Week 2: Treatment Session 3 & 4 Copy

This week, you will make treatment visits 3 & 4. Post your case notes in the Discussion Forum immediately following your treatment visit. Your supervisor will read your weekly case notes on the forum and provide feedback and answer any questions you may have. In your case notes, use ONLY the INITIALS of the child with whom you are working! This will protect the privacy of the child.

You will also learn how to coach the parent to attune the movements of QST to their child’s responses. Dr. Silva’s article entitled “What is an attuned massage?” will help you learn and teach parents these skills. Please note that “3x” for each movement represents the minimum number of times necessary for the attuned form. Once you and the parent start attuning the treatment, you will almost always do more than three repetitions of at least some movements, depending on the child’s responses and needs that day.

Emotional Release: How do you support it? This is a deeper level of healing for the parent and child. The parent-child relationship is the single most important relationship for the child during the growing years, and anything that threatens it, threatens life itself. Autism can create a rift in the child-to-parent bond. This leads to stress, grief, loss, worry or fear for both parent and child.

Once touch normalizes through QST, bonding comes back as strong as ever and is reinforced daily by the treatment. Now one big reason for the old stresses and emotions is no longer there in the same way, and tears are often released spontaneously during or after the treatment session. Don’t worry when you see this, letting go of grief and stress is a good thing; have the parent keep the treatment going while reassuring the child, “You are OK.”

It is important for the trainer to understand how deeply parents’ emotions can be affected by their child’s autism. Not everyone shares the same emotions, and much depends on how severe the child’s autism is. But it is helpful for all parents to know how normal their feelings are, and to be able to express their feelings as they go through this process.