Friday, October 2, 2009

Therapy - a blessing and a curse

Scheduling, at our house, is a crazy crazy ride.

Since mid-June, Acorn has had 5-6 sessions of therapy a week. 2 physical therapy (PT) hours with the fabulous therapist from our insurance, 2 occupational therapy (OT) hours with the less-than-stellar therapist from the insurance, 1 PT session from the school's early intervention (EI) program (30 minutes only), and the same for OT from the school.

Add in 3-5 doctor's visits a month, plus a nap schedule typical of most toddlers, plus nursing, plus mom and dad working and occasionally having lives, and chaos ensues.

Don't get me wrong - any therapy Acorn can get is usually a good thing. He's behind on milestones because of his time in the hospital, and the only way he'll catch up is with this sort of intensive effort.  But still...it runs our lives. Every interaction, there's a voice in the back of my head wondering what his therapists would think of this latest activity.

And now, to add to the insanity, there's "school." Thanks to our pediatrician, Acorn gets all of his EI services at home, as a homebound student. This includes a whole hour every week with an early childhood teacher. Yes, that's twice as much time as the therapists...she's more important than them, as far as the school is concerned.

It seems odd to me (and I'm sure in the coming week's you'll hear more about our IEP/IFSP drama as I stir the pot trying to get something that works better than what we've got) - his two major deficit areas are expressive language and gross motor skills. She's not a speech therapist, and doesn't encourage him to vocalize. Acorn understands more signs than the teacher knows. So it doesn't seem that she's qualified to help on that front. She does a lot of playing with toys, but nothing that the OT hasn't already been doing. So right now, I'm trying to figure out what her purpose is in our lives, and why she's taking up our time. 

She's pushy about things she really has no knowledge of, like how wonderful it would be for us to meet other EI parents, or how Acorn should spend more time in his high chair.

I was ambivalent about eventually sending him to school....now I'm dreading it, and it's still years away. What a terrible way to encourage faith in the system

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