VIRUS DIARY: For boy with Down syndrome, new path of therapy

PHOENIX (AP) — The speech therapist held up a book of animals. Our 4-year-old looked curiously at her across the Zoom call screen.

“Beig! Beig!” Pablo suddenly shouted, pointing at a pig.

It was the first time I had heard Pablo say an approximation of an animal name. It was a huge accomplishment for a kid with Down syndrome who struggles with speech.

In early March, fear over how the virus could impact Pablo pushed us to pull him from therapies. Then the clinic closed altogether. When his therapists began offering online sessions, my wife and I declined. We figured online therapy would never work for such a young child with special needs.

After a few weeks, when it became clear there would be no in-person therapies for the foreseeable future, we decided to try a few speech therapy sessions. Pablo already has many developmental strikes against him, so we decided that, until things got back to normal, anything would be better than nothing.

Two months and many therapies later, I don’t think we ever want to go back to “normal” when it comes to therapy.

The biggest difference between clinical and online therapies is the involvement of the family. In a clinic, the child goes into a room with a therapist while mom or dad sit in the waiting room. This partly because children get distracted and want the attention of parents. And for parents, there is an advantage: a 30- to 45-minute respite from parenting's rigors.

But there are two big disadvantages.

First, parents have to get kids to therapy. This is rarely talked about but one of the biggest challenges of raising special needs children (never mind that most insurance companies only cover a fraction of the therapies needed and the gaps have to be covered out-of-pocket). A few years ago, at one point my wife and...