Pediatric Occupational Therapy
Your child’s occupations are the activities and tasks they do every day. Some children struggle to handle some of these tasks due to developmental delays, disabilities, or sensory processing disorders. Pediatric occupational therapy can identify your child’s abilities and limitations and address these with proven treatment methods. Your child will love working on their skills in a motivating and supportive environment where therapy feels as fun as playtime.
What Is Occupational Therapy?
Pediatric occupational therapy is a specialized treatment for children who struggle to handle daily tasks due to a developmental delay or disability. Your child will work with an occupational therapist (OT) on different activities and exercises that can help them improve areas of their development that are necessary for their independence.
Why Occupational Therapy?
Occupational therapy helps with many areas of development such as:
- Fine motor skills – the small movements needed to tie shoes, write, self-feed, etc.
- Cognitive skills – the ability to pay attention, understand others, learn, remember information, solve problems, and other thinking skills.
- Social and emotional skills – needed to understand social cues and rules, good manners, how to play well with other children, and how to cope with feelings like sadness or anger in healthy ways.
- Sensory processing skills – the ability to manage physical and emotional responses to sensory input, such as loud noises, itchy clothes, new foods, etc.
Children with a disability or an occupational delay may struggle with one or more of these areas. This can lead to trouble taking care of their own needs, doing well in school, and making friends. Early intervention is key to ensuring your child can grow, learn, and handle their needs independently.
What Are the Benefits of Occupational Therapy?
When your child participates in routine occupational therapy sessions, they can experience a ton of great benefits such as improved self-confidence, better ability to socialize with other children, improved academic performance, stronger ability to participate in their own self-care, improved focus, attention, and other thinking skills, and increased independence.
How Can I Tell if My Child Needs Occupational Therapy
Often, the most common sign that a child needs occupational therapy is behavioral struggles. If you find yourself frequently wondering why your child is acting a certain way, it could indicate a need for occupational therapy. Some other common signs of an occupational delay include:
- Has trouble getting dressed, especially if clothes have buttons, zippers, or laces
- Not playing with other children, or only playing with younger children
- Frequently bumps into objects, trips, or has accidents
- Seems unaffected by extreme sensations, such as temperature, spice, or pain
- Doesn’t understand relationships or social cues
- Can’t feed themselves during mealtimes
- Poor handwriting, coloring, or scissor-cutting skills
- Struggles to follow multi-step directions or routines
- Has trouble handling their emotions when sad or angry
- Has trouble managing their behavior (frequent outbursts, tantrums, etc.)
- Not climbing, crawling, or walking by the expected age
- Avoids certain sensations such as temperature, texture, sound, etc.
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Pediatric Occupational Therapy FAQs
How Can Pediatric Occupational Therapy Help With Fine Motor Skills in Children?
Fine motor skills are essential for a child’s ability to handle everyday tasks like drawing, holding utensils, tying shoelaces, buttoning a shirt, and participating in many classroom activities. Children who struggle with fine motor skills can have difficulty handling these daily tasks, which can impact their independence and self-esteem. Pediatric occupational therapy works to strengthen fine motor skills through fun, hands-on activities that help children learn to handle these daily tasks more independently and confidently.
Our occupational therapists use proven, play-based methods to help children build strength, coordination, and control of their fine motor skills. Each session incorporates targeted exercises tailored to your child’s unique interests and developmental stage. For example, we may use activities like stacking blocks, drawing, or sorting small objects to help your child build dexterity and coordination. Our team focuses on making therapy fun with creative games and other activities to ensure your child stays motivated to practice these foundational skills.
Therapy doesn’t stop at our clinic. We also give parents strategies that you can use to support your child’s development at home. For example, we might recommend that you do activities like sorting utensils or completing puzzles to help your child continue making progress outside of therapy. We may also give you simple exercises to do to help your child build their fine motor skills, or offer practical solutions for daily tasks with which your child struggles at home. By working together, we can help your child achieve the developmental skills they need for greater independence.
