What is Occupational Therapy? And how can it help my kid?

Hey parents! We get it. You do so much to tend your nest and support your kids, even when your cute little chicks sometimes wake you up in the middle of the night. As they snuggle into your bed, now sleeping safe and soundly next to you, you are left awake trying to get back to sleep and you can’t help but ponder…

                                 

Why is my kid struggling so much even though I know they have so much potential and so many gifts? 

You feel at a loss as to why they are struggling with all the demands of the school day but are just fine at home. Or on the flip side, why are they able to hold it together all day at school, but they can’t help but melt down once they’re home and it feels like everything gets unleashed on you?  Or you get the reports that they can’t sit still and focus on their writing work. Or that they are getting into the personal bubbles of other kids at school. 

Or maybe you really want your kid to be able to ride a bike and you know they are capable deep down but there's something you can’t put your finger on holding them back from that final stride and the excitement that comes from seeing them pedal away to their heart’s destiny.

                                    

Or maybe your child has aversions to certain textures or food or clothing or gets headaches in bright fluorescent-lit stores or school or they seem to notice every little sound even from a mile away? Or does it sometimes feel like any little thing could set them off?

You want to give the world to your kid, but sometimes you feel alone in your journey to support them. You know your kid has the ability to succeed but you keep feeling like something needs to be unlocked to free their potential.

Maybe you have googled or heard from a family friend about this thing called occupational therapy, or OT for short, that could possibly help your child. 

But what is occupational therapy? 

And why would it help your child? Isn’t that just something that people need when they can’t find a job? Although you are correct that “job or profession” is one definition of what occupation means, there is also another definition, a lesser known and more broad one, that the field of occupational therapy is based upon. 

In occupational therapy, an occupation is any meaningful activity in which a person occupies their time throughout the day¹. 

And for children, the most important occupation is play²! There are even studies that say that if you learn something through play, you need 10-20 repetitions to get it, whereas if you learn the same skill in a more rote way, you need 200-300 repetitions to learn it! 

So that is why occupational therapy sessions with children often just look like playing. Because we are! And on purpose! 

Occupational therapists use play in order to make their graduate expertise of child development and neuroscience fun, accessible and age-appropriate. OTs also use this knowledge to strategically assess and address the physical, social, and emotional underpinnings of why certain issues block their access to functioning easily in their daily activities (or occupations). 

And then we explain what we see to you and help you find the best strategies to help your child at home, in the community and/or collaborate with your child’s classroom teacher in school.

At the end of the day, OTs are there to support you! Because you know your child the best. And occupational therapy is there to empower your ability to best support your child and set them up for success in the long run.

Ok cool. Now you may understand a little bit more about what occupational therapy is.

But how can occupational therapy help my kid? 

Some of the challenges that OTs assist with in children include: 

Coordination: organizing big motor movements to do things like run, jump, skip, hop, throw a ball, and also smaller, more intricate motor movements like holding a pencil, stringing a beads, cutting paper or folding origami

Sensory Processing: understanding the information they receive through sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell and increasing awareness of the types of activities that can calm and regulate them when their senses feel overwhelmed

Social Skills: being able to successfully take turns, collaborate, and consider the feelings of others

Emotional Skills: Being able to name feelings and successfully work through them

Visual Motor Skills: Being able to see what they see and coordinate and control their body in a functional way, namely being able to write with their small hand muscles what they see with their vision, which can be more involved than you may think

Executive Functioning Skills: Being able to plan, organize, have adequate focus, to shift focus from one thing to the next, to pay attention to safety, and have impulse control

To put it simply, occupational therapists focus on pinpointing the obstacles that are preventing a child’s success in their everyday activities and work with you to help support their success. 

At Nature Kids, we specialize in the kind of occupational therapy that gets to the roots of the issues, from the nervous system, through modalities that help integrate the body and brain for optimal functioning. 

                          

Next time you are awake in your nest with your sweet little chicks, you don’t have to feel alone anymore. We are there to encourage and support you in your journey of caring for your child.

Curious to learn more about occupational therapy services at Nature Kids? 

Check out our latest e-book on how to transform your home into a sensory friendly haven here!