With the treatment jungle out there, it is hard to know what advice to take; what advice is useful and what advice is detrimental to your child's development. Everyone is an expert in their own field but not each others. Through conversations with other Special Needs mums and dads, I have found that many therapists heavily promote their own field of expertise, criticizing other therapies, even telling parents that other therapies are not necessary. Or the one that really infuriates me - diagnosing a child with something e.g. ADD, ASD or ADHD without going through the correct testing process, for example watching a child for 20 minutes and deciding they are ASD (this actually happened by the way). One parent even confided in me that her child was diagnosed with ASD by a well known psychologist/psychotherapist, who told her not to send her child to any therapies until he was 8 years old (but obviously to come to her once a week). Oh my God! I really wanted to go to this psychologist's office, turn into a banshee so that I could scream at her
HOW DARE YOU!!!
How dare you diagnose something you are not an expert in and not refer the child to someone who is! How dare you tell a mother not to take her child to therapy so that you can line your own pocket! How dare you delay the correct therapy and not allow a child to reach his full potential because you think you know everything, taking advantage of parents that are trying to process the news you have just broken to them!
Taking a short course in ASD (autism spectrum disorder) or ABA therapy (applied behaviour analysis) does not make you an expert. I mean does doing a first aid course qualify someone to work as a doctor in a hospital? Of course not! So parents please, if you want to truly diagnose your child, go to someone who specializes in Developmental and Behavior Pediatrics.
I admit, I am lucky. We have managed to find therapists who have gone out of their way to help our child, but more than that, they have been willing to work with the other therapists to help my son generalize his skills (as ASD children tend to acquire a skill with one therapist but do not know how to transfer that skill to other parts of their lives like school, home etc...). And this is thanks to our Developmental specialist who recommended we have a communication book that we pass around all our therapists and teachers (both in the morning at school and in the afternoon at his private therapies), Each person involved in his development has to write what they have done with him that lesson, his behaviour, the outcome, goals, etc... Then everyone else can read what he has been working on, adapt it and consolidate it in their lesson.
It has worked beautifully, allowing my son to feel confident and progress in leaps and bounds.
In October 2013, I attended an extremely interesting seminar about bridging the gap between ABA and Speech/Language therapy. She explained the main misconceptions these therapists have about each other and then the strengths and limitations of each. What I understood was that these 2 therapies were like pieces of a puzzle. The Language therapy part of the puzzle understood the anatomy/physiology of speech production, the challenges of motor speech disorders and the components of language, whereas the ABA therapy part of the puzzle had formal training in behaviour management strategies, specialized in autism and had expertise in instructional design. When these two pieces of the puzzle join together, learning and collaborating with each other, the benefits for the child are immense. In the UK and USA there are schools that incorporate all therapies under one roof on a daily basis, because they recognise that one therapy does not hold all the answers. But here....
So to all the therapists out there, please recognise your limitations (we won't judge you on them), leave your misconceptions at the door, and find your therapist unity...for all our children's sakes.
