This is the story of my overpronating child.
Overpronation is basically the fancy medical name for flat feet, or when your arches collapse excessively. When it's severe, the ankle also rolls inwards. I mean, see the photo above. Does that look right to you?
When we first thought that something might be wrong, I spent a lot of time googling her symptoms. I found lots of people talking about their kids doing the same kinds of things - refusing to stand, standing on the sides of the feet, "walking" on their knees. Forum posts and questions written by worried parents were easy to find, but rarely did they come back months or years later to tell what the outcome had been.
I want to record our story from beginning to end. Of course everyone is different, but this is how it played out for us.
Everything seemed ok until she reached the age where she should have been pulling up and cruising. She crawled at 11 months but by 15 months, when most of her peers were off and running, she still wasn't able to stand. She avoided putting weight on her feet, and when she did she ended up standing on the top of her foot with her toes rolled under, or on the inside edge. The sole of her foot didn't touch the ground at all. At first I thought it was related to her dislike for different textures - sand, grass, etc. I thought she didn't want to put her feet flat on the ground. It took a while to realise that she couldn't.
Eventually she progressed to walking on her knees, and was able to get around quite quickly that way. It's amazing what you can get used to. At the time, although privately worrying that something was wrong, we strangely never thought much about the knee walking. I guess we assumed it would lead to real walking in time. Now if I happen across a video on my phone of her tearing around the house on her knees, it's a bit shocking.
It looks so wrong.
Over Christmas that year we spent time with family, and my mother-in-law's sister - a nurse - confirmed that yes, something was wrong. Her ankles were not normal. Off to the doctor, then a referral to a specialist, a visiting neuro-developmental therapist.
She took her first very wobbly steps the morning of her therapist appointment (of course she did), at all but 18 months of age. Her feet were turned out like a ballerina's and she walked on the arch of her foot. She was prescribed ankle-foot orthoses, tiny little pink splints that made me teary just looking at them.
But once we got home and put them on, it was incredible to see the difference. Her wobbly little ducky gait disappeared instantly. She loved to wear them and asked for them constantly.
Over the months of wearing the splints her alignment improved, until at her follow-up appointment five months later the therapist said the AFOs were only required intermittently going forward. Six months after that we were able to hand the splints back.
Now, at two and a half, she's still quite flat-footed and the therapist said she might always be, but her gait and ankle alignment is normal. She runs everywhere. She climbs, jumps, and dances.
The story has a happy ending, and we were lucky that the problem was not severe in any case. I'm forever thankful that that auntie was honest and gave us the prod we needed to stop waiting for things to improve on their own. Now, the whole saga is already behind us.
And the joyful little girl who can go (almost) everywhere and do (almost) anything she wants will never remember any of it.
Edited to add: when something like this first crops up, you get lots of people saying, "I'm sure it'll be fine" and "she'll figure it out" and "we went through something similar and look at us now". It's a natural response to want to offer reassurance. This is one of those cases where it actually wasn't fine and it wasn't going to be ok on its own. If everyone else is telling you it's probably fine, but your instinct tells you something is wrong, listen to your gut.
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