Power of Television

When I was pregnant, I had all sorts of ideas about how I would raise the baby I was bringing into the world. One of the things I definitely planned was to limit how much television my child watched.

God laughs at our plans.

Who would have guessed that I would come to look at our television as a true blessing.

When Sally, our angel OT, first started to work with Matt, he would scream. I knew that he needed to do the therapy that Sally was having him perform, but I will never forget him laying on the exercise ball, hollering in pain.

After a few sessions, Sally said that she wanted to try something new. She popped in a kid's video, turned on the video, put the exercise ball in front of the television and placed Matt on the ball. He was so mesmerized by the images on the screen that he did not cry. After that, we had a video play for each of the painful portion of his session. He never complained about what was being done to him while he was distracted by the television.

His love affair with the television began at a few months old. While I was carrying him, had I been told that my baby would start his television addiction at seven months old, I would have been horrified. When it happened, I could not have been more grateful. I discovered the power of television can be a positive thing.

Thresholds

By the time Matt was six months old, we thought the worst was behind us and, in many ways, it was. He has survived his surgery. His cardiologist was thrilled with his progress. I took him to his six month check up with his pediatrician expecting to only hear how happy she was at his progress.

Unfortunately, she was concerned with how delayed he was. I was completely unprepared for that comment. He looked amazing to me. She told us to get him evaluated and introduced us to the Harbor Regional Center. An appointment was made for someone to come to our house and evaluate Matt. The evaluation confirmed the doctor's concern: Matt was significantly delayed. We were assigned a counselor from Harbor Regional who would oversee his progress and it was decided that he should have an occupational therapist (OT) work with him twice a week for an hour each session.

What we did not know was with that evaluation and report, we had crossed over another threshold and start traveling down yet another unexpected road. On this road, we would meet and continue to meet many wonderful people who would help and have helped Matt to achieve hard to reach goals.

Our first angel was his first OT, Sally, who worked with him from seven months to two and a half years old. Oh the magic she did!!