Can I share little 5 year old Rosa with you? A sweet youngster on the autistic spectrum, with an attention span of 5 seconds and little to no connection towards the humans in her life. Rosa would create patterns of walking and touching an innate object for a few seconds, then move on to the next object. She was in her own little world as she repeated these patterns over and over. Rosa sought sensory stimulus through touch, repetitive movement of objects and water. Oh how she LOVED water. Our experience as instructors has shown us how valuable the horse smell, feel, gentle breathing movements can be for sensory dysfunctional children.
We devised a plan involving water in an attempt to draw her near to Velvet, the miniature pony. The plan worked, and as you can see by the picture, Rosa found much comfort as she wrapped herself around Velvet. The instructor, at this point, gently lifted Rosa on and off of the pony, much to her delight. Velvet now became a motivator for Rosa to attempt interaction with humans, in order to have more of that sensation that she loved. All of this happened within one semester of 10 weeks.
The goal is to have Rosa keep a helmet on long enough to allow her to actually experience the movement of Velvet walking in the arena. A lofty goal for a child with sensory processing disorder. Once again, as experienced instructors, we have seen children overcome in order to ride.
Rosa’s mother is beyond thrilled as she witnesses the positive changes in her child’s behavior. Mom has 2 younger children affected with sensory processing disorder that she hopes to have in our program in the future.
