Well, I did it. I took the leap into a therapy-free world for my son. Outside of school, that is. Sam's independent speech therapist "graduated" him last November. She said that he was successfully learning his verb tenses and making inferences from story illustrations and that he was picking up verbal cues from other people, and so no longer needed to see her. He still gets speech therapy in school, mostly practice in conversation.
I also pulled him out of his social skills group. Our last meeting was last Thursday at a bouncy place. It was meeting once a week at different venues. The kids would bowl, ice skate, or whatever, then sit down in a circle, play games, practice turn-taking and what have you. The group meeting time was a pain in the rear end, meeting from 3:45-5:45, putting us in a time crunch for dinner and bed, not to mention rush hour traffic, but I'd mainly been feeling resentful of the group for some time, which I think was a signal from the subconscious that we were ready to be done. When you are no longer grateful to a therapist for providing effective services your child desperately needs.....well, perhaps your child no longer desperately needs them. Sam is socially successful at school. Most telling: When I told him we were quitting the group and I asked him how he felt about it, he answered, "Happy. We get to go on our own!" Sam's a fairly outgoing child, so that was interesting coming from him. Maybe he didn't think he needed it either.
With social skills, we are done. Sam gets speech therapy for conversation and occupational therapy for fine motor skills at school, but that's it. I think he enjoys the pull outs for their own sake and to get a break from class.
No comments:
Post a Comment