Hypermobile DS - how can I improve his stamina??

[Loueytb3]

This is complicated by the fact that he has ASD and the hypermobility is only part of the picture.

He gets so tired and when he gets tired, his behaviour is just awful. At the moment it is at its worst after swimming which we do on a sunday morning. He is dreadful for the rest of the day.

I don't know if the answer is doing more swimming to build up his strength or if that is going to be counter productive.

He has 1-1 OT every week at school plus some OT based games lessons and we have a trampoline at home. I am supposed to be doing exercises using a swiss ball at home but I need to get a new one as ours has gone pffffft. I would like to do more activities with him but I fear that if I do, he is going to lose the plot as he will be too tired.

Any advice from other parents of hypermobile children (ASD or not)??

I think swimming is the thing that has helped most of all.

We eventually found a really good swimming teacher who understood the issues with hypermobility and black and white thinking eg. dont tell the child to twist their arm as they will twist it right round the wrong way

Once Dd3's strokes were sorted her swimming improved loads.

Since january she has been doing 2 one hour swimming sessions per week and her stamina and fitness have improved loads.

Good luck

Polter - we do a lot of that at the moment. Scooterboard is a good idea - I know they use that in OT at school. Where did you get it from?

Ineedmorepatience - that's interesting. He only does 30 minutes a week at the moment and its not enough to improve things. How long did it take before you saw an improvement? He loves water (and has no fear) so we would fork out for more lessons if it is likely to help.

Like any exercise program, exercises need to be done quite frequently to have any effect . Little and often is more effective than one big weekly session with exhausted inertia for a day or so afterwards.

DS2 is lucky because there's a softplay room in his school and his 1:1 takes him in there when his class has PE. There's also a trim trail on the field that he sometimes enjoys. His balance is much better than his brother's, now. (He's the hard one to work on. Will walk for miles, but very resistant to actual "exercise")

ouryve - that's exactly what his OT has said to me.

I spoke to her this morning partly to sound her out about whether we should be adding in more swimming. She pointed out that part of the reason he is probably exhausted after it is also down to sensory overload and the effort of concentrating and listening to instructions in a noisy environment.

He is getting a lot of OT at the moment, he has one doing handwriting exercises with him (another battle), and a session of sensory OT as well. He is also doing PE, an OT based PE programme, dodgeball and relaxation therapy as well. Actually, when you look at it like that, it is a lot. Then swimming on Sunday, we went to soft play on Saturday and he spent a fair amount of time on the trampoline this weekend as well.

I'm going to look into 1-1 lessons for him and see if we can find a calmer environment for him to see if that helps.

I'm a bit worried about the summer holidays as I've booked him into a summer camp for a week, including daily swimming. I'm worried he will be dead on his feet by day 2 and his behaviour will deteriorate...

Little and often. Our child with HMS used to fall a lot and get very tired but her stamina has definitely improved with weekly gymnastics class, and additional classes such as yoga and ballet (with restrictions on the stretching).

My 4 year old doesn't really realise we're doing physio it's just a game - balancing, sitting on a little blow up ball like mummy, also standing wobbling around on a sit-fit. She does get more tired than other children her age, and though she has no behavioural problems, her behaviour can be atrocious when she's tired. We moved her bedtime back 30 minutes from 7.30 to 7 and saw a big difference in her behaviour in the evenings.