BECOMING A THERA-PARENTS

This switch to the virtual world- a world with laptops, Google calendars, and multiple conference calls hasn’t been easy for anyone. For our children on the spectrum, our staff wondered what would come of this switch. Would the children respond to video calls? Would they learn new skills? Would they even recognize us? Online learning had never been tried, and now when we were, it was the entire school- all 30 teachers and children, being put in this virtual boat together.Little did we know that there were more people aboard this boat, ones who were helping us teachers row back and forth, and keeping us steering ahead. Our parents and families have truly been a guiding force during this pandemic. They have taken this change in their stride, and helped keep our metaphorical boat, full of interventions, moving. As teachers taught through the screen and got creative with digital assignments and activities, parents and caregivers became our hands and ears and navigated their child towards acquiring goals through prompting and corrective feedback.It has not been easy, for families, by any means. In the times of work from home, parents and caregivers have doubled up as homemakers and breadwinners. They are doing it all- and now they were extending their job description to include behavioral, speech and occupational therapy! We realized, early on, that our ACE TheraParents (therapist-parents!) would need guidance from us just as much as we would need from them. Call it a blessing in disguise, but this virtual space really brought therapist and families together, working in collaboration, for our children with autism.Parent training is a big part of our program at ACE. We started with webinars that went over generating child responses to instructions, navigating challenging behaviors, building communication etc. These were helpful, but rather generic. Slowly, as the students’ programs developed, parents requested meetings and/or specific trainings. These individualized catch-ups really got our boat into a higher gear, as our parents clarified doubts and gave their inputs to better the implementation of the program. A communication program was run with items around the house most familiar to the child, a mathematics program involved counting items present in multiples like glasses and ice cream sticks, and a program on mask toleration was combined with delivering items to different members around the house! Therapist interventions were honed and perfected by our dedicated caregivers in a way that our students were mastering goals faster and with higher applicability.This online space has liberated us from the four walls of the school campus and allowed us to enter the homes of our students through the virtual window. Not only have we gotten a better understanding of how our children with autism thrive in their natural environment, but we have also seen them quickly generalize the skills learned to their homes and communities. None of this would have been possible without our parents, who have now become therapists in their own right!

Neetika Thapan,
Junior Programme Specialist