I cannot do enough to sing the praises of occupational therapy. I will admit to having my doubts about it at first, but thought that it was worth trying. Now, about 6 months later, I have seen so many improvements that we are actually going to stop our weekly sessions. My oldest son now eats almost anything we put in front of him. He doesn’t always like it (or at least he says he doesn’t, but I think he does like most of it) but he eats and that is an absolute miracle. We used to only have 2-3 things we could offer him for dinner. He never ate what we were having. It always required the preparation of 2 separate meals. Now we make one meal for the entire family. He can choose to eat it or not, but he understands that the consequence of that is not getting dessert and being hungry until morning. Most nights he eats at least something. He is also better able to dress himself, use utensils, and we have strategies for dealing with other sensory input that can cause distress. It is amazing just how much he’s changed in these few short months.
We have 2 more weeks and then he’ll be released. Should we have more problems in the future, we can go back and resume therapy. I can’t say enough good things about Dymond Speech and Rehab. They also did the physical therapy for my youngest through NC’s Early Intervention program and did a great job there as well. If you have a child who has some sensory processing issues, consider OT. Our insurance actually paid for a rather large chunk of it, so the cost to us was minimal. And it was worth every penny to see my child eating pizza the other night and enjoying it. Or eating PB&J for lunch. Or any number of things that weren’t in his gustatory repertoire before. It’s an amazing change, and I’m incredibly thankful for it.
