Daniel Smyth, 5, Bethany Watson, 3, and Charlotte Taylor, 3, using a Firefly Upsee to walk with their parent. Photo courtesy of Leckey Firefly. Debby Elnatan’s Upsee, designed to help her own son walk tethered to an adult, could be the answer to many parents’ prayers for children with disabilities.Cerebral Palsy kids walking!
Cerebral Palsy kids walking.
By Abigail Klein Leichman Israel21c
A Jerusalem child named Rotem was the inspiration for an invention that allows mobility-challenged little ones to experience walking, while tethered to an adult.
Rotem’s mother, musician Debby Elnatan, traveled to Ireland ahead of the April 7 launch of her Upsee product under the new Firefly brand of Irish company Leckey, and has been featured on ABC News, The Daily Mail, International Business Times and other media.
On April 1, 2 and 3, therapists and parents from around the world are welcome to join a live-streamed discussion on the Firefly website on how to use this mobility innovation to help children with disabilities experience the benefits of walking.
Elnatan tells ISRAEL21c that she began working on the device when her son, who has cerebral palsy, was two years old. He is now 19. The motivation was the advice of physiotherapists not to let little Rotem’s legs remain useless, but to “walk” him regularly to strengthen them and increase his awareness of his limbs.
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“I cried for about a week or two, and then I started to walk him,” she relates in a promotional video for the product, her voice cracking with emotion at the memory of that time. “It’s very hard to walk a two-year-old, because you’re down on your hands and knees on the floor. I thought there had to be a better way.”
After trying several different approaches, she designed a harness that attaches to a belt worn by an adult. The system includes specially engineered sandals to hold the adult’s and child’s feet so that they step in synch. The child is fully supported yet both pairs of hands are free.
Once she put a prototype together, she began taking Rotem out to walk. The first few times his legs collapsed under him, Elanatan tells ISRAEL21c. “Gradually he built up his strength, and by the end of a year he could go out for two hours with me. Before that, we could do only a few steps at a time.”
Family-tested
The nitty-gritty design details were worked out in cooperation with a team of product designers, engineers, textile experts and therapists at Leckey, a well-known brand of equipment for children with special needs.
Elnatan explains that it took so many years for Upsee to be commercialized because she was busy raising Rotem and his older sibling, inventing all sorts of innovative gadgets, running music groups with her husband for people with special needs, and beginning a nonprofit called Full Family Rehabilitation with another mother of a special-needs child. When some Israeli relatives said they wanted to invest in her walking invention, she began contacting manufacturers(Cerebral Palsy kids walk).
Cerebral Palsy kids walking
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Cerebral Palsy kids walking
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Cerebral Palsy kids walking