How Does Pediatric Occupational Therapy Support Children With Autism?
Occupational therapy for children with autism provides personalized strategies to help them navigate sensory, motor, and social experiences. Every session is designed to celebrate the child’s individuality, building on their unique strengths and interests.
Children with autism may experience heightened or diminished responses to sensory stimuli, such as sounds, textures, and lights. Our occupational therapists use specialized techniques like sensory integration therapy to help these children process and respond to sensory information in a more balanced way. These techniques aim to reduce overstimulation and promote a sense of calm to help children engage more comfortably with their environment.
For example, our therapists might use weighted blankets or do activities like swinging, balancing, and exploring different textures to support your child’s sensory processing skills. We’ll design your child’s therapy plan based on their sensory preferences and any specific challenges they’re facing to encourage them to participate in therapy. These evidence-based approaches help children with autism experience more predictable and enjoyable interactions with the world.
We can also help your child build their social skills! Our expert occupational therapists use proven strategies like modeling behavior, role-playing different social scenarios, and practice to help children with autism improve their ability to comfortably interact with their peers and the adults in their lives.
As parents, you’ll play a vital role in your child’s treatment. Our team will give you techniques and strategies that you can implement at home to help your child continue making progress between therapy sessions. We might recommend that you create a family routine, use visual schedules, or do specific activities to support your child’s progress. We might also offer advice on how to modify your home environment to better meet your child’s sensory needs. This collaboration between us will help ensure your child feels supported both in therapy and everyday life.
What Signs Indicate a Child Might Need Pediatric Occupational Therapy?
Every child develops at their own unique pace, but sometimes children need extra support to achieve their developmental milestones. If you’ve noticed that your child seems to struggle with daily tasks like getting dressed or following routines, we’d recommend you schedule an evaluation with our expert team.
Here are some of the most common signs that we see in children who need occupational therapy to reach their fullest potential:
- Difficulty with fine motor skills like using utensils or buttoning clothes
- Trouble with self-care tasks like brushing teeth or self-feeding
- Sensitivity to their environment (lights, sounds, crowds, etc.)
- Difficulty with hand-eye coordination
- Trouble with writing, tracing, or drawing
- Struggles with staying focused on a task
- Difficulty following directions or planning out actions
- Challenges with making friends
- Trouble managing their emotions or behavior
- Frequent accidents or clumsiness
- Lack of response to pain or extreme temperatures
Your child may also benefit from occupational therapy if they have any of the following conditions:
- Cerebral palsy
- Down syndrome
- Autism spectrum disorder
- Dyslexia
- Sensory processing disorder
During an evaluation, our expert occupational therapists will assess your child’s movement, play, social, and sensory processing skills. We do this through observation and simple play-based activities to understand the challenges your child is experiencing.
If you’re at all concerned about your child’s developmental skills, reach out to our team at Believe Therapies for an evaluation today.
Can Pediatric Occupational Therapy Help With Behavioral Issues?
Yes! Your child’s behavior is often their way of trying to communicate how they’re feeling or what they need. It can also be a sign of a developmental delay or disability that they need support to manage. Our pediatric occupational therapists can work with you and your child to determine why certain behaviors are happening and develop strategies to improve them.
For example, children who struggle with sensory processing may behave in ways that are disruptive. They might be constantly on the move touching everything in sight, or they might have a meltdown because the environment is too overwhelming for them to handle. Our expert occupational therapists can help determine which sensory experiences your child needs support with and provide strategies to help your child feel more comfortable.
We’ll work with you to help you understand why your child is behaving the way they are. We’ll also offer tools that you can use at home to help your child better manage their behaviors and emotions. And during therapy sessions, we’ll help your child practice healthy coping strategies, build their sensory processing skills, and learn how to better express their thoughts and feelings to others.
