Pediatric occupational therapy aims to help children to participate in their daily life activities and focuses on helping children to develop the skills they need to grow into functional, independent adults.
Service Delivery Areas
Cognition - Fine Motor - Motor Planning - Self Care - Social Interaction - Visual Processing - Information Processing - Sensory Integration - Emotional Regulation - Eating
Cognition: Executive Functioning
Executive functioning helps to encompasses important mental skills that are key to learning.
Executive functioning includes skills, such as working memory, planning, organization, and self-control.
This area also includes attention and processing speed.
Being a ‘flexible thinker’ can be a result of executive functioning skills
Children with cognitive challenges may have trouble remembering their letters, shapes, and numbers, or may appear disorganized or forgetful.
Fine Motor: Dexterity, Strength & Control
Fine motor skills are motor acts that are completed with our hands and fingers.
Fine motor skills include finger dexterity, hand strength, fine manual control, immature grasp, and manipulating small objects.
These skills are often seen during tabletop activities such as handwriting, and eating (using fork, spoon).
Children with fine motor challenges may have illegible handwriting, write slowly, or may avoid toys with small pieces.
Motor Planning: Visualizing, Sequencing, & Executing
Motor planning is the ability to conceive, plan and carry out a skilled, non-habitual motor act in the correct sequence from beginning to end.
Motor planning is comprised of three parts: visualizing, sequencing, and executing a plan of action.
Motor planning impacts both gross and fine motor skills.
Children with motor planning challenges may stick to one familiar game or idea, may appear fearful or unwilling to do something novel or that they may have done before, may have trouble learning a new skill, or may require assistance to complete age appropriate tasks.
Gross Motor: Bilateral Coordination & Postural Control
Gross motor skills are motor acts that are completed with large movements, often with arms, legs, torso.
Bilateral coordination is the use of symmetrical, alternating, and dominant/non-dominant hand activities.
Postural control is a child’s ability to maintain an upright posture while seated independently.
Children with gross motor challenges may appear to be moving around a lot, may have a hard time learning a new skill, or may have trouble participating in challenging tasks because they are so focused on remaining upright
Self Care: Activities of Daily Living
Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) are activities related towards taking care of one’s own body.
This can include bathings, toileting, dressing, feeding, hygiene and grooming, functional mobility.
Higher level ADLs, called Instrumental ADLS are more complex, and include meal preparation and managing transportation.
Children with self-care challenges may depend on a parent or caregiver more than they should for their age to complete these tasks.
Social Interaction: Play with Others
Skills to interact with others and the world around you
Attending to and concentrating on others, taking turns, following directions, social problem solving, emotional regulation.
Children with social skill challenges may have a hard time playing with others appropriately and following directions from others.
Visual Processing: Visual Motor Integration& Visual Perception
Visual motor integration (VMI) is the linking of visual and motor skills.
VMI is similar to hand-eye coordination, but also encompasses visual perception skills.
Visual perception skills include perceiving and copying shapes, letters, or numbers shown.
Children with visual motor challenges may have a hard time copying from the board onto their paper or telling the difference between two objects.
Information Processing: Sensory Processing & Integration
Sensory Process and Sensory Integration address sensory systems that may impact attention, regulation, and can impact learning.
These children may be over- or under-responsive to visual, auditory, tactile, vestibular, and/or proprioceptive stimuli.
Children with sensory processing disorders or challenges with sensory stimuli may have reactions to loud noises or hold objects too tight. This includes feeding therapy for picky eaters and problem feeders.
Sensory integration therapy aims to help children with sensory processing issues or disorders by exposing them to sensory stimuli in a structured, repetitive way
Emotional Regulation is a complex process that includes initiating, inhibiting, or modulating one’s state and behavior to be appropriate in a given situation.
This includes recognizing one’s own emotions and developing strategies to help return to a regulated state.
Activity modulation relates to recognizing the about of activity needed for a given situation.
Children with emotional regulation challenges may move from one emotion to another very quickly or may require assistance to calm after having big feelings.
Children that have challenges with emotional regulation may give in to fight/flight/fright responses.
Feeding: Picky Eating& Problem Feeding
Picky eating/problem feeding or eating limited numbers of food due to sensory aversions including over/under response to flavor, texture, consistency
Children with limited food repertoires are at risk of dropping foods from their preferred food list.
Children with feeding challenges may only eat crunchy or chewy foods, avoid pureed foods, or prefer foods from one brand.
Children with feeding challenges may demonstrate difficulty with chewing foods correctly