Occupational Therapy

Children with developmental delays often have difficulty keeping up with their peers. An Occupational Therapist can work individually with a child to:

• Assist with training the muscles used for fine motor skills to develop good handwriting
• Hand-eye coordination to improve kids’ play and school skills such as batting a ball or copying from a blackboard
• Help kids with severe developmental delays learn basic tasks (such as bathing, getting dressed, brushing their teeth, and feeding themselves)
• Help kids with behavioral disorders maintain positive behaviors in all environments (e.g., instead of hitting or acting out children learn positive ways to deal with anger, such as writing about feelings or participating in a physical activity)
• Work with kids who have sensory and attention issues to improve focus and social skills.

Sensory Integration helps to develop consistent appropriate responses to outside stimuli such as sight, sound, touch, smell and movement. SI also assists with the integration of basic developmental reflexes into complex age appropriate motor patterns. Practitioners using a Sensory Integration approach use clinical reasoning, existing evidence, and outcomes to create a comprehensive, individualized approach for each client, rather than using isolated, specific sensory strategies. By changing how sensations are processed by the brain, children are better able to make sense of information received.