Autism Awareness

Last week there were noticeably many spots on NBC news about ADHD/ADD , Autism spectrum disorders and learning disabilities. I always find it interesting watching these spots as the reporters turn to the medical doctors for information regarding these diagnosis'. Of course that's where we all look as parents. But I have to say that I am always disappointed to see nothing on the therapies that are most effective for our kids. Occupational, speech and physical therapists are highly under rated in our media. In fact therapists are the professionals who understand the inner workings of many diagnosis' , not just the symptoms. I would love to see the media focus on therapists. We dedicate our lives to making changes in other peoples' lives, not with quick fixes but with ongoing training and education to find one more thing that can make life better for our clients. There is so much technology out there and yet the area in which we need the most education is not being highlighted!

Speak out about your therapists - they are special people in your families lives!

As many of our clients already know, we focus our therapy on using evidenced-based, neurological programs during intensive therapy that make changes efficiently and effectively. This means that our clients come often for "boot camp" to do programs such as Interactive Metronome, The Sensory Learning Program and or therapies 3-4 times a week for short periods of time. This sounds like alot and it is. The parents work hard, the kids work hard and so do the therapists. But it is days like yesterday that make it all worth it.

We have a young man who was first tested in December of 2009, just 3 months ago. His scores were very low in areas of Visual perception, motor planning ... everything related to mild Autism Spectrum Disorders. He has wonderful parents who have devoted their time and efforts to making learning easier for him and the payoff is showing!

We re tested him last week using another test so as to maintain validity and he has shown an improvement of ONE FULL standard deviation in visual perceptual skills! And it is showing in everything he does. The teacher has made comments at school like " he is more organized, getting his tools together before going to lunch , whereas before everything was haphazard". His handwriting is improving and he has commented that it is easier (we have not worked on any handwriting!).

I can go on and on, there are improvements daily both from mom, the teacher and the child. Whenever I doubt myself or the process, I just need one little guy like this to remind me that what we do here is nothing short of amazing. That the team of therapists participating in this process are wonderful and the parents who hand their children over to us are trusting that this is the right thing to do. But when I put my head down at night, my thoughts are mostly about my little people who sacrifice their afternoons to come play with us, whose lives we are influencing and who I hope will look back one day and say " gee I can't remember what that crazy lady's name was , she had a funny accent and made me do silly things, but we had alot of fun together and even though I spent alot of time at therapy, look where I am today!".

This is when I cry happy tears because we became therapists in order to change lives and that is what we do during intensive therapy programs. For that, I am grateful!

You tube

We are excited to upload our first video to youtube. It has definitely been interesting working out how to use all the cool software out there. The great thing about video is we can watch children blossom from the time they come in until they leave with a whole new set of skills to go home and practice with. This particular little sweet heart is a little girl named Emma, with a benign brain tumor in her hypothalamus. She is blind and very brave! It is incredible to see the spunk and life in this little girl and her family. Mom is an amazing person who is upbeat and embraces every opportunity to live life to the fullest. I am always inspired by families like these. It makes my job so worthwhile. This is when the passion for what we do takes over - it is not a job it is a love and that is why we do it!
These are my thoughts on just one of our brave little girls who lights up the room with her presence!

Summer

Blogging is definitely new to me, so I have to practice this, the more you blog , the easier is gets - so I hear. We are on our way to California - driving across country in an RV with three children and a 3G card. Thank heavens for 3G! It is amazing how much thinking you can do whilst driving. I have written a column for Around Town Publishing on sensory integration which will be published in July - look out for it. As I wrote, I was trying to condense the amount of information I am trying to convey into 400 words. We have so much information out there now that it is definitely challenging imparting such important information, but that's OK because I have another 5 columns to go! I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak out on important issues related to Autism, Sensory Integration and Learning Disabilities. I truly believe that the more we learn, the more we can help families figure out how to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.
Yesterday whilst packing, I was watching Oprah with one eye. I had to put all my packing on hold when I watched a little boy who was not supposed to live, walk out on stage and explain to Oprah how many pairs of legs he had. After him came the little girl with Mermaid syndrome and after her, the young boy who watched his mother drown as Hurricane Katrina violently shook up his life. As the river of tears streamed down my face ( and Oprah's and Celine Dion's'), I reassured once again why I became an occupational therapist and opened my own practise - to make as many changes as I could and help as many families as I can live healthy, successful lives! The more I watched, the more ideas came to me - having non-profit organizations to fund therapies, working with families from rural areas, low income and overseas countries that don't have this technology. Then there is the intensive programming that we can do for those families who can afford premium therapy - helping them access resources that can improve their families lives and help others too.

So many ideas, but it takes a village and I am grateful to all the therapists at Children's Therapy Works who put their heart and soul into every child they work with.

I look forward to great things in the future!
Shelley

Social Skills groups

Children's Therapy Works is very excited to announce our Social Skills Programs. These are comprehensive programs that are interactive and encourage children to participate in typical activities such as going to the grocery store and asking for an item, ordering from a restaurant or just playing with a friend.

