@cucumber If the question is:what could have A&P done better to help Abbie, when she was younger?
There is a lot they could have done!!!
I don’t know about the whole ABA thing. We never did ABA therapy with any of our 4 kids.. It wasn’t that I was against it but I wasn’t comfortable with my child going into a one-on-one setting, for hours a day, going through frustrations.. Back many years ago, they didn’t have home based ABA in our area and it was only offered that way..
I will say though, OT, PT and Speech should have been started when Abbie was 12-18 months old, when they first seen her not developing properly and she probably had a developmental delay diagnosis. That diagnosis would have covered her therapies, along with Asa’s medical insurance through the coast guard (or his VA benefits).
With these services, they needed to jump in and do the homework inbetween visits.. PT would help with balancing and coordination. OT would have helped with sensory issues, impulses, and even using her iPad or voice devices.. Speech would have helped with her sensory for foods, speech sounds and also using her iPad or voice devices...
At 3 years old, she would have qualified for early intervention services through their school district. If she went, they still needed to keep up her private therapies. It seems like when Abbie hit the public schools, if they had private therapies, they stopped those.. Public school doesn’t substitute what the private therapies can do... Also, when Abbie came to the shop in the afternoon, one of them, either A or P, needed to put down their shop responsibilities for the afternoon, done dinner with the kids and completed homework.. Abbie should have been going to the therapist offices in the afternoon and them working with her, one-on-one too... The room in the back of the shop, didn’t need to ever happen.. If paperwork needed to be done, like P did, close the front office at 5pm, take the kids and paperwork home, after the kids went to bed, stayed up and did it from home...
Also, your family comes first P... You can be the best person on volunteering in every group and heading each office that you want but at the end of the day, your house comes first and if it is burning down, you need to handle that first... It seems like she didn’t get taught that growing up...
From there, I could literally go on and on but gosh, just these small changes would have made Abbie be in such a better position than she is now...