Occupational Therapy

It's been a crazy week, but I found some time to write. I'm going to talk more about Occupational Therapy today. I am using a handout from John's START program orientation packet as a reference.

Occupational Therapy (OT) for children is play based and goal oriented therapy designed to enable a child to do his/her job (occupation). Some of these occupations include play, being a member of a family, making friends, performing in school, completing self care activities, and reach developmental milestones.

Occupational Therapy using a Sensory Integration Framework

The tacktile, proprioceptive, and vestibular systems (discussed in previous blogs) develop and function prior to birth, and together play a part in the development of skills. We need to register, interpret, and respond to stimuli. The organization of the senses is called sensory integration. The ability to successfully meet an environmental challenge is termed adaptive response. OTSI therapy provides the child with controlled sensory input in order to facilitate a n increasingly complex ability to create an adaptive response.

5 senses - touch, taste, smell, sight, & sound
2 others - movement and body position

Using OTSI (Occupational Therapy with a Sensory Integration framework), expected outcomes:
- increase frequency & duration of adaptive responses
- development of more complex adaptive responses
- increase self-confidence & self-esteem
- Improvement of gross and fine motor skills
-improvement in daily living and personal-social skills
-improvement in cognitive, language and academic performance