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Occupational Therapists (OTs) can help to provide meaningful engagement and fulfillment in all areas of daily life!
Fine Motor Skills
This includes how children use and control the smaller more precise muscles of their hands and fingers. Fine motor skills include activities such as drawing, cutting, coloring, printing, two-hand coordination and how a child holds and manipulates objects in their hands and fingers. These skills are important for greater confidence and independence in self-help skills, academics and play/social skills. OTs use a play-based approach to target these skills across all environments.
Visual processing skills are also closely linked to success with early literacy skills (i.e. reading and writing) and can be evaluated by an OT with training in this area.
Self-Help Skills
This includes our activities of daily living such as dressing skills, grooming/hygiene (i.e. hand washing, brushing teeth, bathing), self-feeding and picky eating, toileting and most important of all....sleep! OTs can help the child where they are at and recommend helpful tools and strategies for success!
Sensory Processing
This refers to the way that the nervous system receives, interprets and responds to sensory input. Every person has 8 sensory systems: taste, touch, sight, sound, smell, balance and movement (vestibular) and body awareness (proprioceptive) and interoception (inner body processes) which help shape our understanding of the world and how we respond to it. How efficiently we integrate all of these senses together in our daily lives affects our ability to adequately show the world what we know and what we can do! OTs can use observation, informal interview and/or standardized questionnaires to determine areas of need and then provide helpful tools, strategies and recommendations to support your child's sensory system and how they function in daily life!
Self- Regulation
This includes our ability to regulate our brain and body (i.e. nervous system) as well as our emotions. Self-regulation is affected by our ability to manage stress and is a balance of energy and tension which is necessary to meet the needs and demands of the environment and situation. OTs can help provide insight and support and empower you as a parent using the Stuart Shanker Self-Reg Method to support your child and the whole family!