Strive OP News

Welcome to the Strive OP Educational Series — a growing collection of videos designed to help parents understand their child’s care in clear, everyday language. In this installment, we’re tackling one of the most common questions we hear from families: “Why is my baby’s head flat, and what can I do about it?”

That flattening has a name: plagiocephaly.

Watch the full video:

What a Rolling Ankle Is Really Telling You

The parents in Rochester noticed it the way most parents notice these things, slowly, and then all at once. Their son was almost sixteen months. He pulled to stand at the coffee table like the other kids at daycare. He cruised the furniture with real determination. But the second he let go, his ankles rolled inward, his feet spread flat against...

There’s a question almost every parent asks without ever saying it out loud.

It sits behind their eyes in the exam room. You can see it in the way a mother’s thumb keeps tracing the same curve along her baby’s head — repeatedly, like she’s checking the answer to a problem she’s terrified she got wrong. She won’t ask the question. Most won’t. But it’s the only...

The cereal aisle at the Kroger on 14 Mile is where it usually happens. A cart rolls past, slows, then stops. Eyes drop to the baby strapped in the seat — to the small, molded shell wrapped snug around the head, decorated maybe with stickers, maybe a tiny painted galaxy. And then the look. You know the look. The one that’s half curiosity, half pity, and entirely unwelcome.

The first time Jenna noticed it, she wasn’t looking for anything. She was just rinsing shampoo off the back of her daughter’s head in the kitchen sink, the way she had a hundred times before, and her palm caught a flatness she couldn’t un-feel. Not a bump. The opposite of a bump. A place where the round should have been and wasn’t.

She was a Sterling Heights...

Start with what these things are, because the words scare parents more than the devices ever could.

Pediatric bracing sounds like something out of a hospital drama. In practice, it is a small family of tools, each aimed at a different job, and once a parent can tell them apart, most of the fear drains right out of the room. Here is the field guide, generally to...

Michigan’s only pediatric-specialized O&P clinic adopts the advanced 3D-printed cranial remolding system for babies with plagiocephaly and brachycephaly

SHELBY TOWNSHIP, Mich. – June 16, 2026 – Strive Orthotics & Prosthetics, the only pediatric-specialized orthotics and prosthetics clinic in Michigan, today announced it has selected Talee® as its new cranial orthotic device for infants. The transition is effective immediately, with Talee now available to families across metro Detroit who are seeking treatment...

You're scrolling through photos of your baby. The hospital shots, the one-month, the three-month. And somewhere around the fourth or fifth swipe, you tilt your phone sideways. You look at the head's shape from above. Long. Narrow. Almost boat-like.

You tell yourself you're imagining it. You're probably not.

The Top 7 Things That Actually Help an Infant Get Through a Helmet Summer

It can be challenging for a parent to ensure the helmet is worn 23 hours a day. Then July hits, the thermometer reads 94, and “normal” goes out the window along with the breeze that isn’t coming through it.

If you’re parenting an infant undergoing cranial helmet therapy this summer, you already know the basics. The Talee helmet...

Somewhere around three months in, you notice it.

Maybe you’re changing a diaper, and your hand brushes the back of your baby’s head, and something feels off. A little flatter than it was last week. Or your mother-in-law mentions it on FaceTime in that voice mothers-in-law use. Or you’re at Target, and another mom glances at your stroller a beat too long.

And then you’re up at 2 a.m., phone glowing, typing...