Too Involved

Whilst on my paediatrics placement i had a three year old patient Jack whom i saw on a weekly basis. As with all paediatric patients the aim was to involve the parents as much as possible, however in this particular situation it was a case where the parent was too involved to the extent where it interfered with our treatment sessions.
The mother of this patient was extremely proactive when it came to management of her son’s disability. The mother had been to see just about every specialist available and had sought every form of alternative treatment available. She would also do quite a lot of research on her son’s condition and the available treatment. While this may sound like a good thing often the information she found on the internet and the principles of the alternative forms of treatment, contradicted the goals of our treatment and the information that we provided her. For example she had bought a full body jumpsuit for Jack that was designed to provide trunk support for her son (who had global hypotonia) and therefore allow him to have better peripheral control due to the proximal support. Although the jumpsuit appeared to be beneficial in some situations (Jack’s sitting posture improved slightly although he still had no independent sitting balance) both my supervisor and myself noticed that it greatly restricted Jack’s mobility and seemed to reduce the amount he interacted with his environment. In the few instances that i saw Jack without the suit he was able to roll in both directions on the floor, would actively reach with both arms for toys and was very verbal. While in the suit Jack would rarely roll, was unable to consistently reach for toys, was not verbal and generally appeared to fatigue very quickly due to the restriction provided by the suit. Both my supervisor and i agreed that the suit did provide some benefit and was a useful piece of equipment in certain situations, but we also thought that Jack would benefit from some treatment sessions without the suit on. When we suggested this to Jack’s mother she was very uncooperative and would insist that Jack needed the suit during the treatment sessions.
I often felt like telling this mother to let us do our job, but through speaking with my supervisor i realised that this would have been particularly unadvisable. My supervisor explained that although the mother may not completely understand what we were trying to achieve, if she didn’t agree with our management then it would never be effective because the most important aspect of paediatrics is getting parents to implement strategies at home.