What are you investing your energy into? As a caregiver, it becomes a never ending juggling task to make sure that everything is taken care of. This is especially true when your special needs child is low functioning or has many areas of delay. For example, my son is six years old and has multiple diagnoses. He is low functioning. He needs assistance with speech, fine motor skills, large motor skills, life skills, behavior, small and large tasks, dressing, bathing and more. It is easy, especially when first diagnosed, to get overwhelmed as a caregiver. You want your child to have every chance to be successful.
The fact is, you can’t do it all, all at the same time. I know this because I tried. I thought, if therapy helps, more is better. Four sessions a week on top of half day special needs pre-K, plus the school therapy seemed ideal. I signed us up and away we went.
It started out OK at first, because everything and everyone was new. Then, when the honeymoon period was over, my son started to rebel. He didn’t want to work in therapy. He stopped wanting to do activities at school. He just DIDN’T WANT TO DO IT. It was too much.
Sometimes, you just want to be left alone. I mean, don’t you?
In my quest for giving my child EVERY OPPORTUNITY, I was actually taking some of his opportunity away. I also learned that advances in different educational areas usually happen at different times. In other words, right now, my son is starting to talk. It is still very limited, but this is the area in which he is growing. When I see growth in speech, usually other areas, such as Occupational Therapy (working on fine motor skills) seem to stagnate. Then, speech will start to stagnate but he may do something new on the Physical Therapy end of things such as jumping with two feet off the ground or catching a ball with assistance for the first time.
I have learned blitzing might work in football but it rarely works with my son. So, what works? How can you support your special needs child in multiple growth areas without blitzing them?
- Take a deep breath. It is a long road and like in a marathon, if you sprint you will run out of energy and we are just getting started.
- Choose one or two areas where your child might be making advances. This does not mean that you are ignoring other things that need to be worked on, but your main focus at home or if you get therapy outside of school can be to have extra support where advances are being made.
- Cycle in and out of therapy. By all means, keep going if it’s working!Not working? Scrap it for a while. Choose to take off a therapy cycle (the therapist may have 4 or 6 or 8 week cycles) and come back to it if your child stagnates for longer than a couple of weeks.
- Use your child as a guide. If you see that they were talking more and you were supporting them with speech but suddenly they are stagnating in this area, where do they seem to be improving? Be flexible. Let your child’s changes guide you.
- There is no one tried and true way to improvement in any area of deficit. What works for one child may not work for another. I know this because in the Physical Therapy room my child was melting down while other kids were happily working away with their therapists in the same room. Doing the same thing. However, my son would happily ride the therapy bike all around the halls and would often pass a child who was sitting on his bike, refusing to do anything. Don’t compare your child to anyone else’s child. Compare your child to where they were a day ago, a week ago, a year ago.
- Ask for help. If your child is under age three, ask for help through Early Childhood Intervention. Older? PPCD. Older still? The diagnostician at the elementary school. Or your case manager at therapy. These people can help make a plan for improvement in all areas. Make sure you agree with their ideas. It is always OK to ask for alternatives when something doesn’t feel right.
- Know that advancement is a pendulum process. Your child may take two steps forward and then one step back. This is actually the norm in typical kids as well.
- You are OK. Your child is OK. Truly. Believe it. Try to settle down into the idea of you both being OK. Because you are. Things may not be what you envisioned and you may be overwhelmed and confused right now, but you are still OK. And it gets better. It does.
In what ways do you support your special needs child’s growth outside of school? How do you keep from overwhelming them? Please let us know in the comments below.