What therapy??

forkeeps251

Member
As I posed before, difficult child's test results have come back, and today I was looking more closely at the recommended therapy for him.
Problem is, both myself and my husband work full time. My mom is able to help a little, but she is getting older (and recovering from a broken back), so I'm not sure we can really do ALL the recommended therapy. Not to mention the cost of it :-(.

From what I've read there were four recommended things:
1) Occupational therapy - to improve his sensory sensitivity and improve his school behavior
2) Speech therapy - to fill in gaps that the speech therapy through school is not covering (which he goes to weekly)
3) Individual/play therapy - improve his coping skills and increase his ability to tolerate anxiety
4) Social skils development - the recommend an "art therapy group" which teaches him how to deal with his emotions through art

Personally, I think #4 sounds the coolest :). I would love for him to that that outlet, but obviously, I want to do what is MOST beneficial to him.

I think most of these are weekly things, if not all of them, and like I said, we don't have the money or the time to do all of these at once.

My gut feeling is that the Occupational Therapist (OT) and the social skills development might be the first two we try. The Occupational Therapist (OT) because it has been heavily recommended here (thanks guys!), and the art therapy just cause I like the idea of it. Speech he is already receiving SOME through school, so it isn't at the top of the list, and then the individual/play therapy falls to the bottom because I think the combination of Occupational Therapist (OT) and the social skills therapy would probably cover most of his problems that would be addressed in idividual/play therapy.

But I would love some feedback as to what anyone's experience has been on any of these.
 

buddy

New Member
Having faced the same thing....(but now it is all different so we can do all of them, sigh, at least for now with more open time) here is how I ranked it....of course this is just for us but ????

1. Occupational Therapist (OT) stuff can over-ride so much....it can really contribute to the anxiety and a large part of what they do in that therapy ends up working/influencing work on tolerance and frustration and anxiety. Regardless of what causes it when they learn those tools it can help with the feeling of anxiety or not being able to sit still or whatever.... from any cause. So even though I am an Speech Language Pathologist (SLP), I admit for these variety kids with behaviors that show a sensory or motor involvement, I would shoot for that as much as possible, they get far less of this in schools than the Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) help.

2. If he has Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) on the IEP, then have a private meeting with the Speech Language Pathologist (SLP), not an IEP meeting so you can go through the evaluation results and ask how the goals can incorporate more of the findings and recommendations for services...they should not be separated so much, it is just harder to word how it is directly related to school stuff but any clinician worth their salt can do that. Then if she feels the goals actually need to be changed to accommodate, have a small IEP meeting and do a significant change form just for those goals/objectives. Does not have to be a big deal.

3. In summer, see if you can do some back to back therapies more intensively to add on the private Speech Language Pathologist (SLP), with the Occupational Therapist (OT) and others. You may be able to hire someone to drive him. for a few of the times to ease your mom's burden (I am in that same boat too..trying not to use her too much).

4. Individual play therapy....I admit is low on my list but we do therapy once every two weeks. Then it is not so intensive. Turns out he really likes her so summer again we may up that.

5. the social skills development, I have found over the years some of it is good, some is just too group oriented. WE had the most success with private pay classes thru the Occupational Therapist (OT) and speech centers that did a dual therapist class for social skills. They taught him things like if you want to throw a ball back and forth...first you call the name, make sure they are looking THEN you can throw TO them etc... those direct teaching details that are lost on some of our kids. We did adaptive art but it was fun to be with the other kids but not really very interactive. So many of the classes sounded great then ended up not being so great and then things I never thought would be so wonderful were amazing (like adapted sports ended up being far more effective for social skills training than formal social skills groups). NO good answer here, just sharing my experience over the years.

Not sure that is very helpful, but it is how I just recently sorted through this...

HUGS and best wishes on this leg of the journey!
 
T

TeDo

Guest
I agree with your priorities. Sensory stuff is such an over-riding issue that it should be at the top of the list. The Social Skills development can be put into the IEP for the school to work on. I would call an IEP meeting to add that as a service and as a Goal area. As Buddy said, that is such a group thing so what better place to do it than in school with other kids difficult child is around most of the time. I also agree with Buddy about talking to the Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) to go over the recommendations and gear their work in the right direction. That could be another Goal area in the IEP. If difficult child is into art, then art therapy might be good but there again, if Occupational Therapist (OT) and Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) and social skills work can cover a lot of it, maybe art therapy won't be as necessary. Anyway, that is just my VERY humble opinion.
 
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