foreign" to four year old Rupa...
  After spending three years in an orphanage in India, this little girl has some catching up to do...
(Dawn Kindel/ Rupa's Mother)"before we started therapy we would come to the park and we'd put her in the swing and she would scream in terror, she was scared of the swing, she wouldn't climb on any of the equipment because she was scared of the little holes on the bottom , I think she was scared that she was going to fall through and just the things that she has been able to be a normal kid now.
It may look like your average play date however children are working on physical, occupational, and speech therapy -- all while playing...
(Jackie Mrachek/ Physical Therapist)"They walk up and are ready to play and then they see your face and its just cheer confusion, is this going to be fun, is this going to be work, don't turn my park into work, and I don't think it turns into work in any way. Therapy in general weather its in the hospital or its here we all strive to make it fun, it has to challenge the child to promote development but making it fun is so important."
   Not only is it fun for kids -- but it's a learning activity for parents as well.
  (Jackie Mrachek/ Physical Therapist) I see kids do things that I don't see them do in the hospital setting and weather it be behaviors or skills that I may not have thought they had or the impairments that are present that I wasn't aware of are highlighted in a new setting so it gives me as a therapist the opportunity to work on new skills.
In Bismarck. KXNews. I'm Arielle Johnson.

Rupa's mom says her daughter loves being outside.
  She's scared for what will happen next week when they return to the hospital for therapy instead of the playground.