I Want You to Believe

Steve wrote this message through facilitated communication:

“I like both inclined floor and knee walking [Steve means doing both on the same day]. I believe I can crawl. I believe I can creep. I believe I can talk with Daddy.

“How do I feel my legs? Cold and hot helps me feel. I should do knee walking right after. After cold and hot, I can feel better for a short time.”

Next day, Steve wrote:

“I believe it is natural to feel angry about everything. I cannot walk or talk. I work hard in my life.

“I want you to believe in me.”

I asked Steve if he felt angry. Yes. I asked if he meant for Rumiko to believe in him. Yes. Mama? Yes. Daddy? Yes. Then I told him that we did believe in him, and so did the workers, and Grandma and Alissa and Karli and Huiru and George and many other people. Steve had been intent and serious up to this point, then he began to smile widely.



Steve doesn’t waste words. It is hard, doing facilitated communication. He tells us the essential things.

Rumiko is the woman at the Institutes in Philadelphia who guides his treatment. The inclined floor is like an indoor slide; with gravity’s help Steve can crawl on his belly down to the bottom. Now he can get half his body off on to the flat. In this photo, Steve is getting off as far as his knees, his best trip ever.

Creeping means supporting his weight on hands and knees. This is much harder than crawling because he’s raised his trunk off the floor. He does this with Mama’s support in the evening after the workers go home. Now, he feels confident to do this with me, but not so well as with Mama.

Knee walking happens with Steve in a harness, with elastic straps that suspend him from hooks that in turn hang him down from the ceiling. This device bears part of Steve’s weight. When Steve knee walks, the device coasts along a track attached to the ceiling. He can go about 10 feet, then turn around and go back. After five or six trips, he is tired.

I felt surprised that when Steve wrote, he did not write about his intelligence program – reading and math are going very well, he seems to enjoy them. Instead, he wrote about his physical program, that doesn’t seem to be progressing much at all. I understand it is very hard work for him, but he sees how important the physical work is.



Because he doesn’t have enough feeling in his feet or lower legs, we are now giving him alternate foot and lower legs baths, first in a bucket of hot water for 30 seconds, then cold water for 3 minutes, then hot, cold, then hot and cold again. Each session takes about 10 minutes, and we do four sessions a day.

Steve also likes tightening his gluteus maximus and he likes side-lying, pushing his knee down and straightening his leg. These sessions give him practice at telling the muscles what to do. He tends to use his flexor muscles but not his extensor muscles. He needs both.

He would like to do more than we are doing for regaining feeling and control for his lower body.