Why Should My Child Attend Therapy Regularly?
The frequency and duration for therapy is dependent on each individual child. Consistency is a necessity for any new learning. It is a must for making improvement in speech, physical, occupational, or behavioral therapy. Attending therapy based on the recommendations from the evaluating therapist has been proven to lead to better progress and much quicker. It not only allows routine practice on the skills they are learning in therapy, it also allows therapists to help with activities parents can do at home for carry-over.
Without consistent attendance, progress slows and a child can regress. If your child is not progressing as you would like, look at their attendance – numerous cancellations? Numerous breaks? Numerous vacations? Discuss increasing the frequency of sessions each week with your therapist. The typical therapy sessions are one time per week, but may be 2-3 times per week if needed and if your child’s insurance will approve it.
We realize that life happens and a child can be sick, holidays, vacations, etc. The SpOT Clinic policy allows for 3 cancellations during a 3 month period. If one time per week, this allows for approximately 25% cancellation rate. We have this limit because it is necessary to have much less than 75% attendance for consistent progress. If your child is sick or you must cancel, plan to make up those visits during another week to allow your child to gain the practice needed provided by a licensed therapist. This means keeping appointments even when the child is “not in the mood,” having a bad day, or a sibling is sick.
At times, parents don’t miss a session, but are running late. Again, we understand that this just happens at times, but we can’t have it be a pattern. Each day the therapists come in and make your child’s therapy session is individualized. When a child is late, that plan has to be adapted to determine the most important things to cover and what has to be omitted from the session. If you are more than 7 minutes late, your session must be rescheduled. Being late may also impact progress. We are in the business to help as many children as we possibly can by giving them undivided attention for the amount of time recommended based on the evaluation. When our children progress, we all win!
