Skateboard Therapy Helps Whitman Boy Soar
WHITMAN (CBS) - What if illness meant you couldn't do too much, but once a day, you could soar? For a little boy from Whitman, it's making all the difference.
James Dodge is just six years old and spends most of his time in his wheelchair. "He has Polymicrogyria which means too many little folds in the brain. He has intractable epilepsy, hypotonia, global development delay," says James' mother Sarah Dodge.
But every chance they get, his family brings him to "The Practice," an indoor skate park in Whitman, just across the street from their home. "We come almost every single day," Sarah says. And it's at The Practice that James becomes a bit of a skateboard dude.
James wears a special vest called an Upsee that attaches him to Shawn Kain. Kain and his wife Jill are Special Education teachers who own the skate park and run it nights and weekends. Shawn holds James as he moves the skateboard up and down gentle ramps.
Even though James doesn't speak, there's no question what he's feeling as an enormous smile spreads over his face and his eyes light up. "I think it's probably freeing for him. He loved it. It made him happy. He likes movement. People always say you have the wind in your hair, but when you're in a chair you don't feel the wind at your back," his mother says.
"James in many ways is a role model for other kids," says Shawn Kain who has been working with James for about a year. "With the dynamic movement of skateboarding and going back and forth, it helps him strengthen his muscles because he's constantly engaging and re-engaging," says Kain, who encourages James to use his leg muscles to push down on the board.
James' eight year old sister Olivia loves to skateboard with him, and says the therapy is working. "He used to have very tiny leg muscles and now they're getting bigger, so he might be able to walk," she says. "I consider this to be the best therapy he can have because it's one that he loves," says Sarah.
She sees a big difference in James since he started coming to The Practice. "He didn't really use his legs at all. He was more just hanging from the harness that Shawn wears. And now you can see, he pushes with his feet, there's muscle tone in his legs, more trunk control, head control, it's been incredible," she says.
And at The Practice, he's one of the kids. "Here it's just James. And to have a space for him to go to have that, is just really awesome," says his mom.
James and Sarah are about to travel to Oregon to try a new therapy. It's a program that uses medical marijuana in an oil form in the hopes of controlling his daily seizures. Even though medical marijuana is legal in Massachusetts, no dispensaries have opened, so the family can't get what they feel James needs at home.
