A parent of a 26 month old little girl with Down syndrome recently contacted the website to let us know of an ingenious device that has helped her daughter enormously. Like many children with Ds, her daughter has very low muscle tone (hypotonia) and was having difficulty controlling her hips and legs, which had a tendency to splay.

The aid, called ‘The Happy Strap’ has been designed to help infants and children with hypotonia, to assist the control of their ligament laxity and joint flexibility in the hips.  A degree of stability is given to the hips by the Happy Strap, and this assists in stabilising little bodies, and helping them through their developmental milestones of sitting, crawling and walking. It can be worn too while the child sleeps to counteract the tendency of the legs to splay.

Janet Wichmann from South Africa is a mother of two boys, the younger, Jens, has Ds. He also has low muscle tone and at a young age he started displaying startling laxity of the hips. From a sitting position, with legs splayed at almost 180°, he would lie down between his legs and then move his legs around the outside of his body resulting in him being prostrate on the floor. He would then sit up using the reverse manoeuvre.

Janet had been warned about how damaging this rotation of the hips could be and went about designing something to counter this problem. The prototype of the Happy Strap was designed and made specifically for Jens who reaped the benefit of it from an early age. The Happy Strap effectively and efficiently kept his legs from splaying and helped him tremendously through his physical developmental milestones.

When beginning to walk the Happy Strap ensured that he had the correct walking gait (i.e. not a 'wide base'); automatically aided him to bend his knees in a normal walking position, as opposed to walking 'stiff-legged' (which was the case without the Happy Strap); and assisted greatly with his balance and stability.

Now at two and half years, Jens is a very active little boy who walks steadily, climbs well and moves incredibly fast, yet he is happier and more confident wearing his Happy Strap than not.
 
The adjustable Happy Strap is available in various colours and sized from newborn through to approx 8 years. For more information please see http://www.happystrap.co.za/

Many thanks to the Mum who contacted us to tell us how impressed she has been by this product. She says her daughter has only been using it a couple of weeks and they have already noticed a huge improvement, as did her daughter’s physiotherapist.

Keep up the good work!