Autism Acceptance With The Help Of Therapy

It was “the happiest place on Earth,” but Rowan was not.

The 2 year old “cried, he screamed the entire time we were there,” recalls his mother, Heather McMannan. “When we came back home, we immediately alerted our pediatrician, something is not right, the kid was miserable. And so with the help of the therapist at Franciscan and our pediatrician, Rowan ended up being diagnosed with autism. And what started it out as a very scary journey with a lot of uncertainties, has really just blossomed for us in utilizing skills and resources that we learned here through therapy.”

As part of Rowan’s care team, occupational therapists worked to help him develop skills for greater independence.

“You might ask yourself, why would a child need occupational therapy, they don't have a job? That's a common misconception, but a child's job is to talk and communicate, to play, to socialize and to learn how to do things for themselves,” explains Carrie Canary, pediatric occupational therapist at Franciscan Health who specializes in children with autism and sensory processing disorder. “For children on the autism spectrum, all of that is impacted. My job is then to help them be able to do those things for themselves so that they're independent and they have that feeling of confidence going forward, so that they can manage the struggles that they're going to have.

“When a parent comes in with their child and they've been recently diagnosed with autism, the first thing that we do is do a lot of education and a lot of listening, because it's a scary diagnosis and parents want some answers. They want to vent their fears and then we can connect them with resources and offer them hope, and so that's the first part of it. And then we start to develop schedules and routines for home to help with behaviors and teach them behavior modification techniques. Because what we do here one hour a week or two hours a week in the clinic, isn't what's going to make the huge difference, it's what the families are able to do at home. Without that education, it's not going to happen.”

Pediatric occupational therapists can help families implement home programs and ways to adapt at home for a more successful environment.

“Then we start working on the deficits that it may present, like fine motor skills or dressing or sensory processing or communication,” Canary said. “So then once we've got all that established, then we can start picking out what is it that we need to do today? What's the most important goal for the family? What does the child want to accomplish, and what's missing in their routine to make them successful?”

For Rowan, it was more than learning fine motor skills, his mother said.

“They really instilled confidence and a strong self-esteem in him and just have really built him up and encouraged him and taught him, he's brave. He can do big things,” McMannan said. “I have several videos that I recorded from sessions and you'll hear him pulling himself up the scooter boards. And you just hear him saying like, ‘I'm not giving up today. I can do this. I'm not giving up today.’

“Not only did Rowan learn the skills that he needs for life, he learned that confidence, and they also treated me as... they saw me as the parent. They heard my concerns. They addressed those concerns and Franciscan became family. We talk about that all the time. We haven't seen Carrie for months, and Rowan was counting on the minutes until he got to see her again today. They really became family. And to have people like that in your life, in your village to really support that, there's nothing better that a parent can have.”