J had a visit with the developmental pediatrician this morning. All is well, a game plan has been made for the next several months and we agree on a lot of things…

… Except ABA.

You see, the constant push is for what feels like unending therapy of a mostly Applied Behavioral Analysis variety for children like J. I see the reasoning behind this, to a point.

But what if that’s not him. What if that is not in his best interest to have non-stop interventions, every day, with no chance to be J? What if even through the best of interviewing and every effort to the contrary, we still end up with providers who are constantly focused on what pieces of paper say and not what the child before them needs, or even who the child before them is?

We were spoiled, you see. Our first experience with ABA is something I have written about glowingly before and will continue to do so. Catherine did not walk in and try to fit J into any paradigm. She looked at the little boy, and saw what the little boy excelled at and where he lagged behind. It was a whole child approach to behavioral therapy that makes him just plain soar.

So I have a lot of fears about what adding even more therapy to his very, very busy days might do, especially if we cannot find the precise right provider. I am scared of my son being pigeonholed into things that sound good in a research paper but aren’t really practical in the real world for him. Yet, those fears all told, there’s benefits that could be gained and I understand that. It could help with his intense separation anxiety (seriously folks, I can’t walk from my living room to my kitchen without it sounding like I just abandoned the poor boy to child eating monsters), his impulse control, his toileting, etc. I am not blind to this, yet … fears.

It’s not like I have zero time, or like I have to decide how to manage this all tomorrow or anything. I figure after the first of the year, as he gets back into the school and therapy routine, I will start calling around and finding out who will work with our insurance and work outwards from there. Til then, I’ll sit here hemming and hawing likely non-stop over what the right choice is. Because that, that is what I do.