What interventions, recommended toys, etc have you found completely useless?

[Anonymous]

All Sensory Integration therapies: Bullshit and no evidence or research base (except "studies" by the people who promote it.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All Sensory Integration therapies: Bullshit and no evidence or research base (except "studies" by the people who promote it.)

I think it very much depends on the provider. We have a very gifted OT who does sensory integration and DS has made tremendous progress with her in part b/c she has established a really strong bond with him and he adores her so he learns so quickly with her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:15K for a listening program?

why do ots love it others dont?

Nutritional supplements -- kind of a waste of money. Lawyer and advocate -- a waste of money too

I'm the PP who's kid benefited from the listening program. It was about $2,000 total for us. I don't know where the PP's are getting $15,000. The special CD's where roughly $120 for a set of 3 (we did 12 sets coming to $1440). The headphones were $150. The CD player we got at best buy for $40 and we replaced it once. The belt to wear the player while moving around was $50. So, roughly $1640 for the program. If an OT is quoting $15,000 that seems to be WAY out of line. I would most definitely question that fee.

Sorry--I'm the OP who spent 15k on it. I was a listening "Loop" program that was in an office building in Berhesda off of Wisc. Ave. Children go there for 2-3 hour listening "loops" with headphones on playing loops of the parents voice reading different children's books. It was for speech and language therapy. Each loop cost 4k back in 2002. We did 5 loops lasting 4 weeks. I saw np measurable benefit to our DS speech or language. As I said though it did makes us "feel" like we were being proactive, though, sadly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For us, our visit to an OT was worthless. She couldn't identify any problems, and yet recommended a plethora of interventions to solve these "problems" (which were not the problems we went to her for). When I researched the recommended programs, none of them had any support in the scientific literature.

A complete waste of money and time. (Except to know that I am not missing anything there.)

We have worked with crappy OTs before we found someone outstanding.The crappy ones come up with countless new problems which the developmental ped tells you are not the main issues and low and behold the OTs have expensive soultions. It was like the OTs ADD was worse than mine. FOCUS and stop losing the forest from the trees. I go in saying these are our goals which we discussed with our developmental pediatrician and she comes out ignoring goals and adding nebulous goals like "will be able to tolerate hands in mud for 5 minutes" For fuck sake, I don't want my kid to enjoy putting his hands in mud. I don't enjoy it. Or even better, the OT ignores former assessment reports and re-diagnosis the child with the same things at cost to you. I think our child gained more from babysitters than from the bad OTs.


That said, OT can be an excellent intervention with a good one. Some of these people really know what they are doing and can get to the route of the problem and show real progress while also giving you great tips. The developmental pediatricians usually know who the good ones and which quack like ducks. I find it's like going to TJMax-you really have to hunt for a good one, but there are treasures (though sadly not at TJ Max prices). Yes, different things work for different good, but the most of the really talented clincians are successful with all or most clients. Good STs have been easier for us to find.

[Anonymous]

Incompetent OT who kept coming up with more and more things "wrong" with DC. We were diligent about doing what she suggested and had no progress. We finally found an OT who focused on actual things to change, rather than just listing a multitude of problems. We saw immediate progress.

My son has ADHD among other issues. A psychologist suggested talk therapy and useless progress charts to help him. We eventually ran to the nearest child psychiatrist who carefully evaluated him, put him on meds and THEN started working on behavior. Once he was able to focus, the changes started occurring.

I feel the psychologist totally took us to the bank on therapy when she really should have seen the need to at least consider medications.

We were so clueless and trusting. If something isn't working, find out why and don't be afraid to change providers.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

PP at 10:56 -- can you recommend your psychiatrist? Looking for someone to work with ADHD meds with us now that we can't see Dr. Conlon anymore.

[Anonymous]

OT actually worked wonders for my inattentive ADD, speech delayed, auditory processing child. The actual report the OT wrote was not helpful to me and she did verbally correlate the things in her report to the sessions but it all didn't really make much sense to me. In the end though, my DD benefited so whatever happened during the sessions was worthwhile.

[Anonymous]

PP -- i have an ADD inattentive, speech delayed auditory processing challenged child. Can you recommend the OT who worked wonders? THanks

[Anonymous]

OT - we are stopping for our son with AS/ASD who is 5. I'm not sure what it does at this point and it's really expensive. He gets OT at school for fine motor and help with writing using handwriting without tears with his tutor outside of school. I told DH that we are taking a 6 wk trip to China/Asia next summer with the money we are not spending on OT.

[Anonymous]

15:00. Stopping private OT not school or HWT tutor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All Sensory Integration therapies: Bullshit and no evidence or research base (except "studies" by the people who promote it.)

I think it very much depends on the provider. We have a very gifted OT who does sensory integration and DS has made tremendous progress with her in part b/c she has established a really strong bond with him and he adores her so he learns so quickly with her.

I strongly agree. My child made significant strides with sensory-integration OTs. I won't waste my child's time or my family's resources on therapies that don't work.