a little vent

Rarely do I find myself extremely angry, but when it comes to my kids it is more likely to happen. If you are a mom you know what I mean. I'm not talking about getting angry AT my kids, but in relation to someone else involved in their lives. In this case I'm talking about our most recent speech therapist (SLP). If you have followed our blog at all, you know that Lewis is basically nonverbal. He has no words, and only a few sounds. Since we started with Kentucky's early intervention program last year, Lewis has fewer sounds, but we are starting to recover some of them.

You may find it hard to believe that indeed we have had speech therapy consistently over the last 14 months. You'd think we'd be making more progress, right? Well, yesterday at the end our speech therapy session we were informed that it would be the last with this SLP. We had already started the process to find someone new, but this guy, we'll call him Ed, took it upon himself to voice his irritation with us, and me in particular, for questioning his techniques and "yelling" at him during last week's session.

He thought he was making great progress with Lewis, but that in 21 years of experience had never had a parent yell at him before. Let me explain the scenario: Last week, Ed was working with Lewis and getting him to identify body parts on a picture of a baby in a book he had. He was then trying to get Lewis to touch his own nose or whatever it was. He'd say, "Touch YOUR nose!" very loudly, but Lewis was focused on the book and seemed to not even register was Ed was saying. After this went on for several minutes (and we only have 45), I said rather loudly, "Try taking the book away so that he can't get to it and ask him again."

Ed seemed irritated by my suggestion, but he did it and it worked at least once (though he said yesterday it didn't work at all). But yesterday he said I yelled at him, and that we didn't seem to have confidence in what he was doing with our son. Well, gee, why would we not have confidence in his techniques?! He's only been getting paid $80/hr. to play with our child without figuring out a way to encourage him to produce a single new sound....or even to more commonly use the few he has. He finished his mini lecture with something about how after his 21 years of experience in working with kids that of course he is an expert on what kids like and need and that he knows what he is doing yadda yadda yadda.

Funny, because a month or so ago I took one of the many toys Ed brought....with Lewis squealing....and said, "Do you want it back? Say 'guh guh.'" Lewis responded, "Guh guh!" and Ed said, "Let me try that." He then repeated the exercise and Lewis vocalized again. When I, a lowly uneducated parent, have to show my SLP how to get my child to make sounds, it's disappointing to say the least. But there again is the factor in regard to autism--I know my own child. Autistic kids learn differently, and not just from normal kids, but from other autistic kids too. There are ways to teach them that tend to work, but a parent's knowledge should be used and abused to make the most of whatever techniques are tried.

One last irritation with Ed. A few months ago, when it was becoming obvious that Lewis had a bigger problem, I asked Ed about techniques with autistic kids, and if we got such a diagnosis would he do therapy differently. He said no, that he would do exactly the same thing, and almost belittled our desire for a diagnosis saying that parents just want something to hang their hat on for blame or whatever. The one bright spot in getting a diagnosis, in Ed's opinion, was that we would qualify for more services so that professionals could help our child more.

I said, "Well, isn't the point of First Steps to train parents so that we can figure out ways to teach our kids when the therapists aren't here?" He said it was partly, but that in his experience that parents don't have time or the expertise to worry about such things, and that we really needed to get more therapy time in order to make a difference. To which I said, "I am here, and I have the time and would love for you to show me things I can do when you're not here." But Ed had nothing to offer.

Other parents have laughed with me about the worthlessness of SLPs with autistic kids. I'd say there are really good ones out there who do more than blow bubbles and yell "Pop!" but they are few and far between. We picked a new one today, and we haven't met her yet, but I hope and pray that she is good enough to pick up on Lewis' interests or at least listen to us when we try and help. But I will also do my best not to 'yell' at her either. I certainly did not love Ed's practices but I did not mean to offend him or hurt his ego. Experience is best utilized when the one using it is willing to adapt to the situation at hand. Hopefully we'll all learn something from this somehow.