[Lylac]

like they are better at giving your kids therapy, than their real therapist?

L has been in PT, OT & ST since she was 6 months old. She'll be 6 in December. Every week I take her to therapy and every week I have to tell the therapist what works for her. Like her ST will ask her questions, but word it differently that we do at home.

Like she showed her a picture of a little girl with gloves on. She asked L, why does the girl have on "mittens"? L just gets a blank look on her face. Then I told the therapist to use gloves instead of mittens.

L then told her because it's cold, gloves keep your hands warm.

I find myself repeatedly having to give the therapist the "right" words to use to get her questions answered.

The bad thing is, if I'm not there to do this, and she tests her. L get's a low score.

Another thing that burns me up about testing is. L's vision is way off. If you showed her something in a book, she may not be able to tell you what it is, but if you showed her the real thing. Bingo, she knows everytime. But they don't account for her vision loss.

I'm done ranting now.

I just wondered if there were more parents feeling the same way.

[SuzBerg]

I feel this way too Lylac! E has actually tested out of speech with our private therapist. Our therapist actually told me I could do better at home with her then she would in therapy. There are cards, games etc she suggested, so we have just been working at home. And according to the tests E is "average" for her age. (although I feel she is still behind her peers - but that's okay

We also had to quit going to PT since E's health has been such a concern since last winter. Doing 45 mnutes of intense physical/therapy activity was not helping her heart much!

I guess what I'm saying is maybe you could just work with L at home - maybe just take a break for a month - and see how she does. Maybe talk to your pediatrician about it. Our pediatrician is the one that told us to do that. Best Wishes - Suz

[tlmerrie]

Sounds like a bad fit. At least it's not harming her. Although I'm sure you're sick of the drive.

Amy

[Lylac]

The drive isn't bad, we just switched from Dyersburg to Jackson.

[Barksum]

Had a wonderful long and interesting post all typed in. Ds (2) came and deleted it by wapping on my keyboard with whatever was in his hand. (I was seeing red at the time, so didn't note WHAT it was he was banging with.) Sigh.

So, here's my perspective: therapists should save us all time, effort and money by training the majority of the parents to do the therapies with their own children. The therapist should be a guide, helping the parents determine what needs to be done and when that would be best to do. In my (limited) experience this is pretty much what we were doing, anyway. Did the once a week visits with the speech therapist REALLY train my Ds? Or was it the daily interaction with me? What about the other Ds who had sensory issues? Was it the consults with the OT that made the difference? Or was it the way that we applied what the OT trained us to do?

I know this would not work all of the time across the board, but I do believe that for the majority of families, most of the time, this would be very effective. There would be times where consults with the therapist would have to be stepped up, but for most of us, most of the time, having periodic check in's would be a better use of time vs. packing children up several times a week/month and dragging them hither and yon.

I stated it better in the first post, but I think you can get the idea from this one.

[Lylac]

I totally agree Barki.. I got so frustrated with L's first set of therapist from EI. Every week they'd tell me "keep doing what your doing". Not that I needed them to tell me to. They came a total of 12 hours a month, and the Ins was paying them over $2000... for really a few words.

Now I'm not downing therapist, but when it comes to a point where the child isn't/hasn't made any attempt at just a lil bit of progress. After awhile, it's time to move on to different things.

Thats why I pulled L from OT & PT w/EI, and started taking her to a private clinic. Although she did stay in EI for speech until she aged out. Then started the clinic for speech too.

[Matushka]

First, I'll start by saying that I'm a speech therapist. I have 2 kids that receive speech, OT and PT. I agree that therapy, at least with little ones, should be very family focused. The parents need to be taught how to be their child's therapist. On the other hand, I have worked with hundreds of kids/families in the past 20 yrs and I have to say the majority of parents want the therapist to fix the kid. They don't want to participate in therapy, don't do what is recommended, don't practice the homework, etc. The reality is that therapists stop expecting the follow through. I can usually tell which families work with their kids, they're the ones that make progress. I have gotten in the habit of telling parents bluntly, up front, that a session or 2 per week will not correct the problem. Even so, many will initially agree to do the homework but most don't follow through for long. When I was working with EI, the mom's acted as if I was there to give them a break. They'd always find something to do while I worked with the child. With in the office kids, we have parents drop the child at the door and go run errands. When invited to sit in the session or observe through the observation window, most decline. Then the homework book never comes back, gets lost or mutilated. I wish all parents had your attitude toward therapy. Kids would make much more progress in a shorter amount of time.