Occupational Therapy in Schools: Interviews with Parents

I spent the last two days meeting and interviewing the parents of my students for occupational therapy sessions which will begin next week. If  you would ask me how I can summarize my 2 days it will go something like this: "Same theme, different story".

I consider this new, actually I have come in full circle because I did the same thing in the school year 2000-2010 in the same school, endeavor as a community outreach program with the minimal fee I asked for. Mostly those who arrived are the mothers and I expected it to be that way. I mainly asked the same questions and those were:

• What time does your child wake up?
• What time does he/she sleep?
• Can he/she take a bath on his own? Can the child feed himself independently? 
• Can he/she control his bowel and bladder movement?
• After school, what does he do?
• How are his siblings relating to him and vice versa?
• What are the concerns you would like occupational therapy sessions to address? 

So in the spirit of same theme, different story, the answers were:

• "TV viewing makes up most of my child's time"
• "He can take a bath on his own but I'd rather help him because it will take a long time if I leave him on his own"
• "He still wears diapers (age 7 years old)""
• "I want him to write"
• "I want him to be able to talk properly"

With the economy really failing all over the world and the Philippines doing poorly when it comes to providing for the Filipinos especially persons with special needs, I just had to slap myself and ask why Philippine Society is in a very, very messy situation.

Imagine one mother I talked to:

" I have 5 children, he is the second to the eldest and was recommended by the doctor to have  special eyeglasses which costs four thousand pesos. We do not have electricity at home because we had to disconnect our line from the illegal source we used to subscribe in. We have the card from Philippine General Hospital MANCAU Department but we cannot afford the transportation fare. My husband was retrenched recently"
 
The hell our society is in!