Are therapists doing unmasked therapy for kids with anxiety about covid stuff yet?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many of your anxious kids are traumatized and refuse to get in cars because they're required to wear seat belts or sit in car seats?

See how this works?

Seat belts don’t inhibit children with speech issues from learning to talk. Seat belts aren’t used as fear porn or to silence and create control. See how this works.

You've just given your bias away. Fear porn? Create control? Yea, you're unhinged. Did you storm the Capitol too?

[Anonymous]

Reiterating, ask. Some will, some won’t. But they can answer this over the phone or by email before you schedule. It’s ok to look for the specific care you want and troubleshoot ahead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many of your anxious kids are traumatized and refuse to get in cars because they're required to wear seat belts or sit in car seats?

See how this works?

Seat belts don’t inhibit children with speech issues from learning to talk. Seat belts aren’t used as fear porn or to silence and create control. See how this works.

Speech issues are not caused by masking.

However, common sense is to mask at an appointment. Therapists can see 8-14 or more patients/clients a day and that puts them and your kids at high risk for covid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It makes me really, really sad that special needs therapists around here are still masking themselves and their patients. I mean come on, really. This is absurd, fear-based, behavior by a medical professional.

Speaking only for myself, i’ve managed to not get Covid this entire time. I’d prefer not to get it in session, because I can’t work with any patients until we’ll again. Schedules are tight enough.

You'd be sick for one week. And you're likely going to get covid anyway. So to avoid that, you're going to significantly impair your therepeutic relationship, for what, forever? And don't claim that it doesn't. Especially if you work with kids with autism, masks absolutely interfere with emotion recognition.

Wow.

Wow, what? The fact that you say "Wow" as if what I wrote was completely shocking just shows how very, very out of touch and bubbled you are. You realize that kids and teachers *never masked* in Europe? Do you think child therapists everywhere in the US are masking? What's strange and bizarre is making kids with autism, speech delays, hearing impairments, or any other kind of mental health issue, do therapy with their faces & therapists faces covered.

You are entirely out of line.

PP is right. Therapists still requiring masks are doing a disservice to their clients. Even more so when the clients are young kids.

I’ll let my medically fragile patients know.

Nobody is saying not to mask if a medically fragile patient wants you to. Curious if you wear masks when socializing with friends and extended family?

I’m very careful in my personal life so that all of my kiddos are safe. We require masks so no one in the space is compromised. I’ve been in person the entire pandemic minus a few months of spring 2020. Our clinic policies factor in everyone. Anyone who is not comfortable with the policy can find care elsewhere, but most choose to stay.

It is your practice and obviously you get to make the rules, but parents are desperate and it is really hard to find a therapist, so most are going to stay because a less than ideal situation is better than no treatment at all.

[Anonymous]

Look if a therapist wants to wear a mask, or has personal reasons for being more concerned about COVID, I can respect that. I would, however, move in a heartbeat to an unmasked therapist if I needed to and was able to. We absolutely lucked out with our therapist, who we switched to because our previous provider was still 100 percent virtual (still were this spring last I heard). Again if it works for your kid fine, does NOT work for mine so we had to find something that did.

I hate seeing this kind of dogmatic arguing on the SN board, we are usually better than this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many of your anxious kids are traumatized and refuse to get in cars because they're required to wear seat belts or sit in car seats?

See how this works?

Seat belts don’t inhibit children with speech issues from learning to talk. Seat belts aren’t used as fear porn or to silence and create control. See how this works.

Speech issues are not caused by masking.

However, common sense is to mask at an appointment. Therapists can see 8-14 or more patients/clients a day and that puts them and your kids at high risk for covid.

My son’s speech therapist still wears a mask. Recently she has started pulling it down to occasionally demonstrate what she is talking about and even the willingness to do that is so helpful rather than him trying figure out what she is talking about for 10 minutes. He is not a kid who can translate instructions into actions super well. Virtual is an option but also not so good at his age. I am respectful of their needs but there is no question there are times the masks are problematic. Would drive quite a way to find an unmasked speech therapist but given it took us 6 months to get in here I don’t think we will have much luck.

[Anonymous]

I was as hardcore covid conscious back in 2020 as anyone. We stayed home for a year, didn't see friends, etc.

But it's 2022. DC is living in a freakishly small bubble if people are still masking. And I suspect therapists inside an ever smaller bubble within that DC bubble.

You are obviously not treating patients to the best of your ability if you're still insisting on masks.

[Anonymous]

The frustration is understandable. It’s still a choice each provider needs to make on their own. Remember too your providers have lives outside the office that can dictate those choices as well.

I wish you well on finding situations for your kids that fit well and meet your individual needs.

[Anonymous]

This discussion has been really eye opening for me. My dentist is not only masked but gowned at our appointments. I respect her professional opinions when it comes to protecting her health, the staff, and the patients that she encounters throughout her work day. Other health care professionals that I’ve encountered recently have all been masked, and requested that I mask also when doing so does not interfere with what we’re there to do. I’m startled at how little respect and general regard many of the posters have for therapists who have actual needs and lives and standards based on both their own risks and current practices.

