My youngest daughter,7, is an idiopathic toe walker. She has always walked on her toes but it was something that I thought she would just grow out of so I didn't pay that much attention to it.

 When she was 4 years old I was making a joke to one of my friends about my daughter's tight toosh. She just happens to be married to a pediatrician,  she was quick to inform me that toe walking can be a symptom of many other things and immediately booked us an appointment.  We are so lucky that for her it's just a physical condition versus a neurological one.

After months of physiotherapy and castings, we moved her into these fancy AFO custom braces. These braces force her to keep her heel down and she begins to feel the heel-toe motions. It’s teaching her the proper movements when she is walking. I bet when you walk you don’t say “heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe” and try to remember to point your toes to the sky.  

We got these braces a few weeks before our first visit to the IWK (Children’s Hospital in another province) to meet with an orthopedic surgeon. He told me to take her out of the braces immediately and throw them in the garbage. He told me there was nothing wrong with her and that she would grow out of it. Prior to this, I needed to be concerned about how she was growing. We didn’t want her tips to protrude, her forefoot to get too wide, and having infant-like heels and ankles. 

He told me to let her be for a year and bring her back for a follow-up. At this point, she had zero range of motion in one ankle and less than 1% in the other meaning she couldn’t pull her toes up at all. 

This was the opposite advice I had received up until that point and I really left that appointment at the IWK confused and unsure what to do. I decided that he was the surgeon so he should know best. We stopped wearing the braces, physio, and I tried to stop nagging her to walk on her heels.

Our Orthotist was disappointed but very supportive of our decision and she wrote my daughter’s measurements down for me so I could keep track of where she was and have a baseline going forward. If they stayed the same or improved the IWK could be right if they worsened the Orthotist could be right.

We went the full year without physio, braces, unfortunately, I couldn’t completely stop the nagging. 

Before we went back to the IWK for a follow-up appointment this past August I decided to visit a physiotherapist who had worked with us the year before to get my daughter’s new measurements as our Orthotist had switched hospitals. Well, to our surprise she had some improvement, not much, but a bit.

When we had our appointment at the IWK I was thinking this is great I know she is has improved they must have been right. 

I was shocked when they told me that I could put her on the list for surgery. 

She had improved some why would they operate now? That being said, the Dr did say that it would be best to wait until she was done growing and there was a chance of reoccurrence but if I wanted to get it done we could add her to the list. 

What do you do as a parent? I'm trying to do the right thing for my kid to help her for the long term and I have so much conflicting information.

My husband and I talked about it and we decided no we weren't going to do the surgery and we would start physio again, wearing the AFO's, and incorporating other exercises to strengthen the muscles in her foot.

We have been back in the AFO's since November and her range of motion has improved over 3 degrees!!! And this is during a growth spurt.

She has to go next week to get new AFO's made because she has pretty much outgrown them but what a difference!!!

This does not mean she now walks on her flat feet all the time but I see a dramatic improvement. And yes she could lose some of the motion with the next growth spurt but for right now, at this moment, I am beyond grateful.

Consistency is the key to this success. She wears her braces every day at school (not during gym), we wear flippers around the house, we do squats, we try to touch our toes. It is not fun. It awful to constantly nag your child. It's annoying to go to all these different appointments. This has really sucked....but things are improving so it seems absolutely worth it right now.

And yes, I understand she could have something far worse to deal with. I absolutely recognize that.

My point is... 

You can change anything with consistency. It will suck. It's hard. You will want to quit. Even if you take the shortcut (in this case surgery) you don't know that the problem won't come back because you haven't changed the behaviour.  

If you are trying to use a Facebook page to grow your business and it’s where you are doing the majority of your marketing then you owe it to yourself and your business to show up on Facebook every day. 

You need to do the painful stuff, study your analytics, understand the platform, know how to run successful ads that generate results, interact with your customers.. you can’t half-ass it. If you want serious results you need to get to work and do all of the things. 

One of the biggest things I hear from my clients is “I don’t want to do that, it’s not me”. 

Have you said this before? You know its BS that’s holding you back, right? You’re comfortable doing the same old things so you will continue to have the same result. 

The skills that got you here won’t get you to the next level. You may even have to let go of some of the skills that got you here because they start to hold you back. 

I know you have a big vision and you haven’t figured out all the steps yet. I know you feel overwhelmed that’s why you let Facebook slide but clarity comes through action. 

If you were consistent on your Facebook growth strategies (more strategic than just posting), whether you need to grow organically or you want to incorporate an ads strategy too, you could be in a totally different place this time next year.  

Maybe you were doing something that was slowly working but you listened to someone you respected and they suggested you switch to another platform, so you figured you’d listen. You do it their way for a while and you see some small improvements but not enough. Pick one method and stick with it for the long-term. When you switch and lose focus you are no longer consistent and then you lose momentum. There is no shortcut to success. 

Find someone who is specialized in what you are trying to do and hire them to help you (if that’s Facebook, it could be me). In our case, our physiotherapist has gone to Australia to study idiopathic toe walking. Australia is leading the way in physiotherapy right now from toe walking to the pelvic floor. I’m so thankful for this woman because not only does she work with my daughter but she reassures me too. She gives me confidence that I’m doing the right thing, that my daughter will be ok, and I’ve made the right decisions. 

 We all need to stop second-guessing ourselves and just be more consistent. Consistency every day will pay off in the end. I don’t know how long it will take but consistency will always get there- whether you are creating good or bad habits. 

 We are going to be fitted for new custom AFO’s in a couple of weeks, our journey is not done, we need to continue to work on this. And I don’t know what will happen in the future whether she will eventually need surgery or not but for right now my goal is to help this kid walk on her flat feet. 

The feeling I have today is just a small win. I’m going to celebrate but I’m going to keep moving forward. 

Don’t stop. There are people out there who need to hear your message. 

So where should you start? You need to give yourself a baseline. I encourage you to sign up for my 28-Day Insight Reminder email so you can start tracking where you are at. Right now my girl can move her ankle 18 degrees- we were at 0- you need to track your results. 

Then, you need to figure out where you are going? It’s so much more than just posting hoping to make a sale. You need to learn how to use Facebook as a tool to help you reach those dreams of yours.