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Welcome to S-O-S Best of the Best (BoB), Edition 9. This month’s topic was provided by Floortime Lite Mama and is on therapy and special needs kids. Over 20 bloggers share their views and feelings on various types of therapies. This diverse group of bloggers reveal their experiences with speech therapy, biomedical treatment, occupational therapy, sensory integration therapy, and more. You will learn how therapists become part of the family, how to evaluate therapies, and how therapy frequency is determined. Lot’s to learn!
Types of Therapies
Adrienne Urban presents Healing Our Son’s Autism–The Best Therapy of All posted at Whole.New.Mom. Adrienne presents the therapies that she has tried for her son with autism. “Some successes. Some ‘failures’.” Find out what she means by “low and slow” and why this may be the “best therapy of all.”
Chrisa Hickey presents Speech Therapy is About More Than Just Speech posted at The Mindstorm. Chrisa summarizes her son’s thirteen years of speech therapy. She went from apprehension over the therapy to crediting “…his speech therapy as an integral component to developing his ability to discuss his symptoms in complex and often abstract detail.”
Daniela Mohr presents Biomedical Treatment is AMAZING! posted at Autism-Natural Mom. Daniela is a firm believer in biomedical therapy but acknowledges it “…is true that it doesn’t work for all kids with ASD but I say it is worth a try…” Read about her son’s progress on day 16 and beyond.
Gavin Bollard presents The Value of Special Needs Therapy posted at Life with Aspergers. We are treated by Gavin who provides his experience with going through speech and occupational therapy as a child. Gavin states, ” I wasn’t diagnosed with aspergers then but simply had a hearing loss (speech therapy) and was somehow recognised as “different” (occupational therapy).” As always, we are fortunate to have Gavin as a BoB member who can offer a different perspective as someone with Asperger’s!
Nancy Konigsberg presents Special Needs: Can They be Cured or Fixed? posted at Milestone Mom. As an occupational therapist, Nancy shares, “I have seen firsthand how often a parent believes that the right medicine or the correct therapy will cure their child.” Nancy presents some common conditions, what kinds of treatment can help, and what parents can expect.
Patty presents Sensory Therapy posted at Pancakes Gone Awry. Patty explains the difference between a sensory diet and sensory integration therapy. If your child sees an OT, Patty encourages you to “Make sure that the therapy goes beyond just simple sensory diet activities.”
Penny Williams presents Creating calm: what our occupational therapist taught us to help with ADHD posted at a mom’s view of ADHD. Penny is a big advocate of occupational therapy, but she shares, “The things Luke learned and accomplished during therapy are great. But the knowledge and tools I gained from the therapist for life outside of that two hours every month are the real treasure.” Discover some of her jewels.
TheFowler4Group presents Which therapy is the right one for your child with autism? posted at Look at My Eyes. TheFowler4Group begins by stating, “While my wife and I have our beliefs and preferences when it comes to treatment, medication, therapy for our 5-year-old son, it might not necessarily be the right one for you and your family.” They went onto present information on early intervention and Applied Behavioral Analysis therapy.
Tiffani Lawton presents Facilitating Progress: Finding the “Right” Therapeutic Mix posted at OUR Journey THRU Autism. Tiffani presents a huge array of information on therapy options and there should be something for everyone. Become familiar with therapy through the arts, energy therapy, color therapy, botany based healing, and more. Tiffani advises, “I think that we need to think outside the box to determine exactly what issues the individual child is facing and develop therapies to meet the child’s individual needs.”
Feelings Toward Therapies & Special Needs
Barbara Boucher presents Arbitrary are us posted at TherExtras. Barbara tackles the question that many parents ask: “Exactly how did they decide she needed 30 minutes-a-week of occupational therapy?” She explains that the decision is not typically dependent on how much therapy a child needs, but rather, is decided based on a number of other factors. Read more to get Barbara’s professional insight.
Beth Rubin-Gabor presents Not in the Same Boat posted at A Little Bloomer. Beth shares what she feels as her friends talk about their kids as they are getting older and gaining new responsibilities. Beth reveals, “I listen to their discussions and feel as though I’m peering in from the outside.”
