Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Balking against therapy

He had been doing this new treatment every morning and every evening. It had been producing mild improvements, or at least we think. It seems that he is a constant improvement in motion. Words he can not say today will be uttered tomorrow and things he can not do today will be done with ease in the near future.

Giving that I was unimpressed with the treatment, the therapist suggest to mix it up a little bit, intensify it a tad. So with all the instructions in hand this is exactly what I do. The rule is; It should last at least 20 minutes no matter what.

After his evening bath I thought would be a good time. Hopefully this will relax him and he will have a better sleep, and in turn so will I. The start was easy enough, six whole minutes he participated and then excitedly announced to all, waving his hands as a sign "All done! All done!"

I try to persuade extra minutes from him "Just a little bit more?" with terrible results. The situation was escalating and my commitment of 20 minutes was losing ground. His nervous struggling to get away was going to quickly become dangerous to me. The visions of a very short person climbing up my body, grabbing each ear and headbutting me into unconsciousness did not seem so far fetched.

I relent, I let it go. 10 minutes in and I cave. I let him run and hide in his bed and meet him in there with his choice of sour candy or a fruit leather, and a drink because these treatments always get his jaws working. It makes no sense to me that this should make his mouth react in this way, but there is so much I don't understand about my little guy just yet.

He chews through the fruit leather quickly, drinks his juice, and is out like a light in a matter of moments. I gather up my CD player and Godly awful expensive headphones, knowing that for now he is not quite ready for Mozart.

6 comments:

Suzy said...

Hey, at least you got through the 10 minutes. Maybe a minute or 2 more each night.
Every kid is different right? Connor will get there....maybe at his own pace.
I think Mozart has to wait also. At some point, he'll want heavy metal.......

Love you
Suzy

Casdok said...

As you say there is so much to understand and for them to teach us!

She's like the wind said...

Surely 10 minutes is better, with any child once they get fed up or frustrated you don't get anywhere by continuing. I think you obviously do a great job. x

Jeni said...

Gotta agree with all the rest here. When they do physical therapy on people, they don't start you out at the highest therapy level or time so why expect a 3-year-old to be able to deal with 20 minutes of this right off the top? I'd go with working up to it gradually but also, inching up as quickly as possible all the same. He has to adapt to it all in the first place and that isn't going to happen in one session!

dgibbs said...

He has been doing music therapy for a few weeks now and loves his easy listening CD. Mozart has a lot more complicated pitches and more strings and he was just done with it after the first song. Has to be some in between music but OT hasn't told us what that is. Think she had us jump ahead of ourselves.

Anonymous said...

We're had very mixed results with music therapy over the years. I'm still very much in two minds.
Best wishes