Our pediatric occupational therapists can help to remove the barriers that affect your child’s emotional, social and physical needs as they grow.
What exactly is a pediatric occupational therapist? If we define the word ‘occupation,’ it is any activity a person engages in. A pediatric occupational therapist (OT) works to help children participate in all the activities in their daily life successfully and gain independence as much as possible.
Occupational therapists use a holistic approach that looks at all the components that affect a child’s ability to complete an activity. Occupational Therapy looks at the person's physical, mental, cognitive and emotional skills and the surrounding environment; this can also mean looking at relationships dynamics with family, school, home and the activity we are working on.
Depending on the individual, skills can be from daily tasks to specially developed routines ranging from everyday life skills, such as feeding, playing and hand-eye coordination, to specialized needs involving motor skills, sensory processing tools and more. Once we learn all the individual details, we try to figure out how to bridge the gap by either improving the skills, providing alternatives or providing accommodations.
Some examples of everyday activities that a pediatric occupational therapist can help with are:
Every child is different, so every session is different. Our On The Ball occupational therapist each possesses individual skills and takes different approaches to treatment.
Generally, your first appointment will be a phone consultation, giving you and your occupational therapist a chance to learn more about your concerns and background information about your child. You will also be able to discuss the areas of development or goals you’d like to collaborate on through occupational therapy.
Your first in-person appointment will be an initial assessment. During the initial assessment, your occupational therapist may use standardized and non-standardized evaluations to determine where your child is physically, socially, emotionally, cognitively and/or mentally. Depending on your child’s age, interests and abilities, pediatric therapy can also look and feel like a play session. However, our therapists are always assessing and making changes to determine or challenge your child’s skills. After the initial assessment is completed, an individualized occupational therapy treatment plan is created based on the goals we are working towards for the follow-up sessions.
In the follow-up session, we involve education for both the parent and child on what skills, development, and issues we’ll be working on through different interventions.
Si vous ne savez pas si l'ergothérapie peut être bénéfique à votre enfant, notre équipe peut l'évaluer et lui proposer une thérapie pour l'aider, ainsi que votre famille. Une fois que nos ergothérapeutes pédiatriques ont identifié les problèmes de votre enfant, nous pouvons travailler en équipe sur les domaines sous-jacents qui nécessitent une amélioration. Pour ce faire, nous utilisons des techniques éprouvées qui permettront de changer les choses tout au long de la vie.
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