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Lockdown Is Forcing Special Needs Parents to Get Creative
With professional help, parents of kids with autism and developmental delays are embracing DIY therapies
For Darlene Rodrigo, finding the right care for her daughter, Bella, has been a challenge. The sixth grader is nonverbal and has Down syndrome and autism. Despite these obstacles, her family’s hard work has helped Bella to bond with not only her teachers, but also the team who work to provide her with the therapies and assisted technologies that help her communicate.
But isolating during a global pandemic has changed that, and now, the Ontario, California, family is figuring out alternatives.
“I think this quarantine and this whole — I guess you could say — unforced lockdown has left us all to figure things out,” Rodrigo says.
While scrolling on Instagram last week, I saw Bella at a table with her dad, carefully working to pick up cotton rounds with tongs and place them into a bowl.
“The video that you saw was our very first attempt at occupational therapy over film with her OT therapist,” Darlene Rodrigo tells me. “We’re all doing what we can to make things work.”
I was drawn in by the video because, like the Rodrigos, no school for my son means…
