Has therapy actually helped anyone’s child with asd?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DC went to a weekly social skills group from 4th grade to 11th. The person running it also did a parent group once a month or so. It really helped him. At first it was the only place where he met with people who were happy to see him. Then as they aged they talked about the issues they faced and how to deal with them. When he went to college he came back and said he was glad he had had that group because he knew what to do and he saw other kids like him floundering. The monthly parent group helped immensely too it was nice to have someone to talk through issue and work out solutions. Plus having someone be able to say ‘concentrate on x and don’t worry about y that will come eventually’ was very helpful.

DC is now living in their own apartment and working at a job he has had for 4+ years and had had promotions. He still needs to work on developing a little more on the social front, but he is in good shape.

Would you mind saying which social skills curriculum they used and which practice it was through?
I am looking at PEERs and Social thinking, but it's hard to decide with my child still in early elementary.

I can’t remember. It was at Improving Outcomes in Falls Church.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nothing helped without the right meds.

With meds, PEERs and family therapy have helped. Individual talk therapy/CBT was useless.

What meds?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. Parenting therapy worked wonders. Therapies that work on actual skills (like OT) were beneficial. 1:1 coaching in sports and tutoring were great. Money for travel. Talk therapy was pretty pointless. I don’t think much of “social skills” therapy but at least a therapy group would be beneficial for interaction with other kids.

Basically - any therapy or tutoring/coaching that actually teaches a life skill, a fun activity, or provides opportunity to socialize is beneficial. 1:1 talk therapy is not.

Caveats: we never did speech therapy except in school. I can see private speech therapy being beneficial in some cases - but see above, that qualifies for “actually teaching stuff.” And the school social worker hours were beneficial as well. Not because of anything she could teach him but to have a trusted adult to decompress with if anything happened at school.

I truly do not believe any psychotherapy worked unless the person chooses it at can put in the work. That generally will only be for an older child. I guess I can see some forms of anxiety/phobia/ocd therapy working with a child old enough to understand the techniques and be motivated to do them?

"Talk therapy" can and often does work on specific skills!

Not in my experience. CBT does but that’s not “talk therapy.” And 7 year olds are too young to have their own goals to work towards anyway - they very rarely have any insight into challenges.

[Anonymous]

CBT did not help for our age 8-12 child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:CBT did not help for our age 8-12 child.

did anything help?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. Parenting therapy worked wonders. Therapies that work on actual skills (like OT) were beneficial. 1:1 coaching in sports and tutoring were great. Money for travel. Talk therapy was pretty pointless. I don’t think much of “social skills” therapy but at least a therapy group would be beneficial for interaction with other kids.

Basically - any therapy or tutoring/coaching that actually teaches a life skill, a fun activity, or provides opportunity to socialize is beneficial. 1:1 talk therapy is not.

Caveats: we never did speech therapy except in school. I can see private speech therapy being beneficial in some cases - but see above, that qualifies for “actually teaching stuff.” And the school social worker hours were beneficial as well. Not because of anything she could teach him but to have a trusted adult to decompress with if anything happened at school.

I truly do not believe any psychotherapy worked unless the person chooses it at can put in the work. That generally will only be for an older child. I guess I can see some forms of anxiety/phobia/ocd therapy working with a child old enough to understand the techniques and be motivated to do them?

"Talk therapy" can and often does work on specific skills!

Not in my experience. CBT does but that’s not “talk therapy.” And 7 year olds are too young to have their own goals to work towards anyway - they very rarely have any insight into challenges.

"Talk therapy" is a broad category of psychotherapy, which includes CBT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CBT did not help for our age 8-12 child.

did anything help?

Not yet. We're trying DBT now. We are considering therapeutic programs but we're wary of the therapeutic camp/school-industrial complex.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nothing helped without the right meds.

With meds, PEERs and family therapy have helped. Individual talk therapy/CBT was useless.

What meds?

Abilify and Zoloft (and stopping stimulant meds) were the magic combination, but of course everyone is different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. Parenting therapy worked wonders. Therapies that work on actual skills (like OT) were beneficial. 1:1 coaching in sports and tutoring were great. Money for travel. Talk therapy was pretty pointless. I don’t think much of “social skills” therapy but at least a therapy group would be beneficial for interaction with other kids.

Basically - any therapy or tutoring/coaching that actually teaches a life skill, a fun activity, or provides opportunity to socialize is beneficial. 1:1 talk therapy is not.

Caveats: we never did speech therapy except in school. I can see private speech therapy being beneficial in some cases - but see above, that qualifies for “actually teaching stuff.” And the school social worker hours were beneficial as well. Not because of anything she could teach him but to have a trusted adult to decompress with if anything happened at school.

I truly do not believe any psychotherapy worked unless the person chooses it at can put in the work. That generally will only be for an older child. I guess I can see some forms of anxiety/phobia/ocd therapy working with a child old enough to understand the techniques and be motivated to do them?

"Talk therapy" can and often does work on specific skills!

Not in my experience. CBT does but that’s not “talk therapy.” And 7 year olds are too young to have their own goals to work towards anyway - they very rarely have any insight into challenges.

"Talk therapy" is a broad category of psychotherapy, which includes CBT.

Not really.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CBT did not help for our age 8-12 child.

did anything help?

