Tanner is child who has ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) tendencies who treated by Occupational Therapists at Children’s Care. Here’s his story, from his mom, Laura. Go, Tanner!

At nine months old, our son Tanner was hospitalized for the first time due to a tonic-clonic (grand mal) seizure and subsequent status epilepticus (seizure that wouldn’t stop). Stationed in Japan with the Air Force, we were referred to a developmental pediatrician and for early intervention services. At ten months, Tanner was not yet able to hold his bottle or a spoon, or even able to hold onto a toy or teething ring. He received two months of occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, and therapy with an early childhood special educator before we separated from the military and moved back home to South Dakota in the summer of 2007.

When Tanner began receiving occupational therapy and other services in S.D. around his first birthday, he was struggling with developmental delays, seizures, GERD (gastro esophageal reflux disease), a growing oral aversion, and an inability to consume adequate nutrition orally. This eventually resulted in a diagnosis of “failure to thrive.” Tanner also shows many signs and characteristics of autism.

Tanner is nearly four years old now and has improved both as the result of medical interventions as well as the result of hours of working with wonderful occupational therapists at Children’s Care, including Lynne and Robyn.

Before his third birthday, Tanner was in the Birth to 3 Program, and his therapists come into our home for therapy, bringing all kinds of wonderful toys and resources to help him learn to play, talk, crawl, walk and eat. They taught us, Tanner’s parents, fun and easy ways to carry over treatment ideas into our everyday living. They were always there when we sometimes needed emotional support—they really become a part of our family.

We were told that Tanner needed “occupational therapy” to help Tanner learn the skills for his occupation of day-to-day living. The OT helped Tanner learn to play and interact with things by bringing out different toys and helping him to reach out and interact with and activate them. The therapists helped him learn to tolerate different textures in his environment by introducing him to items such as felt, crinkly paper, and even a bag of rice! Our occupational therapists even worked cooperatively with the speech therapists and ABA therapists to help Tanner learn skills necessary for eating and drinking by mouth.

Because of his autistic characteristics, Tanner tends to absorb things taught in therapy sessions well when they are presented repetitively, and he receives many hours of ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis). Our occupational therapists and ABA therapists have worked cooperatively to incorporate the fine motor skill goals of occupational therapy into the framework of the ABA style of learning for Tanner. Further collaboration between OT and speech helped with feeding issues and OT with the vision therapist from the South Dakota School for the Blind and Visually Impaired also was very effective. We could not be more pleased with how all of his therapies and therapists work together to teach Tanner how to do things most kids just naturally learn to do. We have been very blessed!

Tanner began to gain weight last summer when he had a gastrostomy feeding tube (G-tube) placed, and he finally began sleeping through the night when we, on his doctor’s recommendation, started him on a gluten-free/casein-free (GF/CF – no wheat, no dairy) diet.

With the help of Lynne, Robyn, and many other terrific therapists, there have been HUGE differences in the life of our child as well as our family. Directly as a result of therapy, Tanner is a happier little boy. He is able to sit up, interact with toys and others, make better eye contact, and visually track things more consistently. He knows how to give us hugs now! While he still has quite a ways to go, we look forward to seeing more and more progress thanks to the wonderful help of the therapists at Children’s Care.

- Laura A., Parent, Sioux Falls