Special Needs Mom Friend: What sports are your kids doing this fall?
Me: Therapy. Therapy is our sport. It's all we have time for, and it's all we can afford. Our copays equal a damn car payment.
Special Needs Mom Friend: Awesome. Any time you want, my kids are always up for a pick-up game.
And that is why I love my friends.
Yes! This is why I love being friends with other special needs parents. They totally get it.
ReplyDeleteWe have some type of therapy every day, and I'm thinking of adding music therapy to the mix as well...because I think we have a spare hour somewhere in the week.
YUP! For the neuro-typical girl who also happens to be the LOUDEST CHILD IN THE WORLD, it's swimming, gymnastics, and OH MY GOD STOP YELLING. for the Aspie boy, it's swimming, wherein we don't pay the swim coach nearly enough for the weekly freak-outs, and OT, 45 miles away!
ReplyDeletei LOVE your pics on this post!
Hahahaha! <3
ReplyDeleteWe are somehow pulling money outta SOMEWHERE to rent a cornet for our 10 year old aspie girl. Since our crappy insurance won't cover her doctor, our bill for her doc is as much as a car payment too. Still, I guess she's got to have something enjoyable to do. We can only try to do one thing at a time though. I'm just hoping that I didn't miss some loophole, and they can't kick her out of band for being ... well... herself. lol God bless her teacher. He's gonna need it. :D <3 my girl.
This is so true! Sometimes I feel like all the therapy sessions don't give my son much chance to just be a kid. Then trying to explain to a teacher that sometimes he's so tired after all his therapy, homework doesn't always get completed. In her mind, these sessions are just like other kids after school activities....
ReplyDeletehahaha. . . that's funny. I need friends who have kids with special needs.
ReplyDeleteGirl, you GOTTA come to Massachusetts so we can have a couple of SERIOUS cocktails! Just TWO DAYS ago, someone asked me if the kid was doing any after school activities and I responded "Varsity Therapy". Seriously, I am SO happy to know that there's someone else out there like me. LOVE YOU!
ReplyDeleteGood reminder to appreciate our friends who get it. This year we have added actual activities outside of therapy. I'm surprised we had time to do that but we decided we're at the point that she needs the outside activities so are scheduling therapy around them.
ReplyDeleteIt is so good to laugh. I need to get off my Aspie butt and cultivate similar friends. I'll put your graphic in my head when I make a call! :)
ReplyDeleteYep. Yep. Yep.
ReplyDeleteOh, boy, can I relate to this! Therapy is OUR fall sport, too. When you have neurofeedback twice a week, iLs and OT and then add LEGO social skills club, yeah, that's all we have the time for. And we can really barely even afford all that. Thank goodness LEGO club is free!
ReplyDeleteamen.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what a car payment costs. Honestly. (We bought ours used and paid with cash.) How much money are we talking about?
ReplyDeleteRight there with you! And add in that our new insurance plan's prescription coverage sucks mightily, and we're sunk between $$ for therapies and meds. Vacation this past year? We didn't take one, couldn't afford it. (4 days in the OCD level neat freak in-laws' country house doesn't count. I worked harder those 4 days than I do any 4 days home, and still they decontaminate after we leave.)
ReplyDeletePhysical therapy, occupational therapy, counseling therapy, dietician therapy...used to do music therapy but now in middle school so violin instead...and now happily have found dance...but GOD I am up all night worrying about where the money is going to come from. Maybe we can have a special needs mom bank heist.
ReplyDeleteSo true, so true! Every year when I do my taxes I shake my head at the amount of $$ we are spending on therapy and un-reimbursed medical expenses... :-(
ReplyDeletethank you to all
ReplyDeleteI feel at home
after reading the comments
:)
I know.
ReplyDeleteMy son's doing two activities, swimming lessons and soccer, but we haven't yet started private therapy up again since we moved and we will be soon. I know we will be doing some PT, probably speech or a pragmatics group, and OT. Trying to fit it all in during the week is not easy.
And the activities aren't easy. Well, swimming is. He loves it. We are going to try to increase to twice a week if we can schedule around PT. But soccer... oh god, soccer. He whines and cries half the time he is there. He refuses to do anything if I'm not right there next to him. Oh its been horrible. But he has fun for a few minutes at a time and every week I do see improvement. I'm just glad it ends in November.
HA!
ReplyDeleteMy Aspie is good at Sports. It baffles his therapists, but when he has a bat or ball in hand, his Tourette's tics vanish and his klutziness disappears. But, we still spend way more time in therapy than at the ball field.
Even from the outside, this is a sweet post, and one to which I relate. It's probably my childhood speaking, that! :)
ReplyDeleteLuna-I don't know about all the therapies people are mentioning here but my son met with a therapist once a week this summer. It started off as an hour session, quickly went down to 30 minutes. I think we did 10. It's not covered since it's out of network and we haven't hit the deductible on out of network so we'll be paying around 1,000 for those sessions. Our last car payment was around 300.00 so not that different. Oh yeah, and would be a lot less frustrating if we weren't also paying for insurance each month which is our second highest expense right behind our house payment.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's sad but true that I read anonymous comment about dietician therapy as defectation therapy and was really stinking excited that there might be such a thing. And that perhaps that would finally be the end of our battles with encopresis.
Fantastic friend!! Everyone needs someone like that!
ReplyDeleteYes ... I can relate! :-) I wonder if you can earn a letter in therapy for special needs?
ReplyDelete