On the mend. Little People, Big World’s Zach Roloff gave an update on how 5-year-old son Jackson is doing after having surgery — and the road to recovery hasn’t been easy.
“It’s tough because the screws in his legs help straighten the leg as he grows,” Roloff, 32, wrote via Instagram on Tuesday, November 15, after a fan asked how Jackson was doing after getting surgery in November 2021. “For him he maybe grows a inch a year, so it’s tough to see and won’t be obvious for a while.”
In addition to Jackson, Zach and wife Tori Roloff share son Josiah Luke, 6 months, and a daughter Liliah Ray, 2. The Oregon native and all three of his children were born with achondroplasia — the most common form of dwarfism.
On Tuesday, Zach noted that an “average person with the same recovery” as Jackson would “see the difference a lot quicker,” but his son is still doing “good.”
The couple have been candid about their concern for their eldest over the years. “There is legitimately something wrong,” Tori, 31, revealed during an episode of Little People, Big World that aired in June. “He isn’t progressing like they said that he would.”
During the episode, Zach and Tori explained that Jackson’s surgery was done in an attempt to correct the bowing in his legs that will hopefully “slow down the growth and allow the bones to even out.” After the little one’s recent complaints of pain, Tori decided the couple would “make sure that there’s no actual structural damage” by checking in with their doctor.
Zach, for his part, told mom Amy Roloff during the June episode that he wants to “adjust” if “something isn’t healing right” before the couple welcomed their third child.
Previously, however, the pair praised Jackson’s progress, exclusively telling Us Weekly in May that “he is doing great. Everything’s great,” adding that it will take about “four or five years” to see the change in their son’s legs.
Liliah, for her part, has the common eye condition strabismus. According to John Hopkins Medicine, the condition is a “misalignment of the eyes, causing one eye to deviate inward (esotropia) toward the nose, or outward (exotropia), while the other eye remains focused.”
After a second fan asked the father of three on Tuesday if their daughter has undergone surgery to help with the diagnosis, Zach replied, “Current plan is to wait till Lilah is talking better and can give us better feedback with the tests they do before moving forward.”
Despite their struggles, Tori shared earlier this month that she wouldn’t change anything about her family after a social media user asked via Instagram if the Washington resident wished she could “have the opportunity to know what it’s like to raise an average size child.”
“Absolutely not,” she said. “I’m Obsessed with the three kids God gave me and I’d have it no other way.”
