services and down time

[Sweetum]

I am scheduling more services for DS and find that I am unable to schedule in much down time. But if I give him the downtime, I can't schedule everything. Wondering how all of you plan down time and how much you schedule in, and how many total hours your child gets (continuous or scattered). thanks.

[crl]

I think you have to find your own balance. It was important to me that ds have time to just be a kid. Once he started special education preschool five mornings a week, I didn't really schedule any other therapy for him. I felt like by the time he went to school and came home and napped, he needed the afternoon time to play. When he was a little older and no longer napped we did do yoga with an OT once a week. This worked out well for us, but ymmv.

Catherine

[Gena]

As a preschooler, DS had a busy schedule with very little downtime during the week. He has special education preschool in the mornings. He had some activity every afternoon: speech, OT, a therapeutic movement class, or swim class. Additionally we did 3-4 hours a day of our home ABA/VB program. He did get a "nap/quiet time" in the afternoon and he had a little bit of downtime in the evenings. Also he had more unstructured time during the weekends. A lot of people criticized us for putting such a young child on such a heavy schedule, but we felt all of it was important to help him gain the skills he needed.

His schedule got a little lighter once he started kindergarten. Partly because because we dropped the daily ABA/VB sessions (his classroom used the TEACCH methodology and we wanted to avoid confusion). And partly because I went back to work full time and DH was a (involuntary) SAHD. DH took DS to his therapies and classes, but didn't structure the at-home time as much as I did.

I agree with Catherine that you need to find a balance that works for your child and family.

[Sweetum]

Thank you, both, for your responses. I too felt that I want him to have time to be a kid, but they end up being non-productive (watching tv or something like that). But at the same time I am not sure if I am pushing too hard. But given that he is lacking some important skills (next post), I think I should step up the intervention for now. I think it would be beneficial to push now and ease off later rather than be easy now and then find that he is behind and push then.

[Pepper]

Jut my two cents - since you know your child best :-)

I've been giving DS 1 more downtime lately. Basically he gets home from school, we check if he has homework, and if he does I ask him to make aplan for when he will do it (and then make him stick to that plan). He "graduated" from private OT in Dec and i've ben trying to find some other thing for him to do...but I;ve also noticed that things seem to be taking a bigger toll on him than previously. For example, he used to love swim class, but since he turned 6 and had to move up to the regular lap pool (little kids get classes in the warmer therapy pool at our YMCA) he's had a much harder time with it. Also I think first grade has been a much bigger demand on him than kindy, even though he's in the same classroom with the same teacher.

I guess what i'm saying is that i feel like expectations have gone up, so I'm giving him extra downtime to adjust to that. I don't feel that playing video games or watching tv is automatically non-productive - with DS1 especially, he seems to be comforted by video games and I think he feels really happy while he dies it. We've talked about that a lot lately, and also about other ways for him to feel happy that might be more interactive with other people

I read your post about the legos; DH and I have had several conversations about how legos have "changed" because when we were kids, you just got a big bucket of legos and went off to build something. Neither of my kids, the typical DS2 age 4 or the totally atypical DS1 age 7 wants to sit down with an instruction booklet and follow the directions, but they both love to build towers. (I remember my nephews, who are now ages 21 and 20 - one would follow the interaction, the other would not). Do you think that DS is missing out socially by not doing the building sets/ following the instructions? IF so, then I might think baout addressing it, otherwise I would focus on other areas. But again, just my two cents, you know your child best :-)

[Sweetum]

Thank you, Pepper. It's always good to hear from other parents who have been there so I can see the bigger picture and not be bogged down by details in the short-term. Our primary concern for DS currently is social language and his perseverations on certain objects. Sometimes his perseverations can exclude his social interactions - other children don't understand (like a lego traffic light or a mega blocks lamp) and he goes off on a tangent. In general he doesn;t know how to talk to kids, BUT is getting so much better thanks to the social groups and other therapies. He is actively asking/talking on cues. So, with that sort of positives, I wonder if I am letting him too much downtime. On the other hand, esp since I am a big fan of downtime for hardworking people(!), maybe the downtime is helping him. I guess I won't know till I do it. And I wanted to see how other moms perceived their kids programs vs downtimes. thank you.