The pro’s and con’s of being a therapist mom

The Pro’s:

You know so much about development, you feel instantly informed and empowered when you are faced with development, milestones and some scholastic decisions. This makes development a little less scary as you have training and understanding in many different areas.

You generally have friends who are colleagues, which means you can call on them for advice if you need a little help or guidance. This also helps you understand teachers and other professionals’ advice and don’t easily take it personally or negatively because you know that their hearts (like yours) are to help your child and give them the best.

Being Mom AND a therapist

Another thing your kids will love is that you always have awesome toys and equipment for them to explore! So if you are an OT, you know they are always happy to go to your work and play 🙂 But ultimately my favourite part is that I often get holidays with my children and can work my day and timetable around them. So as a therapists being Mom and working is “possible” as you can create some flexibility with work which is such a bonus for my family.

And then of course like every job, there are some Cons…My son, Jonny, who is almost 10 years old always says to me, “Mom, I wish you were not an OT because all my friends Mom’s let them have an X Box and they are allowed to play Fortnite!” I don’t think he will ever forgive me on that one 🙂 Sometimes we find “problems” and “areas of difficulty” before teachers do and my husband thinks that I am completely overboard and stress too much about their development.

The juggle of trying to fit in work, kids and life can be so taxing! Mornings are FULL with trying to see as many kids in therapy so that we can take the afternoon off and be with our children. However, this impacts on our admin and record keeping. We don’t get to making those calls to other therapists to discuss cases, report writing is not on time, sending in motivation letters, contacting medical aid, calling the teacher….and the list goes on. There is just so little time to do the things we want to do and need to do!

The mother’s guilt

This is something I think all mothers have, but somehow being a therapist and working with children feels a little harder when I work and “play” with other children all day. I’ve chatted with a therapist in Cape Town a few months ago that said to me each of her three children have a once a week 45 minute OT session with her! I was so BLOWN away and encouraged by this… not that I have done it since then, but I just thought to myself, WOW she is doing it right and I wish I had done that from the beginning….I guess it’s never too late and I can also start now!

Being one of the founders of SpecialT as been an exciting challenge for me as I have had a taste working in a different space “business mom”, and seen that therapy mom’s do have some perks! What excites me the most is that our team is passionate about making therapists lives easier! We aim to help therapists find more time, so that they have more time to do the work they love (not admin), and find more time to be with their families. Our approach has previously been focused on after therapy exercises for the parents to do at home. However, a new approach with Version 2 is all about in therapy and out of therapy exercises. This will allow therapists to preselect therapy exercises for each child, and then simply click if these exercises have been done or not, easily making additions and then entering specific results via text, images, videos and voice notes. Practice management and communication is going to be easier which will also help with all the admin that we never get to!