What is Occupational Therapy?

Occupational Therapy enables children to develop and acquire the skills needed for success at home and in school. Occupational Therapy facilitates a child's growth, development and acquisition of skills. This will greatly impact his or her performance in everyday activities.

Who Needs Occupational Therapy?

Occupational Therapy is needed for those children, both early childhood and school age, who display difficulties with:
Fine Motor Skills Gross Motor Skills
Visual Motor Skills Handwriting Skills
Visual Perceptual Skills Self-Help Skills (Dressing/Feeding)
Sensory Processing Self-Regulation and/or Control
Transitioning  


What Can an Occupational Therapist Do?

A registered and licensed Occupational Therapist can deliver the appropriate services based upon each individual:

Assessment/Evaluation Treatment
Consultation Staff Development
Screening  

Visual Perceptual Skills

Therapists will interpret what areas the child is having difficulty in order to help the child improve in school play.Visual perception is the ability to make sense of what is seen. Typical children and adults easily recognize that a square has four sharp corners or that a square turned on its side is a diamond. Visual perception can be separated into several skill areas.

Discrimination: The ability to match two forms that are identical Memory: The ability to remember visual information
Form Constancy: The ability to tell that something is the same even if it is a different size Figure Ground:The ability to find an identical match when it is hidden.
Visual Closure: The ability to match two forms as identical even if part of one is missing  

Children with difficulties within this skill area do not automatically pick up the visual details like you or I. They typically do not like puzzles, mazes, dot-to-dots, etc. These types of activities require that the child take in lots of visual information, organize it, and then complete the activity as intended. All of this is hard and, thus, not fun for a child with visual perceptual difficulties.

Other Helpful Links:

https://www.babysigns.com/
http://www.asha.org/public/speech/
http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/
http://www.nsastutter.org/













Sensory Integration

Sensory experiences include touch, movement, body awareness, sight, sound, and the pull of gravity. The process of the brain organizing and interpreting this information is called sensory integration. Sensory integration provides a crucial foundation for later, more complex learning and behavior For most children, sensory integration develops in the course of ordinary childhood activities. Motor planning ability is a natural outcome of the process, as is the ability to adapt to incoming sensations. But for some children, sensory integration does not develop as efficiently as it should. When the process is disordered, a number of problems in learning, development, or behavior may become evident. If a child is suspected of having a sensory integrative disorder, an evaluation can be conducted by a qualified occupational therapist.

http://www.sensory-processing-disorder.com
http://www.brighttots.com/sensory_integration.html

Therapeutic Listening

Therapeutic Listening is a sensory technique targeting the vestibular and auditory systems through specially designed music and equipment. Provided by certified therapists, this tool can be a wonderful adjunct to traditional therapies and can positively affect many areas related to sensory-integrative dysfunctions. Through our own experiences with music, we know how different types of music affect us, from nature sounds to classical music, to rock and roll. Music itself, as a type of sensory input, is often used by therapists to assist with the sensory integrative needs of children. Therapeutic Listening is similar to this approach, however, it is a much more specialized technique. It is ultimately hoped that this technique will help promote change in the skills of sensory modulation, attention, behavior, speech and language difficulties.

http://vitallinks.net

Handwriting/Fine Motor Skills

One of  many techniques the therapist uses is the Handwriting Without Tears approach. This is a simple, developmentally based curriculum for writing readiness, printing and cursive. It is a multi-sensory approach to writing that is suitable for children with a variety of learning styles - visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic. The program uses unique materials that appeal to kids who need help with letter formation, reversal, legibility, spacing and cursive connections.

Oral Motor

Oral motor therapy utilizes techniques that increase the coordination, tone, and muscle strength of the face and oral structures including the tongue, lips, and jaw. Improved oral motor abilities can lead to improved, feeding, swallowing and articulation skills. Therapists will address children who are picky eaters and who have aversions to foods.

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