tying shoes

February 3, 2006

Years ago on this list...maybe 5-6 years ago...someone posted a neat way to

teach our kids to tie their shoes. Does anyone out there still have that

story/technique? I saved it back then, knowing I would need it later, and

in the mean time our computer crashed and lost everything. Even if it isn't

the same thing, I would love to hear the way you have taught your kids or

ideas on how.

thanks!!!

Kym...mom to 5 including (8ds) who wants to know how to tie his shoes

February 3, 2006

Here is one we used successfully.

(mom to Bridget 12)

DOWN SYNDROME NEWS VOL. 20 NO.9 PAGE 121

Steps to Shoe Tying Success By Meg Egan

Cheryl Beahn figured her 7-year-old son, , would wear Velcro shoes for a

long time. has mental retardation, but since he had early trouble with

motor skills, and for a time had difficulty just picking things up, Beahn never

expected her son would arrive home from school knowing how to tie his shoes.

But one day he walked in grinning, plopped himself down on the floor, stuck one

hand behind his back, and proceeded to tie his sneaker by himself. Thanks to a

simple shoe-tying method developed by Kim Mickley, COTA, has been relishing

this bit of independence ever since. " -he gets so ecstatic. Tongue-tied, "

his mother said. " This is a real thrill. He's showing some independence... He's

being just like his brother and sister. He's doing what they do. Little things

that others can do that he can't-he notices. " In the last year Mickley has

taught 15 children with varying degrees of mental retardation and autism to tie

their shoes. Before then, she averaged one or two students a year. " In the past

I would teach children the way I tie my shoes, telling them to take whatever

lace was on top and pull in under-those sorts of instructions, " she said.

" That's so hard for figure-ground perception. " Mickley is an employee of

Colonial Northampton Intermediate Unit Number 20 in Easton, PA, which provides

special education services to 13 school districts in a

three-county area. Her task-oriented method breaks shoe-tying into several

specific steps, each of which a child begins by using a dominant hand- " the hand

you hold your pencil with, " Mickley tells them. She frequently works with

students at a desk or on the floor, one shoe off and facing in the same

direction as the bare foot, with the laces hanging down, one on either side of

the shoe.

Mickley first asks students to raise their dominant hands and place their

non-dominant hands behind their backs to reinforce that these are the hands they

ought to use to begin each step. She doesn't refer to hands as being " right " or

" left, " since many of her students don't understand the distinction. Students

use the dominant hand to pick up

the lace on the dominant side and cross it over the shoe. With the same hand

they cross the lace on the opposite side over to make an " X " . " The emphasis of

this is that you learn each step and you don't go on to the next one until you

learn that step, " Mickley said. " We would practice this (and each of the

subsequent steps) at least five times, until the child could do it without me

talking them through it. " With the non-dominant hand still behind their backs,

students next slide the dominant side lace, put it under the " X " and grab with

the dominant hand. They use the non-dominant hand to grab the other

lace, and then pull both sides tight. Mickley again practices the step at least

five times, then has the students use the dominant hand to make a medium-sized

loop with the lace on the dominant side, and hold it against the shoe with the

thumb and forefinger, tail hanging down. After practicing making loops on the

dominant side, students use the

non-dominant hand to pick up the other lace and wrap it around behind the loop

toward themselves: clockwise. For the next step she has them make a fist with

the non-dominant hand, and use that thumb to push the lace through the circle

and away from their bodies, then hold it there. Once again, both steps require

practice. Next, the dominant hand drops its loop and grabs the lace resting in

the non-dominant thumb and forefinger. This, too, requires practice. Finally,

the non-dominant hand grabs the other loop with its thumb and forefinger, and

students pull both loops sideways.

Mickley suggested practicing all the steps beginning at number three, making the

first loop-several times with the shoe off the foot, resting on the floor or

desk. Then students must practice tying with the shoe on the foot. Mastering

this may take additional practice since laces tend to shorten once students put

their shoes on. As a final step, Mickley reviews how to untie the laces without

knotting them: by pulling one of the tails, not the loops. Mickley often

encounters students who have learned to tie their shoes using the " rabbit ear

method, " in which they make two loops, cross one over and under the other, then

pull them into a bow. She said that although they may

successfully tie their shoes this way, she always teaches these students her

method.

" The rabbit ear method, obviously that's not appropriate for adults, " she said.

" You don't see adults tie that way. So eventually they'll have to learn the

other way. " Mickley sees a lot of students with high-level autism, many of

whom have problems with motor planning. One, a 10-year-old whom she treated for

five years, was one of the only kids in his class who couldn't tie his shoes-and

until she developed her dominant-hand method, she didn't foresee him ever

learning how. " It was just, basically, impossible to teach him how (using other

methods), " she said. " There was no way he could remember all the steps, " Using

the new method, the boy learned in two 45-minute sessions.