One of the things I want to work on this year is our busyness as a family. This includes therapy sessions, doctor appointments, and meetings with various service coordinators. After everything with the kids, there’s not a lot of time to be with our family.

It’s easy to get sucked into all the therapy that comes with having kids with special needs. I believe therapy is important but it’s not everything. I think it’s important that my kids still have time to be kids.

My son Daniel just dropped his physical therapy (PT) from two times a week to one time after 2 years. It’s exciting because it means he’s catching up to his peers, plus it’s one less session we have per week. Between my three kids, we have 16 hours of therapy during the week. There’s always someone in our house working with my kids.

It’s exhausting managing all the therapy. I’ve learned that it’s OK to say “no.” When something doesn’t fit into our schedule or doesn’t work out in one way or another, I’ve been saying, “no.” And that’s OK.

My son Nicholas has PT twice a week, speech and feeding therapy (ST) twice a week, occupational therapy (OT) once a week, and behavior therapy (ABA) twice a week. Plus, he goes to school twice a week. Daniel has PT and OT once a week and then ST twice a week. My daughter Grace has PT twice a week and just started ST once a week.

With everything going on; all the appointments, meetings, and therapy sessions, I need breaks and I need time to myself. I make sure to leave 3 hours in the middle of the day for my kids to rest and for me to take a break. I don’t schedule anything therapy wise during that time. Sometimes there’s an appointment now and then, but that’s something I can’t really control at times. This helps me stay sane and allows me to regroup.

Sometimes, therapists want to schedule make-up sessions during that time, and usually I would. But for the past few months, I haven’t been allowing it, and it’s been helpful. I even switched therapists for Grace when she was starting feeding therapy, because the time didn’t work out for us.

I’ve also learned that just like it’s OK to switch doctors, it’s alright to change therapists, too. Sometimes we don’t have good chemistry with a therapist and switching is necessary.

I’ve always thought we had to start therapy right away when it was suggested. But now I realize if something isn’t working out right away and we have to hold off for a few months, it’s not the end of the world. It’s better for our family if we don’t have too much happening at once.

We were taking sign language classes for Nicholas last year. He wasn’t really picking it up, so after 6 months, we stopped. There was too much going on and we needed to drop something in our schedule. The extra activity every week was only adding unnecessary stress to our family, so we stopped.

I hope to continue this throughout the year, because it’s been working so far and it’s really helpful. I hope that as Daniel starts decreasing his therapies more and more, and Grace becomes stronger with motor skills and better with eating, that we can be more of a family during the day by actually going places together.