What is Pediatric Occupational Therapy?

 

Pediatric occupational therapy helps children gain independence and promotes development of fine motor skills, sensory motor skills, and visual motor skills that children need to function and socialize in their home, school, play, and community environments.  In the pediatric setting, occupational therapists use their expertise to help children prepare for and perform important learning and developmental activities. 

 

Children may benefit from pediatric occupational therapy for:

• Self-care skills including feeding, dressing, and grooming 

• Hand strengthening and coordination skills required for activities such as cutting with scissors, coloring and writing, buttoning, using feeding utensils, tying shoes etc. 

• Sensory-motor processing and integration

• Behavioral disorders/maintaining positive behaviors in all environments

• Recommendation, training, and use of adaptive equipment

• Neurodevelopmental treatment

• Visual motor/perceptual skills

• Handwriting skills

• Motor planning

• Range of motion

 

 

How do I know if my child needs Occupational Therapy?

• They seem to have weak hands and/or get tired easily while doing fine motor tasks

• They are overly sensitive or emotional to sensory stimulation including touch, textures, tastes, sound, and movement

• They are under responsive with decreased reactions to movement, touch, sound, or have unusually low emotional responses

• They have trouble with writing including pushing too hard or not hard enough, not being able to develop and maintain a good grasp on the pencil, and having trouble with size and spacing of their letters

• They have trouble learning how to dress themselves

• They have difficulty completing visual motor activities