OT skepticism

[Anonymous]

The ot was the one that did the brushing protocol and really saw my ds as a great candidate for it. She did other stuff as wellmof course. I've had two sensory OTs who have helped tremendously.

[Anonymous]

It depends on the child's needs. A child with true gross or fine motor skill issues, I think its helpful, but otherwise I am in the its a bunch of fluff and a waste of time and money. Our developmental ped insisted we go. We did it for about a year and all he did was play games and only a few minutes of fine motor stuff, which was my bigger concern. It was too hard to do with school and speech therapy (very helpful) and we dropped it. Somehow without doing it, the OT was shocked when we went back that all the concerns he had disappeared (they were all language based). He was helpful with teaching the proper pencil grip that I was struggling to do. I, like others said, asked him to focus on fine motor - handwriting especially. He'd spend 10 minutes doing it and then the rest of the time doing unnecessary stuff. After we got the pencil grip, we dropped it again. We may go back for a few sessions for shoe tying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree with PPs that a lot depends on the specific OT. Quite a bit also depends on a child's diagnosis and whether you reinforce what a child learns between sessions.

I completely agree with this. Both my kid have low tone and coordination issues, and OT has been invaluable. We know someone whose kid has ADHD and impulsivity issues. The OT's "how does your engine run" program was very helpful for him.

We seen a few OTs over the years and no one has ever tried to diagnose our kids. When I read on this forum OTs telling parents that their kid has sensory processing disorder, I cringe. I do believe that sensory issues exist, and they may need the help of the OT if they interfere with daily living, but it seems like there are definitely unscrupulous OTs who are interested in making money under false pretenses.

[Anonymous]

I concur with previous posters that it depends on your diagnosis and your OT. My son has ADHD and HFA, and OT has been enormously helpful with social skills, self-regulation, feeding, and overall confidence. Our OT has tailored his treatment to be very specific to his individual strengths and weaknesses. She is also very flexible and responsive to issues that come up out of the blue or upcoming events that may give him trouble. I used to have a lot of skepticism about OT, but we've had a wonderful experience. But choose wisely. There's a lot of not-great OTs out there.