Today's Lecture: Attending Therapy Sessions

ATTENDING THERAPY SESSIONS ...
is a MUST for a parent. While its much more pleasant to sit in the waiting room and read a magazine or book, its essential to actually BE IN THE ROOM to fully extract value from therapuetic sessions both at home and at the therapist's. And this is true for your child's therapy no matter what your child's age.

Actually seeing the therapist doing the exercises and stretching helps you to understand exactly what parts of your child's body are involved and the purposes of this work. Over time it helps you to develop an "eye" for how your child should be using her body and the compensations she develops that can hinder progress. By this point in time, I can see ways Gracie is trying to make a workout easier and I can ask the therapist specific questions about the viability of doing it in such a way. Maybe sometimes it doesnt matter. Lots of times it really does.

Being in with the therapist gives you an opportunity to have an expert advising you in real time. When she assigns your homework, you can run through it with her before you leave to be on your own. By "run through it" I mean you can do it in front of her and have her correct you where necessary. Otherwise you can find yourself doing something totally useless for one week and wasting that precious time.

One has to be careful not to take it as an opportunity to chatter away with the only other adult you'll interact with until suppertime. You have to be in there as a student and as the home therapist of your child. Its fine to talk about non-therapy (I find that many therapists end up as "ears" for their patients' parents but they also have lives they like to talk about.) But never take your eyes from the prize. Having a personal relationship with your child's therapist is very handy but not required.

That said, some therapists will not want you in there. You MUST ASK THEM to explain why. We've had two therapists who claimed when I was in there Gracie would misbehave. However, that was more a function of a phase she was in her attitude towards doing therapy than her being with me. For if I could get her to do 1.5 to 3 hours of therapy a day with minor discipline problems, who better to get her moving? Certainly not a therapist who sees her once a week for one hour - fifteen minutes of which was reserved for her "paperwork".

I have ended up with true world-class therapists and none of these have had a problem with my attending the sessions. If your therapist does not want you in there, find out why. If its something you are doing, then change yourself so you are welcome in there. If she just doesnt want you in there or its a reason you do not agree with, CHANGE YOUR THERAPIST.

Lecture for today is over!