Occupational Therapists work with your child to improve fine motor skills, sensory integration, and activities of daily living. Five main areas we work with include:
Sensory Processing difficulties with processing information from five classic senses (vision, auditory, touch, olfaction, and taste), the sense of movement (vestibular system), and/or the positional sense (proprioception).
Cognition and Perception challenges with visual discrimination (similarities and differences), spatial relations (identifying reversals of objects and symbols), sequential memory (ability to recall objects from choices after they have been removed), visual memory (identifying an object that has been memorized from a previous page), visual form constancy (finding the same shape when it is rotated or a different size), and visual figure-ground (finding an object within a busy background like I SPY)
Self Care such as getting dressed, right-left and front to back discrimination, being able to organize getting dressed or ready for school be strategies and techniques from verbal or visual cues. Feeding issues such as texture aversions, grasp, bilateral coordination or trunk control. Hygiene skills such as bathing, grooming, toileting, brushing teeth and nail care.
Social Skills being able to develop coping skills and self-esteem. Learning how to follow directions, pay attention and listen. Engaging in cooperative play and sharing skills. Family, teacher, child-centered therapy to give tools to everyone involved in the child’s activity of daily living.
Motor Skills with finger, hand strength, position, and stability. Handwriting including wrist and/or forearm control, spatial organization (space and letter formation), copying shapes, fluency of finger movement, speed, and dexterity.