Not yet. We're trying DBT now. We are considering therapeutic programs but we're wary of the therapeutic camp/school-industrial complex.

CBT depends very heavily on monitoring your own thoughts and how you relate to them. It’s hard for a lot of adults and likely very hard for most kids who are being sent to therapists by their parents and don’t necessarily see themselves as having a problem to fix. If the kid has a phobia or OCD, then CBT is likely to work better because those conditions are very cognitively based and because it is more likely the child will identify them as a problem they want to change.

I have less experience with DBT but it’s more skills-based, so I can see that working better.

[Anonymous]

The problem we had with DBT was that it was very much how to deal with the outside world as if the outside world had all these struggles rather than them initiating from within.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. Parenting therapy worked wonders. Therapies that work on actual skills (like OT) were beneficial. 1:1 coaching in sports and tutoring were great. Money for travel. Talk therapy was pretty pointless. I don’t think much of “social skills” therapy but at least a therapy group would be beneficial for interaction with other kids.

Basically - any therapy or tutoring/coaching that actually teaches a life skill, a fun activity, or provides opportunity to socialize is beneficial. 1:1 talk therapy is not.

Caveats: we never did speech therapy except in school. I can see private speech therapy being beneficial in some cases - but see above, that qualifies for “actually teaching stuff.” And the school social worker hours were beneficial as well. Not because of anything she could teach him but to have a trusted adult to decompress with if anything happened at school.

I truly do not believe any psychotherapy worked unless the person chooses it at can put in the work. That generally will only be for an older child. I guess I can see some forms of anxiety/phobia/ocd therapy working with a child old enough to understand the techniques and be motivated to do them?

"Talk therapy" can and often does work on specific skills!

Not in my experience. CBT does but that’s not “talk therapy.” And 7 year olds are too young to have their own goals to work towards anyway - they very rarely have any insight into challenges.

"Talk therapy" is a broad category of psychotherapy, which includes CBT.

Not really.

By definition, it literally is. I'm not trying to argue - I want to make sure people have an understanding of terminology so they aren't missing out on possible treatment options. Talk therapy is a colloquial term for psychotherapy, which encompasses all forms of psychological therapy. CBT, DBT, supportive therapy, family systems therapy etc. are all examples of types of psychotherapy (i.e., "talk therapy.") Here's an explanation from NIH (https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/psychotherapies) if you'd like to fact-check.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. Parenting therapy worked wonders. Therapies that work on actual skills (like OT) were beneficial. 1:1 coaching in sports and tutoring were great. Money for travel. Talk therapy was pretty pointless. I don’t think much of “social skills” therapy but at least a therapy group would be beneficial for interaction with other kids.

Basically - any therapy or tutoring/coaching that actually teaches a life skill, a fun activity, or provides opportunity to socialize is beneficial. 1:1 talk therapy is not.

Caveats: we never did speech therapy except in school. I can see private speech therapy being beneficial in some cases - but see above, that qualifies for “actually teaching stuff.” And the school social worker hours were beneficial as well. Not because of anything she could teach him but to have a trusted adult to decompress with if anything happened at school.

I truly do not believe any psychotherapy worked unless the person chooses it at can put in the work. That generally will only be for an older child. I guess I can see some forms of anxiety/phobia/ocd therapy working with a child old enough to understand the techniques and be motivated to do them?

"Talk therapy" can and often does work on specific skills!

Not in my experience. CBT does but that’s not “talk therapy.” And 7 year olds are too young to have their own goals to work towards anyway - they very rarely have any insight into challenges.

"Talk therapy" is a broad category of psychotherapy, which includes CBT.

Not really.

By definition, it literally is. I'm not trying to argue - I want to make sure people have an understanding of terminology so they aren't missing out on possible treatment options. Talk therapy is a colloquial term for psychotherapy, which encompasses all forms of psychological therapy. CBT, DBT, supportive therapy, family systems therapy etc. are all examples of types of psychotherapy (i.e., "talk therapy.") Here's an explanation from NIH (https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/psychotherapies) if you'd like to fact-check.

“talk therapy” generally means some form of therapy where unstructured talking is the main therepeutic mode. nobody who knows anything about therapy would call CBT and DBT “talk therapy.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CBT did not help for our age 8-12 child.

did anything help?

Not yet. We're trying DBT now. We are considering therapeutic programs but we're wary of the therapeutic camp/school-industrial complex.

I am feeling exactly the same way. We are doing DBT-C with a practitioner who understands ASD, even though we do not have a conclusive diagnosis, some say PANS, DMDD, ADHD, GAD and the therapist suspects ASD. I would love a therapeutic camp I could trust. My child is 10, if you know of any that seem good, please let me know. I am researching like crazy.

[Anonymous]

It didn't work for us online when my kid was younger (during COVID closures), but in person with a good therapist when he was a little older (10ish), and it did help. The therapist was good, and he was in a place where he needed to learn to trust adults and build relationships, and it worked for that. She always was good at helping communicate things we as parents needed to know. It wasn't huge, and it came along with a lot of other changes that helped also, but it was great having this therapist on our team of support for him.

I have heard great things about DBT and would love to try it sometime because I think the practical nature of it would benefit our kid, but we haven't had good luck finding providers with availability.