People really believe in therapy for children with disabilities. In the first and early days after parents learn that their child has a life-changing diagnosis, therapy is usually part of the medical or educational recommendations.
Parents learn to ask for therapy as part of their advocacy for their children.
Parents learn to put hope in therapy to help their child.
Parents might decide that therapy is the defining difference in whether their child will have a good life or not.
And if therapy is good for children, people often think that more therapy is better.
I, too, believe therapy can be effective for children. However, more is not always better. As I wrote in previous logs, therapy is dosed similarly to prescriptive drugs. I think this is the wrong way to dose therapy. Dosing therapy in the same manner as passive pharmaceuticals lends to ineffective therapy, wasted time, emotion and money.
Two treatment sessions per week is such a common and accepted treatment dosage for most children, that this frequency is not questioned as often as duration. Many children receive therapy 2x/week for years whether or not the therapy is effective.
A lot of energy, emotion, time and money are spent in therapy. Without results that make a real difference in the life of the child or their family, therapy is a waste.
A real difference is largely a subjective entity.
The parents and the therapist share some portion of the decision whether the difference is adequate (real enough) to continue therapy. If the paperwork is submitted correctly and depicts ‘progress’, the insurer will likely continue to fund treatment visits. Under this common scenario, the child continues to receive treatment (duration) for years. People really believe in therapy for children with disabilities.
They accept little differences as progress, and keep hoping for the real differences, for years.
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