As Thanksgiving approaches, we all have things to be thankful for. I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the world of autism therapy, though. Sometimes parents take therapists for granted. (By therapist I refer to someone who works with the child at home to improve his cognitive, social, and/or motor skills). It’s human nature when you have a team of five people working with your child, year after year, to lose a little bit of appreciation, I guess.
People move on and parents switch personnel, so in some cases, by the time a child is 10, he has been to several different schools, had multiple home programs, and had enough turnover within each program that he has worked with more than 50 teachers and therapists. It is not good for children to get attached to therapists and then have them taken away from them, because it teaches children that people are expendable and interchangeable. It’s not good for the children psychologically to have people constantly shuffled in and out and taken away from them because they may develop problems in the future related to that.
The more money the parents have, the less they tend to appreciate the people working for them. Not always, but as a general rule, it holds true. You can take that to the bank.
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