What Role Do Parents Play in Pediatric Occupational Therapy?
Parents play an important role in your child’s occupational therapy treatment. Our team will only see your child once or twice per week for a limited time for their therapy sessions. You, on the other hand, spend the whole rest of the week with your child. This puts you in the best position to help your child continue practicing the new skills they’re learning in occupational therapy.
During your child’s sessions, we encourage you to observe and participate so that you can see exactly what we’re doing. By watching how we work with your child, you’ll learn new strategies that you can use at home to support your child’s development, too.
We’ll also give you specific exercises and activities to do at home with your child that will reinforce what they’re learning in therapy. Your support and encouragement is a huge determining factor in your child’s progress because you can help them continue practicing their new skills throughout the week between sessions.
And if you have any questions or need support yourself, our occupational therapists will be happy to offer advice. Our goal is not only to help your child build their developmental skills, but also to ensure you have the knowledge and tools to support their growth.
How Is Progress Tracked in Pediatric Occupational Therapy Sessions?
When you bring your child to Believe Therapies for a pediatric occupational therapy evaluation, our experts will take notes on your child’s strengths and challenges. Then we’ll create a personalized therapy plan to help build their developmental skills through fun, evidence based techniques.
In each therapy session, we’ll be observing how your child does in reaching their developmental milestones. We’ll track their progress by noting when actions that they used to struggle with, like gripping a marker, start to become easier for them. We’ll also adjust your child’s treatment as necessary to ensure that the activities we do during therapy provide the most support for their development.
Your child’s occupational therapist will also give you routine updates on their progress in therapy. We’ll keep you up to date on the new milestones your child has achieved and any changes we’re making to their treatment plan so that you stay in the loop on their progress.
While we may not be able to give you a specific numerical score to say how much progress your child has made, our team will absolutely keep you informed about your child’s progress because we want you to celebrate every new milestone achieved with us. And if you ever have any questions or concerns about your child’s progress, their occupational therapist will be happy to give you answers.
Are There Home Exercises to Complement Pediatric Occupational Therapy?
Absolutely! You are an invaluable part of your child’s progress in occupational therapy, and we will work with you to ensure you know how to support your child’s progress at home. Our team will give you certain home exercises, stretches, activities, or modifications to do depending on your child’s developmental needs.
For example, if your child is having trouble with self-feeding, we may suggest activities you can do at home to help them work on the fine motor skills they need to handle this task. If they experience sensory processing challenges, we may recommend ways that you can help them feel more comfortable at home or at school.
All of our recommendations will be tailored to your child’s specific needs. And if there are any specific tasks that your child has trouble with, like getting ready in the morning or brushing their teeth, let us know! Our occupational therapists will be happy to offer specific exercises or strategies that you can use at home to make these tasks easier for your child while they work on achieving their therapy goals.
What Should I Expect During the Initial Pediatric Occupational Therapy Evaluation?
Your child’s initial pediatric therapy evaluation is designed to help us gather as much information as possible about your child’s strengths, limitations, and medical history.
During the evaluation, we’ll ask you questions about your child’s development to find out what you are noticing. We’ll also ask you about any medical diagnoses they have. And we’ll speak with your child to find out more about what they like, what they struggle with, and what they hope to be able to do in the future.
Then we’ll do an assessment of your child’s occupational skills. This can include play-based activities or exercises, as well as simple observation of your child at play. This assessment will help our occupational therapists determine which specific developmental skills your child needs support to achieve.
Once the evaluation is done, we’ll speak with you about our findings and answer any questions or concerns you might have about your child’s development. We’ll explain how occupational therapy can help and work together to set goals for your child’s treatment plan. Then we’ll work with you to determine the best therapy schedule that fits your family’s needs.
Contact Us for More Information
Do you have any questions about our therapy services? Give us a call today at (936) 293-8800 or fill out the form below. Our staff will be happy to get you the answers you’re looking for.
