Reply to Anyone have luck with OT for meltdowns?

Forum Index » Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities

Reply to "Anyone have luck with OT for meltdowns?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I never found OT all that helpful (we did it for two years). OTs have good suggestions but you can get most of them from a good book (Out-of-Sync Child, Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun). I did find play therapy with a psychologist to be much more useful.[/quote]

OP here. Can you elaborate more on what your child did at play therapy and how old your child is? My DD is 4.5 and we did a few months of play therapy but stopped because I just didn't see where it was going.  My child is not going to get upset or meltdown one-on-one with another adult who is giving her undivided attention.  [/quote]

I don't have a lot of time right now, so I'll try to answer succinctly. I'll start with the obvious, quick, very big impact: 1) by getting to know our child, the therapist was able to give us tools and concrete suggestions on how to work with our child. We are not inexperienced parents, but the stuff that works with our other kids just wasn't enough for one of them. The therapist was able to say when to to support and when to challenge, and HOW to do each of them. She helped us understand him better, predict his emotions better, prepare him better, and distinguish between typical kid misbehavior and genuine anxiety. This stuff takes time and is a work on progress but I don't know that we would have gotten where we are without the therapist's guidance. 2) she improved my child's emotional language. This is something we had been actively working on but somehow he wasn't getting it but really did quite quickly through play therapy. Having a child recognize and articulate emotions helps so much more than I anticipated. It generated empathy for my child's  anxiety where previously, for example, adults had assumed simple defiance. That empathy was very reassuring and often lowered my child's defenses, which not only prevented emotions from escalating but also sometimes became a first step to working through a tough moment. As for the play therapy itself--other than the huge benefits of getting to know my child (which is no easy task!) and the results I mentioned--the impact is more nebulous and hard to define but I have seen improvement in my son's flexibility, for example. My son is very creative and assertive and likes to control the rules to his games. The therapist would engage him in a kind of play he enjoyed but then push his comfort level, change the rules or introduce new ideas. He'd be obviously challenged but also want to continue playing. I think the idea is to help the kids be as comfortable as possible but always push them a little. Play then becomes like an exercise in flexibility training. (Of course, lots of kids get this from normal play with kids but mine was so socially anxious that he didn't.) Hope this helps a little. We really had a great experience.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics