Therapy Thursday is by far my favorite day. I get an hour of therapy. Plus, she helped us with the whole dozen-temper-tantrums-a-day thing. That was good too.

But seriously, I don’t know why more parents don’t go to therapy. It’s awesome. Or maybe our social worker/family therapist is awesome, but whatever the reason it has been what our family needed.

Then the worst and best thing happened today. We realized that we probably don’t need therapy anymore. We sat around talking about the past month (scheduling had kept us from meeting before this point) and realized that we had nothing to report other than good things.

• Molly has started saying “I love you”
• Molly has become more verbal about telling us when she’s uncomfortable
• Molly has transitioned back to school without difficulty
• Molly has started to play with other children
• Molly is getting her face wet without screaming

The list could go on and on and we realized we are only left with one basic problem: dealing with Molly in places that make her uncomfortable with her sensory system. Molly’s biggest sensory hurdle are noisy areas. That seems to be the last thing that still causes her behavior changing, life stopping anxiety. Luckily our therapist has just come back from a conference learning about dealing with anxiety in children. She warns us that therapy is still in the research stage, but I’m okay with being a guinea pig if it gets results. At least this lands us another session!

I’m scared to leave therapy. We have come so far with our hand held, I feel letting go is like jumping into the deep end without my swimmies. I know we can do it (I’m pretty sure I know how to swim), but I’m terrified. Our therapist has done so much for us over the past year. She is the one that took notice and said we weren’t crazy when we said that Molly wasn’t developing normally. She was the one that got us into Early Intervention. She was the one that kept me from ending up in a full straight jacket. She’s the one that taught us how to be a functioning family. I’m really not ready to go at this on my own. No matter how good things are.

What if I forget what I’ve learned?

What if Molly has a backslide when she starts kindergarten?

What if I just need an occasional pat on the back?

Last October when we started, Molly had the emotional development of an 18 month old. She was 3 1/2. That doesn’t mix well. Today in discussing how Molly seems to still lack empathy we found out it was normal. Normal? Molly?? Those words don’t go together.

But, they were said together.

And it felt kind of good.

Maybe I can do this.