To increase or not increase

DixieNormous330

DD gets PT 4 times a week. In addition to 3 sessions of OT, 2 Speech, 2 Feeding per week. We've seen great leaps in her skills. We think she's capable of more and want to take advantage of her current sponginess for learning new skills.

We want an increase of PT to 5x/week. Our PT doesn't want to. She called the neurologist (who used to work with her at the children's hospital that her program is in) and he said, "do what you think is right." Which to me and H is him washing his hands of the situation and letting the therapists do what they deem appropriate.

Our pediatrician feels that that an increase would benefit her. 

DD's program is 2.5 hours a day. She has classroom time and gets pulled for sessions. We added out all of her sessions and right now she's getting 30 minutes more classroom time than therapy time. If we were to add one more therapy session she'd be equal in time in and out of the classroom. The PT is trying to tell us and convince us that she needs the classroom time. If she's getting equal amounts, I see nothing detrimental. It's not like she's getting only 4 hours a week in classroom. 

H is calling the neuro today. I get that this therapist wants to do what's best for DD and what's in her best interest - but so do we. And we want to take advantage of our small window of optimal rewiring time.

MaxandRuby

So is this school based PT or private? I'm assuming this is a school PT. Are you working on things at home? What gains are you hoping to see in that additional 30min of PT in the school that you cannot work on at home?

DixieNormous330

We do work with her at home. We hope the additional 30 minutes will continue to build on things she's doing only in her PT sessions. Her PT does things that we do not carry over at home because we don't know how to and at her request we work on other things while she works on those.

Assembly_Reqd

I think you are doing plenty and the "optimal re-wiring" time I think is a bit of a mis-nomer. You are already working on the PT skills, so the "wiring" is happening.

There is also a lot of benefit to the classroom time as well. It's not like re-wiring isn't happening at that time too. There are PT skills happening there that cannot be replicated in a one on one PT situation. Navigating around unpredictable peers, getting in and out of chairs, self-feeding during snack time, acting out a story, etc.

This is a marathon, not a sprint. If your child is significantly delayed you aren't going to be able to, or want to, just walk away from therapies just because there is some pie-in-the-sky "end" to the re-wiring time. Stroke victims are able to re-wire all the time.

You are the best judge of what your child needs and can handle, so ultimately it is up to you.