Occupational Therapy
Self-Care Tasks
Self-care is a part of our daily-living and includes any intentional actions you take to care for your mental, emotional and physical health. When children practice self-care, they learn to develop the skills and abilities required to take care of themselves and attend to their own basic needs. A few examples of self-care tasks include getting dressed, eating, toileting, sleeping or personal hygiene. Practicing self-care at a young age allows children to build a foundation and develop healthy habits that will benefit them in their adulthood. However, when these tasks become difficult, this limits their life experiences (e.g., eating at a restaurant, using public bathrooms, getting dressed to go outside in the snow).
What are signs your child could benefit from an occupational therapist?
- Require more assistance than others of their age to get dressed or undressed
- Difficulty feeding themselves independently
- Difficulty tolerating certain clothing material
- Difficulty using utensils
- Require assistance opening food packaging in their lunch box
- Refuse to eat certain foods
- Difficulty coordinating movements to brush teeth
- Difficulty falling asleep or getting ready for bed
- Require assistance with toileting (i.e., wiping, reminders to empty bladder or void, fear of toilet)
- Limited motivation to participate in self-care activities independently (rely on adults to do it for them)
In a nutshell
Here are a few ways an occupational therapist can help:
- Introduce routine
- Assess sensory processing differences
- Assess fine and gross motor skills
- Breaking the tasks into smaller steps
- Adapt/modify tasks
- Build body awareness