Caroline McGraw presents Kick-Start Your Creativity: 4 Steps to My Brother’s Beat posted at A wish come clear. “I’m so glad that my brother expresses his creativity through music, as I express mine through words. It makes me feel connected to him, because we are both artists.” Caroline is a beautiful writer and these two sentences give you a glimpse into her post.
D.S. Walker presents Therapy? What Therapy? posted at Delightfully Different Life. D.S. explains that her daughter with Asperger’s did not receive any therapy, because she went undiagnosed for so long. But D.S. recognized her daughter’s struggles and intuitively implemented various things to help her. D.S. believes, “A big part of the problem in our case related directly to the lack of understanding of her sensory challenges.”
Floortime Lite Mama presents What I wish I had known about therapy in the beginning of my Autism Journey? posted at Floortime Lite Mama. Floortime Lite Mama draws upon her five years of autism experience and shares things she wished she had known earlier. She recommends you “Take the advice of experts but remember that you are the expert in your child.” You’ll read other gold nuggets such as ” Your child is still a child, don’t forget to enjoy them.” and “Don’t forget life.”
Kelly Quinones Miller presents Therapy: A Life Line posted at The Miller Mix. Kelly is the only blogger here who addresses therapy for parents. She starts her post with “Anyone who knows me will tell you that I consider therapy and counseling to be right up there with chocolate and wine in terms of must-haves for a parent of a child with ADHD.” Discover how Kelly handled receiving her son’s diagnosis of ADHD.
Lisa Quinones-Fontanez presents The People We’ve Met Along the Way posted at Autism Wonderland. Lisa starts her post with saying, “This last week, I’ve been reminded of how much progress The Boy’s made.” She reminisces about all the teachers, therapists, and aides that have come into their lives and how much progress her son has made with all his various therapies.
Martianne Stanger presents Therapy- What the Kids and I Think posted at Training Happy Hearts. Martianne presents her questions regarding therapy, some of her son’s responses, and what she believes he understands. Questions include, “Does Luke really understand why he goes to OT once a week?,” “Does he understand why a Behavior Monitor and a Behavior Specialist have been coming to our house regularly?,” and more.
Pia presents Therapy Schmerapy posted at The Crack and the Light. Regarding therapies, Pia asks the question, “So how do you weed through all of the options and even have a clue what is ‘right’?” She recently enrolled her son in an ABA-VB (Applied Behavior Analysis-Verbal Behavior) program, “something I would not have normally signed on to.” Read more about her thoughts and how she got to this decision.
Tim Tucker presents There Are No Shortcuts–Ideas for Making Better Therapy Decisions posted at Both Hands and a Flashlight. Tim begins with the premise, “I believe you’ll make better choices about therapies for your child if you grasp where you are emotionally with all this.” After describing his feelings about his son’s diagnosis of autism, this fabulous post offers up things to consider when evaluating therapies. Certainly worth the read.
Trish Doerrler presents Therapy and Special Needs Kids: A Marathon Or a Sprint? posted at In So Many Words. In response to her son’s diagnosis of autism, Trish acknowledges that she “swung daily from feeling that there must be one perfect answer to the question to feeling like I should be hitting every area at once so as not to lose any more precious time.” Trish continues and provides us with what she has learned over the years.
Yuji Fukunaga presents There’s Something About Mary: Great Therapist and Much More posted at Hanabi Boy. Yuji starts out kindly stating, “If I could have one wish for all families who find out that their child has autism, I would wish that they could have a Mary enter their lives.” Mary was a behavior therapist for Yuji’s son and Yuji shares how much Mary grew to mean to his family. I hope Mary gets to read Yuji’s post!
Thank you to all these fabulous bloggers for making this 9th Best of the Best a success. Please leave comments as you read these posts and let the bloggers know you appreciate their hard work. Thanks!
Previous BoB Posts
Anxiety and Stress (Edition 6)
Autism and Treatment Options (Edition 1)
Social & Play Skills (Edition 2)
Disclaimer: Please note, the opinions expressed in each referenced post in S-O-S Best of the Best are entirely that of its author and the inclusion of these posts does not constitute an endorsement by S-O-S Research.
About Danette Schott, M.A.
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