hmm, guess I'm on the other side of this - for us, OT made a big difference, there was an obvious change in DS's behaviour if he didn't go to his weekly session. Our OT let me sit in on every session and answered every question I had happily, and was able to answer all the "why are you doing this" type of questions. We went from shutdown & meltdown every week to "hey, when last did that happen?" And, no, I don't think it was maturity-related...
We did the listening program, and to me DS definitely talked more after doing it (before doing TLP he fit enough symptoms of Expressive Language Disorder that we were going to have him assessed), seems to hear more of what is said around him (vs losing it in background noise, and his pitch is way better (musically). His tolerance for the noises that used to really challenge him also improved.
Yes, this is anecdotal, but just wanted to state that there are people for whom this type of therapy works. I guess a lot of it would depend on your therapist and how good they are, how well they can apply what they learnt vs simply using their bag of tricks as dictated in the textbook for reasons unknown to them (because, yes, we saw one of THOSE OTs too, and that WAS a disaster). I guess it also depends on what's really going on - maybe it worked for use because sensory issues were as deep as it went, rather than just one layer of the onion.
OT worked for two of my kids too - but it worked best (long-term) when it was prescribed after a neuropsych exam where we knew specifically what issues our child was dealing with. Our other OT experience (different child) happened before we took dd to a neuropsych - she was young, 5 years old, and her OT consisted of listening theory, work on muscle tone in her trunk, and various OT strategies to help her feel calm. OT was *wonderful* for her - the listening therapy helped transform her from a child who could not sit still and pay attention in class, and who was highly distracted by background noise, to being a child who was still, calm and focused in class. The thing was though - for all that it worked, it just masked what dd's real challenge was - she wasn't unable to sit still etc due to sensory issues, she couldn't see. The issues with vision caused her huge anxiety, that resulted in behaviors that looked like they were just one big tangle of sensory challenges, sensory OT really did help give her strategies to cope rather than automatically moving into those behaviors that didn't work for her… but they didn't solve the root issue, so instead of a child who was all over the place wiggly not sitting etc (and not seeing), we had a child who was calm, well-behaved in class, seemed to be doing a-ok (who still could not see). So she was able to coast with those strategies for 2 more years before she just couldn't cope anymore, we took her to a neuropsych, and the testing there clearly showed she had some type of issue with visual tasks.
So, fwiw, I think there is something to the listening therapy. It really did help our dd, and it wasn't being promoted by quacks - it was part of therapy provided by a highly respected OT team at our local children's hospital. But any therapy, no matter how well researched etc - isn't going to be worthwhile or effective if it's not being pursued with a thorough understanding of the broad scope of the needs of the child.
Hope that makes sense!
polarbear
