Learning to Tie His Shoes

#5, who is 6, has been struggling to learn to tie his shoes for the past year and a half. A combination of sensory and motor skill issues have made it just one more thing that he just can’t quite master.

I’ve been at a loss for how to help him until I stumbled across a picture on Pinterest that had pipecleaners tied onto shoes. (It was just a picture with a dead link or I’d give credit where it is due.) I was inspired to give it a try. After all, his problem seems to be with the flop and softness of the shoelaces.

Here’s what it looked like:

I put the pipe cleaners through the top eyes on his shoes

He could already do the “X and through” but this helped it to stay put

Thanks to the wires, the loop didn’t slip out of his fingers

He had to practice taking the orange one around the loop several times, but its stiffness helped him to see what it was doing

He got it on his second attempt!

After half a dozen times with the pipecleaners, we pulled them out and tried it with the real thing.

Voila! He got it the first time.

I just want to say thank you to the unknown person whose dead link brilliance made this possible!