Hippotherapy Argumentative Essay

Imagine if you were a parent of a child with cerebral palsy and you have tried many many treatments for your child and they don't seem to be working. Then, out of the blue, you see something about a therapy called hippotherapy on Facebook. You read about how the program works and you read the comments and see that this could be the start of developing your child’s motor functions. I think that people should use hippotherapy because it is an effective therapy. Hippotherapy helps children with neuromuscularskeletal disorders by improving social skills, speech, sensory input, muscle strength, motor skills, and balance. Hippotherapy improves muscle strength. There was a boy named Ben. He was born weighing a little over a pound. Going through
twelve surgeries, Ben went home with tracheotomy, a ventilator, a g-tube, a seizure disorder, and cerebral palsy. Ben’s mom tried many things but one day she came across a hippotherapy place called Simple Changes. Ben was not able to sit up on his own before going to Simple Changes, but after two years of hippotherapy he was able to sit up on his own indecently. He also had better trunk control and he improved his breathing (Apel). For some people two years might be a long time, but when you are seeing the changes throughout those two years and you see the after effect you see that it was all worth it. Ben continued to go to hippotherapy after that to improve even more. Hippotherapy also improves standing, posture, and walking (Apel).
Hippotherapy also improves many skills, but did you know that it can improve more than one skill at once? When a patient is riding a horse and they have a physical therapist and his/her assistants they are working on their social skills. While the child is working on his/her social skills he could be sitting in many different ways to improve his trunk strength. While this child is improving already two things at once he/she could be improving their breathing because their trunk is getting stronger, and because they are breathing better their vocal sound is going to get better as well (De Gutis).
Although hippotherapy is a great way to improve a child's disorder some people may argue that it is not safe. However, when you go to a professional hippotherapy program they make you wear safety equipment like helmets. Another argument may be that hippotherapy is an expensive therapy. I think of it this way, the results you would get from hippotherapy are far worth the expense of hippotherapy. Some hippotherapy programs take certain insurances or they are working on getting insurances to cover some of the costs of their programs' costs.
Hippotherapy improves social skills.
When a rider is grooming their horse before riding or they are just doing plain old ground work they could be improving their social skills (Apel). When a client is talking to their horse they aren't crazy. They are just improving their social skills. The child could be uncomfortable talking to other humans so they talk to their horse maybe about their feelings or what they were doing before the hippotherapy. It's all just healthy improving. When the rider is ready or has always been able to talk to the people around them they are improving their social skills (De Gutis). They could be talking to just the physical therapist or to the physical therapist and his/her assistants at the same time, which is great. The client is preparing for socializing in bigger groups outside in the
world.
Speech is one of the most common thing to improve in hippotherapy. There was a woman named Mindy Hauser and she had a three year old son that hadn't said his first word yet. Mindy took her son to a place called Naples Equestrian Challenge. After only four weeks of work with the physical therapist and the horses he said his first word and continued improving on his speech from then on (Apel). A horse's movement and a human's movement are very similar, so when a horse moves it moves the child in his/her pelvis (De Gutis). This helps a child to be able to speak. If a child is grooming their horse or riding them they feel an urge to talk to the horse, and that motivates the child to speak. There are several different ways to help speech with hippotherapy.
Lastly, hippotherapy helps many different kinds of neuromuscularskeletal disorders.
Hippotherapy helps Cerebral Palsy, Autism, Attention Deficit Disorder, Closed Head Injury, Developmental Delays, Emotional Disorders, Down Syndrome, Paralysis, Spina Bifida, a Traumatic Brain Injury, and many more (3gaits.org). To go further into how hippotherapy helps Cerebral Palsy, CP, hippotherapy is believed to decrease spasticity and maintain or increase the range of motion in the upper body. A girl who had CP had started taking hippotherapy once a week for thirty minutes when she was two and a half. When she was five she had strengthened her back and neck, she had better balance, her ability to sit up longer increased, and she had less spasticity in her lower body
(aetna.com).
Hippotherapy is a great way to improve your child and lessen their disability. It is important to know that hippotherapy is an option for many different kinds of disabilities. It is effective and fun. Hippotherapy helps children with neuromuscularskeletal disorders by improving social skills, speech, sensory input, muscle strength, motor skills, and balance. I understand the reasons not to do hippotherapy. It could be dangerous, which is why safety equipment like helmets are used, and there could be financial issues. Some hippotherapy programs are working on getting insurance companies to cover some of the costs of hippotherapy. I think that hippotherapy is one of the best therapies there is because it's effective and fun for the clients. If my kid had a disability that hippotherapy could help with I would take them to it. I strongly suggest considering hippotherapy as an option for kids with neuromuscularskeletal disorders.