FAMILY/ Parenting

Strengthening Our Daughter’s Knee – Purposeful Living

Purposeful living series by Todd Bowman


These posts written by Todd (Amy’s husband) are designed to model a system of purposeful living.  At least once a month, he spends time setting meaningful goals around one of seventeen core priorities.

If you missed it, consider reading the foundation post – Purposeful Living #1.


Correct Priority
Priority #5 – Children (Physical Health)

Goal – March 2013
Assist my daughter Colsie in daily completing her physical therapy to strengthen and repair the damage in her knee.  

Goal Status
Completed

UPDATED Thoughts About Goal – June 2013
After setting this goal in March I spent an entire week reminding Colsie in the kindest and most motivating manner I could muster that she needed to be doing her leg and knee strengthening exercises multiple times a day.

I offered to help her with her exercises, but she had no interest in this whatsoever.  She gave me that “absolutely not” look.  So I limited myself motivational reminders.

Young girl with short hair cut
{Isn’t she a cutie?}

It was a struggle most of that first week.  She wasn’t in a habit of doing her exercises twice a day, didn’t like doing them, and lacked motivation.  But my gentle reminders did result in her completing her exercises more frequently.

After a week of consistent exercising, Colsie returned to the physical therapist and received a report that she had made significant improvement.  Her knee was healing and strength was improving in her leg.

Colsie was so excited at this report that she started doing her exercises four times a day instead of two and completed many more repetitions than was required.  She no longer needed my encouragement and was working hard on her own.  Each week of therapy her diagnosis continued to improve and at the end of April she was told her knee was back to full strength.  

This is a big deal because she has been suffering from this injury for nearly a year and there was a general feeling through the first few weeks of therapy that things were not improving and more surgery might be needed.  

I am proud of Colsie and the hard work she did to get better.   

ORIGINAL Thoughts About Goal – March 2013
I purchased several volleyball training videos and had planned to use this time right now to work with my middle daughter Colsie on developing her volleyball skills to prepare for playing on a team this spring.

Instead she was diagnosed with a severe knee injury which will prevent her from playing sports of any kind for some time.  

Since this diagnosis I tend to forget about it most nights.  I depend on Colsie to find the motivation on her own to put in the work to get better.  Reviewing my Correct Priorities list today I felt I needed to be much more active in motivating and working with her in strengthening her knee.  I can transfer the time I was going to spend with her on volleyball to helping her get better.  


Build Your To-Do List Around Correct Priorities – Purposeful Living #1


Purposeful Living Outline

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  • Anonymous
    June 17, 2013 at 10:33 pm

    Todd is an awesome Dad!!

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