Good Therapy

My son sees a therapist with me every month because he is on medication for his anxiety—Luvox, which has worked well for him. The therapy appointments are wonderful and I highly recommend it for any child on the autism spectrum. It’s a place where he can discuss his feelings and mine too (Yeah, I sneak stuff in, too—don’t you know it!!), but it’s also a good exercise in social skills and one-on-one interaction. And, also, since we only see her once a month, we can actually see and monitor Nick’s improvements in communication.

The therapist is someone who has spent her career working with kids and adults on the autism spectrum, so she is very familiar with Nick and his disorder—which is vital to a good patient/therapist relationship, obviously—otherwise, the therapist would probably hang herself due to all of Nick’s narrow-minded interests and perseveration tendencies (Oh, don’t I know it!!). This 60-something year old therapist doesn’t mind talking about superheroes once in a while, but she would like to change the subject and does…to help teach him good communication manners. But Nick’s clever—I’m telling you, because the last time she tried this trick, he found an in: He wanted to talk superheroes (I knew he did—I could tell that he was bursting at the seems to ask her about the latest superhero movie that she saw (or didn’t see) and why, why for the 100th time doesn’t she like Batman and Spiderman??) but she changed the subject to science and then the weather came up and BINGO, Nick’s eyes blew open and the smirk shined through (and I knew he was up to something) and he said I saw lightning the other day! And the therapist was thrilled and asked him to tell her all about lightning, and he said it was like flash---ah, Flash Gordon—that is!! (aka, superhero)

Ugh!! We all laughed.

Aah, it's Sooo good to watch someone else try to do the mothering!