I’m happy that I read this though. Given the enormous need for therapists who specialize in working with children and families, I’ve been on the fence about whether or not to pursue local licensing and to begin a practice in the DC area —after taking a career break for family reasons. As a therapist with over 20 years of experience — and with people at extremely high risk in my life — it was always going to be a balancing act: from patient risks to personal risks, from taking insurance including Medicaid to limiting my practice to self-pay only. The thought that so many people distrust the judgement of the professionals that they encounter and also have so little regard for our well-being is really good to know.

Thank you for being so candid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many of your anxious kids are traumatized and refuse to get in cars because they're required to wear seat belts or sit in car seats?

See how this works?

Seat belts don’t inhibit children with speech issues from learning to talk. Seat belts aren’t used as fear porn or to silence and create control. See how this works.

Speech issues are not caused by masking.

However, common sense is to mask at an appointment. Therapists can see 8-14 or more patients/clients a day and that puts them and your kids at high risk for covid.

This, and some of the ABA practices rely heavily on RBTs, who don’t get paid if they don’t work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Look if a therapist wants to wear a mask, or has personal reasons for being more concerned about COVID, I can respect that. I would, however, move in a heartbeat to an unmasked therapist if I needed to and was able to. We absolutely lucked out with our therapist, who we switched to because our previous provider was still 100 percent virtual (still were this spring last I heard). Again if it works for your kid fine, does NOT work for mine so we had to find something that did.

I hate seeing this kind of dogmatic arguing on the SN board, we are usually better than this.

Yes, yes, yes to all of this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This discussion has been really eye opening for me. My dentist is not only masked but gowned at our appointments. I respect her professional opinions when it comes to protecting her health, the staff, and the patients that she encounters throughout her work day. Other health care professionals that I’ve encountered recently have all been masked, and requested that I mask also when doing so does not interfere with what we’re there to do. I’m startled at how little respect and general regard many of the posters have for therapists who have actual needs and lives and standards based on both their own risks and current practices.

I’m happy that I read this though. Given the enormous need for therapists who specialize in working with children and families, I’ve been on the fence about whether or not to pursue local licensing and to begin a practice in the DC area —after taking a career break for family reasons. As a therapist with over 20 years of experience — and with people at extremely high risk in my life — it was always going to be a balancing act: from patient risks to personal risks, from taking insurance including Medicaid to limiting my practice to self-pay only. The thought that so many people distrust the judgement of the professionals that they encounter and also have so little regard for our well-being is really good to know.

Thank you for being so candid.

If you don’t see a difference between how a mask would impact speech therapy for autism vs how a mask would impact a dentist appt, then your reasoning skills are low.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This discussion has been really eye opening for me. My dentist is not only masked but gowned at our appointments. I respect her professional opinions when it comes to protecting her health, the staff, and the patients that she encounters throughout her work day. Other health care professionals that I’ve encountered recently have all been masked, and requested that I mask also when doing so does not interfere with what we’re there to do. I’m startled at how little respect and general regard many of the posters have for therapists who have actual needs and lives and standards based on both their own risks and current practices.

I’m happy that I read this though. Given the enormous need for therapists who specialize in working with children and families, I’ve been on the fence about whether or not to pursue local licensing and to begin a practice in the DC area —after taking a career break for family reasons. As a therapist with over 20 years of experience — and with people at extremely high risk in my life — it was always going to be a balancing act: from patient risks to personal risks, from taking insurance including Medicaid to limiting my practice to self-pay only. The thought that so many people distrust the judgement of the professionals that they encounter and also have so little regard for our well-being is really good to know.

Thank you for being so candid.

If you don’t see a difference between how a mask would impact speech therapy for autism vs how a mask would impact a dentist appt, then your reasoning skills are low.

NP - they are trained to work with SN children. Check yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This discussion has been really eye opening for me. My dentist is not only masked but gowned at our appointments. I respect her professional opinions when it comes to protecting her health, the staff, and the patients that she encounters throughout her work day. Other health care professionals that I’ve encountered recently have all been masked, and requested that I mask also when doing so does not interfere with what we’re there to do. I’m startled at how little respect and general regard many of the posters have for therapists who have actual needs and lives and standards based on both their own risks and current practices.

I’m happy that I read this though. Given the enormous need for therapists who specialize in working with children and families, I’ve been on the fence about whether or not to pursue local licensing and to begin a practice in the DC area —after taking a career break for family reasons. As a therapist with over 20 years of experience — and with people at extremely high risk in my life — it was always going to be a balancing act: from patient risks to personal risks, from taking insurance including Medicaid to limiting my practice to self-pay only. The thought that so many people distrust the judgement of the professionals that they encounter and also have so little regard for our well-being is really good to know.

Thank you for being so candid.

If you don’t see a difference between how a mask would impact speech therapy for autism vs how a mask would impact a dentist appt, then your reasoning skills are low.

“Speech therapy for autism”? Did you not read the OP’s post about psychotherapy for anxiety? Are those voices in your head interfering with your reading skills?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How many of your anxious kids are traumatized and refuse to get in cars because they're required to wear seat belts or sit in car seats?

See how this works?

A mask is nothing like a seatbelt. The proper analogy would be trying to teach a kid to ride a bike with their shoelaces tied together.