Dark treatment room

A patient I had seen during my placement had multiple problems. One of them was intellectual problem and it needed to be addressed in physio Rx session.
It is common to have persistence to particular object/thing if a patient has this problem. For example, light at the ceiling or light from windows.
This patient was not the exception and was distracted by any lights most of Rx session. One of the main goals in this patient was propped long sitting or long sitting with one UL free with good trunk control and balance independently > 5 mins. I had been trying different strategies to ↑time with good quality of trunk control/balance.

Have you ever tried this strategy before that treating a patient in a completely dark room?? It is quite fun to do.
Because I wanted to eliminate lights as much as possible during PT session, a room without windows (a meeting room) was chosen w/out lights and with cause-effect toys for this patient. The cause-effect toys are kind of OT area, however when it is available it is great toys to use for PT Rx as well. Two toys that I chose for this patient were switch toys. One part is a switch and it’s about 20 cm diameter rounded shape. It’s very easy to press with less weight to turn on. Another part is an actual toy and it does some activities such as making noise or moves when the switch is on.
Since this patient likes lights, I used a fan and a stuffed toy with lights. I was not sure this patient would interest or not, but it worked. This patient has been sitting with the switch-toy (on and off) without losing balance for about 10 mins. This patient also was able to prone on elbows with pressing a switch with both hands and stayed in this position for > 5 mins which never happened before.
I thought that Rx was successful in terms of Physio point of view and this patient was satisfied with what this patient wanted which was lights in session. It was hard to measure how much this patient understood regarding ‘cause-effect’ concept, however the time this patient spent in two positions were definitely improved.

It’s sometimes good for patient to have completely changed Rx area and different environment around. This could make to change some of the patient’s perceptions and improves some skills in different areas in the session.