Try This Tuesday #41: Choosing Therapies

Try This Tuesday

Welcome to this week’s Try This Tuesday. For details on how to participate, please check out the welcome post.

Since the beginning of the year, I have been suggesting topics each week, sort of a take-it-or-leave-it writing prompt, but this week I left it open-ended. For now, I am going to leave it that way, although I welcome any topic suggestions you may have – just leave a comment or drop me a line at trish[at]anotherpieceofthepuzzle[dot]com.

As I looked back over what I wrote last week about Supplemental Therapies, I started thinking about how we determine what to try and when and for how long. I came up with a few things that are at the top of the list for us.

Our Guiding Principles

Be systematic. As I began learning about biomedical treatments, one of the statements I heard over and over was to just start one thing at a time, otherwise you won’t know what works and what doesn’t. I have applied that to everything we have done over the last few years, partly for that reason and also because our schedule and pocketbook can only tolerate so much at one time.

Prioritize. Another thing that helped me as I was trying to learn everything there was to know and make the absolute best decision about which direction to go was a fellow mom who told me to think about what I most wanted to see change at that moment and then look at what would be most likely to make a difference in that area.

Relax. We’ve heard it over and over, and it is so true: life is a marathon, not a sprint. We don’t have to fix everything by next Thursday, and it’s not possible anyway. In fact, scheduled breaks can be a good thing as we allow all the work that’s been done to sink in a bit.

It’s nice to realize that it hasn’t been as hodgepodge as it sometimes felt while we were in the midst of things.

I’m curious, with so many different options out there, how do you decide what therapies to pursue for your child? Do you agree with these or think there are other considerations that are more important?

Please join in and share the creative solutions YOU have found to your own challenges, or feel free to post your own challenge for input from others. I would also love to feature some of our readers here, so please let me know if you would consider sharing any of your tips in a future Try This Tuesday!

As the host of Try This Tuesday, Trish shares some of the solutions she has found to make life easier and invites you to do the same. You can also find her blogging at Another Piece of the Puzzle and Autism Interrupted.

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