Additional Needs

I’m a Therapy Mom

Posted by Melissa Schlemmer on 29th January 2019 Additional Needs, Disabilities

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I’m a therapy mom.

I shuttle my 5 year old to private therapy three days a week after I pick him up from kindergarten.

He has had occupational, physical, and speech therapy multiple times a week since he was 5 months old.

I have spent hours upon hours motivating him to reach just a little farther, stand a little longer, and hold his head up higher.

We have a therapy home.

Our home is filled with equipment; standing frame, walking ladder, balance balls, benches, the list goes on. We also have countless sensory items as well as cause and effect toys.

If our son responded to a toy at therapy I scoured the second hand shops or garage sales for that specific toy to have at home.

I could probably run a therapy facility out of my home with all of the items we own. No joke, we have it all.

We are a therapy family.

We take our son thousands of miles away once a year for an intensive therapy program.

We spend thousands of dollars and hours of time for him to participate in a program where he has therapy five hours a day for three weeks.

Our other boys either travel with if we have the help of grandma or they stay home and miss mom for nearly a month.

My husband always stay home to work and care for everyone while I’m away, living in a hotel and watching our son work his tail off day after day.

I do all of this because in the back of my mind is always the question “am I doing enough?’

I think every mom can relate to this, whether you have a child with significant needs or not.

We are always questioning our decisions and choices for our children, but when you have a child who is severely developmentally delayed you seem to question every single thing.

I have always pushed our son because I don’t want any regrets.

I want to look back and know I did everything in my power to help him reach his full potential.

With tears streaming down I know why I do this. I don’t want to fail.

I don’t want to look back and think I failed him.

I want him to know that I tried. So damn hard.

I tried.

Oh how I wish I could see into the future and know if what I am doing is right.

Because there is the other question I ask myself, “am I doing too much?”

You see, there is no “if you do ‘this’ your child will achieve ‘this’ in life.

There is no predictor of anything and the only thing we can do is try.

It is so incredibly hard to have confidence in making the “right” decision.

But I do know that no matter what we do and what we don’t do doesn’t mean we either fail or succeed.

If our son crawls. Great. If he walks. Miracle. If he talks. Life changing.

We will always try. We may re-evaluate priorities from time to time, but we most certainly will never give up.