A Good Transition from Stimming to Clapping – Parent’s Experience
“Our personal journey into this world of autism began just over four years ago with the birth of our daughter. Since the beginning, she struggled immensely. The first thing we noticed was that she had her body tightening. She had a lack of recognition in her eyes. As each day passed, we recognized more ‘red flag’ characteristics of autism with repetitive behaviors, speech delays and more. When our daughter was 3year old, we finally got an appointment at Jewel Autism Centre, Kottayam.
Once I came to the centre, a detailed assessment of my child was taken by professionals from respective departments and they clearly explained about my child’s problems. From the beginning onwards a great service was provided by Jewel Autism Centre. From the department of occupational therapy, the sessions were taken by Ms. Divya M Jose. She always had a lot of suggestions and solutions for my child’s problems and she put her full effort to push her up and was a person with great patience. We are really thankful to Ms. Divya for all the support and dedication up on our daughter.
CLINICAL FINDING AND OBSERVATION BY THERAPIST
Child was attending 1 hour sessions x5 days/week. The first thing I did was playing with the child to build rapport and to make her to adjust with the new situation. Parents main concern was her body tightening. The child was very cooperative through all sessions. As per parental concern, I started with sensory integration therapy. After 3 weeks I made her to clap instead of body tightening while she got excited. After two months her body tightening reduced completely and she started using clap in functional ways. Gradually I could see the improvements.
I felt very happy to work for this child. I would like to thank her mother who was really hardworking and motivating throughout the intervention process for her child. Without her support, I wouldn’t have been able to do this successful intervention.