What is a paediatric Occupational Therapist?
Paediatric Occupational Therapists (OT) are regulated health care professionals that work with children and adolescents by assisting them in overcoming unique challenges they are experiencing within their everyday lives – or finding different ways of performing activities – regarding self-care, leisure and productivity. Some of the areas that Occupational Therapists work with children and adolescents to build strengths and overcome challenges include:
Social and Play Skills
- Individualised and neuroaffirming strategies to support participation and engagement with peers
- Following the group plan
- Flexible and stuck thinking
- Size of the problem
- Hidden rules
- Perspective taking
- Sharing and turn-taking.
Communication Skills and Confidence
- Asking for help
- Asking to play with a peer or within a group
Emotional Regulation and Behaviour
- Expected and unexpected behaviours
- Breathing and sensory strategies to keep calm
- Identifying and recognising emotions
- Persistence and resilience skills
Sensory Processing
- Modulating different sensations in the body
- Processing all the information input from the surrounding environment
- Body awareness, space awareness, and interoception
- Having new ideas and motor planning to participate in activities
Handwriting
- Letter formation and alignment
- Handwriting speed
- Pencil/pen grip
- Using helper hand
- Utilising dominant hand
- Crossing the midline.
Gross Motor Skills
- Balancing
- Skipping
- Stable posture
- Catching and throwing a ball
- Engaging in different social games, such as ball games and obstacle courses.
Fine Motor Skills
- Drawing
- Writing
- cutting with scissors
- tying up shoelaces
- doing up buttons and zippers.
Visual Attention, Motor Integration and Perception
- Focusing attention
- Filtering out irrelevant information
- Visual scanning.
Self-care Skills
- Toileting
- Teeth brushing
- Bathing
- Showering
- Brushing hair
- Dressing
- Organisation.
Executive functioning
- Non-judgmental awareness
- Sustained and Alternating attention
- Flexible thinking
- Task persistence
- Prioritising tasks and sequencing.
Eating
- Variety eating
- Curious exploration of the sensory aspects of foods
- Breaking down the task
- Positioning
- Participation.
Through focussing on these areas within the child’s or adolescent’s life, OTs are working with the child and their family in developing their confidence, self-efficacy, self-esteem and well-being. Paediatric OTs use purposeful activities which may include fun games, sports-based activities, obstacle courses, and others, which intend to assist children to become as independent as possible within their everyday lives and to ensure they are able to engage in meaningful activities.
Paediatric OTs are trained to be highly holistic and understand that everything is intimately interconnected. This ensures that nothing is missed or overlooked when therapy is implemented. Furthermore, through utilising a client-centred approach which includes demonstrating respect for clients and their families, involving clients and families in decision-making, advocating with and for clients’ needs and recognising the clients’ and families’ experience and knowledge, OTs create a collaborative partnership to overcome various challenges that are being experienced. Paediatric OTs build on clients and their family’s strengths which is a highly empowering and engaging approach to therapy as these strengths positively promote the achievement of relevant goals for the client and family.
Where Do Paediatric Occupational Therapists Work
- Schools.
- Community health centres.
- Hospitals.
- Private practice and specialist clinics.
- Disability services.
- Department of education.
- Child and youth mental health services.
Within these environments, Paediatric OTs work collaboratively with teachers, disability support workers, parents, staff, community members and other allied health team members, such as Speech Pathologists. OT’s help children to overcome their challenges and achieve their goals. This may be through working with them during one-on-one sessions, observing the child within their environment, as well as assisting the child’s parents, teachers and community support to identify any difficulties the child might be having, conveying how this may impact on their learning or participation, as well as coming up with strategies to overcome any challenges.
Furthermore, the OT is able to recommend equipment and community resources that are readily available to assist the child within their therapy journey. Through the OT sharing their knowledge and working collaboratively with others, they enhance the capacity of these individuals to work with the unique child, while additionally utilising their profound knowledge and skills to assist the child directly.
If you would like to know how an Occupational Therapist can assist your child, please give us a call on 02 9913 3823 or send us an email on hello@occupationaltherapy.com.au
