Occupational Therapy
"The occupation of the child is play"
Occupational therapy helps individuals participate in the things they need AND want to do through the therapeutic use of everyday activities. These activities are what we identify as occupations. Our highly trained Occupational Therapists (OTs) work with the pediatric population through utilizing play, which is the main occupation of children of all ages, to help them learn new skills, interact with their environment, and progress towards their goals.​
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Since occupations cover a wide range of tasks and abilities, OTs in the pediatric setting can target a variety of skills and activities! Occupations for a child include solitary play, play with peers, gross motor play, sensory play, dressing and grooming skills, feeding, coloring and handwriting, scissor and craft skills, and more! OTs also help teenagers with their occupations as well, including money management, cooking and cleaning skills, developing deep and meaningful friendships, cleanliness and grooming skills, and more! Occupations also require the development of crucial skills such as attention, regulation, and emotional health!
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If OT sounds like a service that your child would benefit from, contact our office today!
Activities of daily living (ADLs)
Activities of daily living are fundamental self-care tasks that are completed regularly to care for the body and someone's physical well-being. These activities include toileting, bathing, dressing, grooming, feeding, and functional mobility. Targeting ADLs in OT supports functional and independent living!
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Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs) are tasks that require more complex cognitive skills than ADLs and that support overall well-being, not just physical well-being. IADLs include tasks like cooking, cleaning, money management, grocery shopping, care for pets and plants, and safety maintenance.​
Sensory Processing
Sensory processing disorders (SPD) affect how our brains process sensory information like smells, sights, sounds, textures, and tastes. While SPD is often seen with other diagnoses like ASD and ADHD, it can also be present without another existing diagnosis. Our specialized occupational therapists work to provide patients with the sensory input they need and to provide them with access to varied and non-preferred textures to regulate sensory responses. Sensory diets can also be implemented to improve regulation and attention, emotional awareness, and behaviors.
Sensory Feeding
Eating and mealtimes are a crucial occupation to children and adults alike! So of course our OTs are going to target feeding skills! While speech language pathologists (SLPs) target the function of the tongue and mouth, OTs target the sensory experiences of feeding. Many picky eaters are avoidant of specific textures, smells, colors, tastes, and sights of foods. OTs help children explore new textures of food to help support their nutrition and engagements with family and friends during meals. If your child is a picky eater, they could benefit from OT!
Emotional Regulation
Occupational therapists utilize cognitive, sensory, and behavioral techniques in order to help children identify and manage a variety of emotions. Often confused with mental health therapy, OTs help a child regulate and understand their body while mental health therapists help children process their emotions and experiences.
Social & Play Skills
Since the occupation of the child is play, it only makes sense that OTs can directly target play and social skills. Occupational therapists work to build social-emotional skills when interacting with peers. For example, OTs help children with turn-taking, sharing, cooperative play, appropriate board game play, and more! They also target the use of age-appropriate toys and engaging in non-preferred tasks!
Both SLPs and OTs can target social skills, but they approach their treatment differently. SLPs focus on the development of pragmatics, or social language, and cognitive skills needed for various types of play. However, OTs focus on social-emotional health and regulation during peer interactions. Our SLPs and OTs often work together to maximize social skill development.
Gross MOtor Skills
Occupational therapists target the development of age-appropriate gross motor skills in order to support functional participation in daily routines and other occupations. Notable gross motor skills that OTs target include tummy time, crawling, walking, maintaining posture for table top activities, coordinating movements for dressing, reducing tension, and more! OTs can also work on "toe walking" if children are doing it as a result of tension or sensory seeking!
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This is another area of overlap with another discipline because physical therapists primarily target gross motor skills! Check out our physical therapy tab to learn more about PT targets for gross motor skill development.
Fine & visual Motor Skills
Fine motor skills are the precise movements in our hands and fingers, and they are required for a lot of developmental occupations! Children need fine motor skills to draw, color, write, use scissors, tie shoelaces, use buttons and zippers on clothing, using eating utensils, and more!
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Visual motor skills are the ability to perceive visual information and process it for motor planning movements. Developmental tasks that require visual motor skills include completing puzzles, word searches, seek and finds, visual memory games, copying letters and shapes, and hand-eye coordination for playing catch, "keepy uppy," and more activities!
Attention skills
OTs help children develop the social-emotional skills and sensory regulation needed for complex tasks that require attention. They work to support children and their families by developing routines built to maintain focus. OTs also modify tasks and integrate visuals to prepare children for school and other occupations important to their daily life! If your child has difficulties with attention, or if they have a diagnosis of ADHD or ASD, ask your pediatrician about an OT referral!
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For my daughter's OT, she has excelled in things like potty training, tooth brushing, eating, fine and gross motor skills, sharing, playing, wandering/eloping, etc. Ms. Emily, Ms. Kyra, and Ms. Emma (with my son too!) have made the biggest differences in our lives and we are beyond thankful for each of them. My daughter's favorite thing to do is to “go play with friends!” She loves therapy days and her friends!