Done with Therapy!What now?

[Terris5]

m&m's mom
How complete did your child "recover" and what kind of problems do you see now? Thank you for your reply and information. That is exactly what my gut is saying. Take care. Terri

[Terris5]

Hope 16-5
Thank you and good luck! I hope you have alot of support for what you're going through now.

[admin]

I just wanted to add our experience...my child is 4.5 and for the most part only those with a trained eye can tell my daughter has limitations. We still continue OT once a week, just recently dropped to PT 2x per week (are considering bumping it back up to 1x per week) and she has regular swimming lessons once per week.

Her range is great, nearly full extension in all areas. However she gets pretty tight, pretty quickly (thus the consideration to bump back up on the PT) and falls into bad habits when she's tight and then the disparity between her active extension and passive is pretty high.

We recently had her Aqua therapist go to one of her swimming classes and give suggestions to her swim teacher, as well as to my daughter, on how to stop compensating and get more out of swim class. Her compensation got particulary noticeable in the swimming pool, swimming on her back she'd only move one arm, swimming forward she wouldn't extend her arm's out equally (even though she has the range passively), getting out of the pool she'd always compensate and favor her unaffected side, etc. Her therapist gave simple suggestions, easy for all the kids to do, and I think really helped out.

She is in such a different place now with therapy than she was at 18 months. At 18 months it was hard and mostly passive. In OT we taught her to do things to be self-sufficient. It was all appropriate and she did quite well and even at that age a lot of people had a hard time understanding why we had to even go to 2 different therapists.

Now at 4.5 years we are at a whole new level of awareness. Something recently clicked with my daughter, she gets what therapy is all about and she looks forward to it, gives FEEDBACK on it, and really approaches it as something that will help her be more successful in whatever she does. We are really working hard on the compensation issues and she really gets it. She's been practicing her new techniques without any prompting. In OT the therapist can verbally cue her to help her get more range and it really works! It has just been a recent change, and who knows if it's temporary or lasting...but we'll jump on it and go on this ride as long as we can.

I'm really grateful that we had therapists who despite their loaded schedule of more severely impaired children, have been able to keep her on their roster and help her get to this point and beyond. It's AMAZING to see her work in therapy, and work so willingly, and then to see her want to practice at home...

So my point is, if you can keep your therapists formally on board as part of the team...either with monthly check-ins or whatever...please do. If you need to jump back into it, it will make it easier. If you don't have to jump back into it, you're getting reinforcement and possibly a few pointers to help keep your direction going in the right path.

A step-down approach from therapy makes a lot of sense to me. So if you're going 2x week, step-down to 1x per week and see if your child can still keep up. Then switch to every other week, then to once a month...At each change making sure that your child is doing okay with the change.

We're slowly doing the step-down thing with our therapy. We dropped Aqua therapy almost a year ago, as I mentioned we dropped PT to every other week. But, it amazes me how affected she can be when we go on vacation in miss therapy. On a bright note, she just got evaluated for gross motor skills at preschool, and was one of the only kids to rate excellent in all areas - so you could say she's on par with the other kids. However, I know she's on par because she works much harder than the other kids to get to that place. That being said though, our goal has always been to be as aggressive as we can early on...so that by the time she's in school where kids start noticing these things...she's not doing a bunch of formal therapy and is using swimming, ballet or other activities as her therapy..., which is also I think why we're so focused on compensation and strength (since luckily she has the range).

Sometimes I think (although I'm not implying this in your case because I have no idea of the circumstances....) that therapists graduate kids a bit early because the sessions get tough and it doesn't seem like the kids get as much out of it, or the kids plateau and it's mistaken for "this is as much as they're going to get" or they're in a public forum with a backlog of kids and need to show "success" for funding purposes. (I'm a cynic though).

Just my two, okay maybe one cent worth..Sorry for the ramble.

[Terris5]

Thank you for your reply! You put some of my fears into words perfectly. I do think that your reasons that therapy are discontinued are pretty close to accurate in our case although our PT is very willing to step back in if needed. The reasons for discontinuing therapy being that she is on target what happens in 6 months when she is no longer showing that she is on target?? Are you from the US? What state? I am looking for aqua therapy in IN

[admin]

I'm in the US, but don't know any aqua therapy facilities in IN. I once saw a posting on this website that was a link to AT facilities, but can't find it. Maybe I'm not remembering it correctly, but perhaps you could post separately with an Aqua Therapy heading to see if someone else knows what website is.

[admin]

bumping this up