For more information call: 770-754-0085

How time flies

I am amazed at how quickly time flies, learning to blog has taken on a whole new meaning for me. When I first started "blogging" I figured that it had to be educational in nature, then realized that it has to be interesting. Well here we go. This morning on the NBC's Today Show with Matt Lauer, there was a segment on how furniture can hurt our children. As many as 15 000 children get hurt every year. I found that quite amazing that there was an entire segment on this information. It is very important to know, and as parents we have all had that happen in some where in the house. But did you know that 15% of children under the age of 18 have some kind of learning disability. Many of them un diagnosed; leaving parents and children at a loss of how to be most successful in learning. We don't hear alot about this information and yet it is affecting so many families that the numbers are frightening.

There are so many programs available to us today that can truly improve children and teenagers learning ability. I am often as frustrated as parents get when we can see that a child has excellent potential but needs a slightly different way of absorbing the information. Computer technology can be very useful too, we see many new programs flooding the market but how do you know what to look for in a program? Lets have that discussion tomorrow.

Have a great day :)

Early diagnosis - what do I do?

If I had one wish as a therapist and practice owner, it would be that parents with newly diagnosed children knew where to go first. When we are concerned about our children, we typically go to the pediatrician first. If the Dr is well informed, he or she may refer the child to some type of child specialist such as a Developmental pediatrician or a psychologist or even neurologist depending on the issue. As parents, we come home and read everything and anything we can on the Internet about the behaviours we are seeing in our child and then talk to those people we trust or know, searching for opinions and insight into whether there is a problem or what the problem may be.

Once at the specialist, we expectantly sit down waiting to hear some type of revelation about why we are seeing these issues in this little being that we created. Voila! Your child is ...... regardless of what we are told, many times we hear or don't hear up to 60% of what the specialist has said. We may hear the "Autism, ADHD, Learning Disabled, Asbergers Syndrome .."By the time we get home we have only retained 15% of that 60%. Hence a mumble jumble of words float around our brains and merge into some type of garbled output when trying to talk to all of those beloved people whose opinions we asked for initially. Many times the "diagnosis" is such a shock that the emotional side of the brain goes into fight/flight/fright - a natural, normal, healthy place to be. The hard part of this is that we still have to function "normally", but don't have any strategies to work with. The specialist usually provides a list of services and places to go and a couple of recommendations that may or may not make sense. Another issue that we deal with is having to move "quickly" through the system of health care and services related to a specific diagnosis. Except that my child is not a diagnosis. He is a living, breathing, acting out little being who shows some quirky stuff that doesn't look quite right or like his peers.
What the specialist does not usually talk about is how to cope with all of this. Receiving a diagnosis of any kind is tough. We go through a range of emotions and thoughts : "what did I do to make my child like this?", "is this my fault or my spouse's fault" " oh, he will just grow out of this!". Denial, guilt, fear and hurt are only a few of the emotions that rally through our heads in a tornado type fashion... but where to go from here?

With so many programs available today, how do you know which one is right for your child? I hope through this blog, that I can talk about the many areas to look at and consider when building your child's team. You are their advocate, their team leader and the head of their campaign.
Therapists are definitely under rated! What I mean by that is when there is a strong team of occupational, speech and physical therapists involved in your campaign, that is where you will see the most bank for your buck.
Let's take a little step back. There are really only 3 areas red flagging us that something may be "out of sync". Motor delays, speech difficulties or social/behavioural difficulties. Those are the indicators that something is different. Well, child development is a layered process. One layer is dependent on all the others to develop fully.

Motor skills are learned. They occur in a hierarchical fashion starting with reflexes like we see in tiny infants and move up the developmental ladder of "milestones". Speech development is dependant on how well motor skills have developed resulting in sequencing sounds, then words, sentences and conversations. Social, behavioural and emotional development are intricate layers that rely on both motor and language development. My point here is that by the time parents notice red flags, there are layers of areas that could be addressed to improve those issues we are seeing and they all have to be addressed at some point. These areas function as a whole, not independently.

The latest research shows that cognitive development is dependant on social and emotional IQ and taking that a step further by incorporating play through motor and language skills is critical in developing these higher level skills.

So we come back to the original question: where do I start. Start with your therapists that use a holistic, combined approach at looking at the brain and body after looking at your child and their needs. This will provide the necessary opportunities to help you the parent and your child develop and work through the areas needed to develop a well rounded child. This of course builds our confidence in our parenting skills and allows us to be parents!

The therapist is the single best person who will be strong force in facilitating weekly changes. These changes are generally slow and small resulting in a combination of improvements. Another critical reason why you have to be a strong part of the your child's team. Step-by-step functional changes are made that affect daily living skills, communication, social development and learning skills relating to cognitive development.

Medications are quick fixes and sometimes they are very effective, however neurological development is dependant on strengthening brain function which is the super computer of a person. Without a duel-core processor, the right and left sides of the brain can't function well together. A therapy team will work on getting those skills to function well. That is key to making life long changes.

Feel free to call us or email with any questions regarding this topic. We are happy to help you through this journey!

Shelley