My son's new classmate has been at school for a bit over 2 months now and has a therapy animal- a cat. My son's teacher says it really helps calm her to pet her and have her close and her parents say it's really helped her socially. The cat stays with the girl's mother full time, as her father wants NO PART of cats. The cat as a special collar and wears a blue vest that says "therapy" and it's in her I.E.P, so the school allows it. My son loves the cat as well and has really been focused on it at school. He even runs to it during transitions. It's great to see him be so tender and loving, but we might need to move classrooms soon. It's getting distracting.We were talking with our son's regional center worker and she said we should look into it as well. I had never even HEARD of therapy cats, only dogs. Our boy is TERRIFIED of dogs, so we were going to look into how/where our son's classmate got theirs and look into starting the process.My husband is allergic to cats and asking him to live full time with a cat is asking too much. We heard of "catios", and thought we could build one for the cat and it could be a quiet room/therapy room for our son, but after inquiring more about it, a separate room/life for a cat would be cruel.Also, outside of the two-what else is capable of being a therapy animal? How hard is it to get into an IEP? Is this something we should really delve deeper into? I just really want to harness this gentle side of him and foster it, but I'm afraid that's going to be impossible. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2h5axXI
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