About OT
What is Occupational Therapy/OT?
The main goal of (pediatric) OT is to support participation in the day-to-day life skills, activities, and experiences that are most important to your child (and your family).
Occupational Therapy (OT) is inspired by what brings your child joy, confidence, and pride.
What can we work on in OT?
Any “everyday” activity, skill, or experience that is important to your child and family can be considered as a goal. Here are some common examples (click on each heading for examples):
- Feeding/eating
- Dressing
- Toileting
- Sleeping
- Hygiene
- Participation in daily routines (personal, family, school routines)
- Academics (i.e. reading, writing, use of technology)
- Organization and planning
- Attention
- Task completion
- Food preparation/cooking
- Self-advocacy skills
- Chores/responsibilities
- Job or volunteer-specific skills
- Recreational activities/interests (these are very individual to each client and the list is pretty endless): individual and family activities
- Play skills and social play
- Co-regulation: Exploring ways to assist your child to regulate their energy levels or emotions.
- Self-Regulation: Working with your child to build their ability to regulate their own energy levels and emotions.
How do we work toward goals?
Detective Work
Through observation, play, discussion with the child & caregivers, and (sometimes) formal assessment, the occupational therapist gains some possible insight to where the breakdown is happening. We want to explore: what may be standing in the way of your child feeling confident and proud? Why is this (activity) so stressful for your child/family?
Get Creative
Next, we work together to find creative solutions to meet the goal. There are 3 ways we might do this (and often we do them all):
develop skills
The therapist has experience to teach a new skill or a new way to support a lagging skill/ability. This could mean supporting and teaching the child, or it could mean supporting/teaching the caregivers.
adjust the activity
There are an endless number of creative ways to do an everyday activity. Occupational therapists love to think of unusual, out-of-the-box ideas to help your child/family reach their OT goals.
tweak the environment
Sometimes the slightest change to the space in which your child completes an activity/task can make all the difference in their ability to be autonomous and successful.