It’s hard to believe that Milla has just completed her 7th week of therapy. I truly thought this day would never come… yet at the same time I feel like we could stay here forever.

This is a sterile environment. There’s no work calls that I need to take or conflicting schedules to manage – we are here with one sole purpose which is to give Milla the therapy that the institute offers. And she’s definitely making great progress with this intensive approach… but it’s making me wonder what happens when we get back home? When the phone is ringing and emails need to be answered and Lulu is bored and Milla wants to play something else and Crumpet needs to eat and Mr V. is stuck at the office late and I’m tired after working and and and…..

There were two parts of this program which really appealed to me:

• the intensity of the program which would exclude all external distractions and allow us to focus on the tasks at hand
• the parental involvement and training which should enable the parent to take the method back home and continue with its implementation.

While the first has certainly been achieved (and some might argue it has been too intense!!) the second has not. The standard weekly therapy template includes 2 x 1hour parent theory based sessions however for a number of reasons (primarily the lack of resources at the institute) I have only had 1 session total… Though I do certainly have an understanding of the methodology and have read the textbook cover to cover a number of times and have been fortunate to see it being implemented in every interaction with Milla in the last 7 weeks, it is different to have a tutorial to discuss the theory and to fully understand it in order to put it into practice. I am very disappointed in this element of the program and do not believe that I have been given the support I need in order to transfer this knowledge back to Milla’s environment in Melbourne.

Another important note is that we have just finished the Jewish holiday of Chanukah, which is the Festival of Lights. No doubt an amazing time to be in Israel – we have really loved the atmosphere. What contributes to this holiday feel is that kids are on school holidays for the week, which also means that many of the therapists also take holidays to look after their kids. This is lovely for them however for us it meant that there were a distinct lack of therapists available during this week and we were seeing therapists that we probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise. I often felt like some were just babysitting and filling a void. And while Milla’s regular therapists no doubt deserve their break, I feel like we really didn’t get the most out of last week (and coupled with the 2 weeks before that and this week so many therapists were home due to the rampant sickness that’s taking over this city!). With only one week remaining I am hoping that Milla finishes really strongly next week!

We have seen many people come and go through the weeks at the program but next week is supposed to be Australian week, with most of the participants coming from Melbourne! It will be nice to hear the Aussie accent around the place and to see some familiar faces, including my gorgeous friend Menucha and her son Mendy. However this also means that we have to say goodbye to our new friends Eli and Kyle and their delicious son Yaya. We have loved meeting them and have developed a beautiful friendship that only someone also doing the program can understand. I don’t know how I would have stayed sane without these beautiful people in my life!

On a personal note my incredible aunt is having Milla for the weekend so I am going to Tel Aviv by myself! 36 hours alone… what will I even do?!!? Gah! So many options so little time!!!! Stay tuned for that post!

J x