My son, C, is in speech therapy through EI. He just turned 2 back in June. We've had really great experiences over the last few months with the speech therapist provided by EI but today something odd happened. It really rubbed me the wrong way - a couple of hours later I'm still really bothered by it.

C is a very oral-focused kid -- at 2 everything STILL goes in his mouth. He and his EI therapist were painting and drawing today and he put a pencil he was holding in his mouth. The EI therapist told him to take it out of his mouth and we waited to see if he would follow her instruction or not. He didn't, and she somewhat gruffly told him to take it out of his mouth and used the paintbrush to smack his hand and the pencil out of his mouth.

The paintbrush hit his face and hand, and he cried out. His lip started quivering and he just said "mama" and cried and refused to participate the rest of the session. I wanted to say something right then but felt odd about the whole thing. I felt it was really unprofessional (not to mention not her place) for her to do that but didn't know if I should say anything or not.

What do you think?