Strive OP News

Is My Child’s Toe Walking Normal? What an Orthotist Looks For, and What Happens Next

It’s 11:47 p.m. The house in Shelby Township is finally quiet. And a mom is sitting on the edge of the bed, phone glowing, typing the same question she’s typed a dozen times before.

“Is my child’s toe walking normal?”

She’s seen it for months. Her son pads down the hallway on the balls of his feet, heels...

She noticed it the way mothers notice everything, which is to say, almost by accident.

It was a Tuesday morning well-baby checkup in Royal Oak. The kind of appointment you pencil in between grocery runs and nap schedules. The kind where you expect to hear that everything looks great, your baby’s gaining weight, see you in two months. But the pediatrician did something that shifted the air in the room. She...

It is 2:14 a.m. in Sterling Heights and the baby monitor is glowing green on the nightstand. The house is quiet. The furnace has cycled off. And a mother is lying flat on her back with her eyes open, doing the thing that nobody warned her about, which is listening.

Not for crying. For breathing.

Her son is eleven weeks into cranial helmet therapy for plagiocephaly, and the helmet has been on...

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...

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...

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.