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What is Occupational Therapy?
Occupational Therapy is an effective form of rehabilitation that enables people to engage in their activities of daily living to their optimal potential and as independently as possible. Occupational Therapists aim to enhance the compatibility between a person’s skills, environment and meaningful activities to improve their performance in these activities.
A child engages daily in a variety of activities that require essential skills to complete them. Children engage in activities within three categories, self-care, leisure and productivity. Self-care tasks include toileting, dressing, feeding etc. Leisure activities include playing a sport, riding a bike, engaging in physical activities and hobbies. Productivity activities for children include school performance with letter formation, printing and writing neatly and in an organized manner on a page, organizing self and items, focusing and attending in class etc. These meaningful activities require skills necessary to complete them in an efficient and effective manner. Skills for these activities include fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, visual perception, motor coordination, sensory processes skills etc.
Our Occupational Therapists in Toronto and Oakville are experts in breaking down an activity and understanding the components involved in completing a task. Occupational Therapists can recognize a child’s area of concerns and work collaboratively with the family towards meeting appropriate developmental milestones and enabling a child to perform to their optimal level of functioning. Our Occupational Therapists use creative techniques and strategies that are fun and engaging to encourage the child to enhance their skills while enjoying their therapeutic experience.
Availability:
- In Clinic
- In Home Services
- Remote/Virtual
How can Occupational Therapists Help my Child?
Occupational Therapists focus on enabling a child to complete meaningful activities as independently as possible by targeting the root causes of concerns. Our Occupational Therapy for children can address:
Helping Children DO and PLAY
Fine Motor Skills
Fine motor skills are prerequisite skills needed to effectively complete day to day tasks. Fine Motor skills involve the ability to use the small muscles of our body (i.e. fingers) in precise ways to complete manipulative tasks (such as zippers, buttons, pencil grasp etc.) efficiently and accurately.
Occupational Therapists engage children in fun activities to enhance the dexterity of their fine motor movements to allow for effective hand skills which greatly impact all the ways we use our hands including pencil grasp and control, printing skills, dressing skills, scissor use, typing skills etc.
Eye hand coordination in an important prerequisite skill for all activities of daily living. This is the ability for a child to take in visual information from their environment and guide their hand skills in a coordinated way to compete a task. Difficulty with eye-hand coordination will impact a child’s ability to complete tasks in a smooth, efficient and effective way. Our Occupational Therapists can formally assess a child’s eye hand coordination skills and set up a plan of engaging activities to work on this important skill.
Our Occupational Therapist work with children and families to enhance all pre-printing skills to prepare a child to effectively begin to printing. Many skills are involved in the task of printing such as: fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, visual perceptual skills, motor control, crossing the midline, gross motor skills, proper letter formation etc.
At Developing Hands, we engage children in fun and interactive ways of learning proper letter formations to avoid poor habits forming. A multisensory approach to letter formation helps to solidify proper letter formation by providing the child the experience of forming letters using different mediums. This in turn allows the child to enhance their visual memory for the letter which in turn will assist with forming it correctly on paper. Our Occupational Therapists also work on enhancing organization of printing on a page including proper line use, margin use etc.
Cursive writing is an alternative method to written communication for children who have difficulty printing neatly on the page. This form of writing may be effective for some children to learn as the motor plan required for cursive is easier than that for printing.
Various skills are required to be able to use scissors properly including bilateral coordination, eye hand coordination, crossing the midline etc. Our Occupational Therapists enable children to enhance their scissor skills by providing strategies to implement and practice to succeed at controlled cutting.
Occupational Therapists are knowledgeable in the effective way to grasp pencils to ensure proper control and dynamic movement of the pencil to produce legible writing. Our Therapists will enhance the root skills necessary to develop pencil grasp and control (i.e. hand skills etc) and will share various pencil grips and techniques to use to improve the control and grasp the child has on the pencil.
Our Occupational Therapist can work with children to assist them with putting their thoughts down on paper and improve their written output skills. Use of various graphic organizers can be utilized during the sessions to guide children with writing about topics and expanding on their thoughts.
Typing is an alternate form of written communication that requires dexterity and practice to be efficient and effective. Our Occupational Therapists can work with children to practice typing skills and enhance their speed of typing with practice.
Helping Children DO and PLAY
Gross Motor Skills
Gross motor skills require the ability to use the large muscles of the body in a controlled and coordinated manner to engage in every day activities proficiently. In order for a child to properly use the smaller muscles of our body, they need to strengthen and stabilize the bigger muscles of their body. Our Occupational Therapists can work on enhancing gross motor skills using fun and creative ways to enable children to move and complete tasks effectively.
Our Occupational Therapists work on meeting a child’s developmental milestone in various areas of growth including mobility, walking, running and crawling. Our therapists work closely with families to provide guidance and strategies needed to meet the child where they are at and build the necessary skills to achieve their next milestones.
Bilateral coordination is the skill of using both sides of the body together effectively and efficiently to complete tasks. Occupational Therapist engage children in fun activities to work on enhancing bilateral coordination which in turn will assist with effectively engaging in activities of daily living.
Coordination and balance are just some of the underlying skills a child needs to participate in various activities throughout their day. Our Occupational Therapists can provide strategies and activities to work on to enhance these skills and make completing daily activities less challenging and more attainable.
Being able to complete fun leisure activities is very meaningful in a child’s life. Our Occupational Therapists can work on accomplishing these activities with children by building the underlying skills necessary to achieve these goals (i.e. motor planning, balance, coordination).
Our Occupational Therapists are skilled at understanding the importance of core strength and stability as it impacts a child’s ability to engage in their every day activities proficiently. Fun and engaging exercises are practiced with the child to enhance their over all upper body strength.
In order for a child to use their body in a controlled and coordinated way, they need to be aware of where their body is in space, how their body moves, how their arms and legs relate to their body, and how their body relates to their surroundings. Body awareness is a key aspect of effectively engaging and accomplishing daily tasks. The Occupational Therapist engages the child in proprioceptive activities that provide deep pressure to the joints and allows for increased body awareness and more proficient use of the child’s body and movements.
Muscle tone is the tension one has in their muscles during rest or during movement. Muscle tone does not change but can be altered for a period of time through various activities that either stretch or strengthen the surrounding muscles to enhance functioning. A child with low muscle tone (hypotonia) may appear floppier and require a greater amount of effort to move. A child with high muscle tone (hypertonia) appears more ridged in their movement patterns and would require effort to complete the required movement. Occupational Therapists can assist with providing strategies to assist with enabling children to functioning at their optimal level of performance with the tone they have.
Helping Children DO and PLAY
Self-Care Skills
Some of the most important activities children complete on a daily basis are known as self-care skills. Being able to dress themselves, toilet, brush their teeth and hair etc, requires a number of skills for children to acquire in order to accomplish these tasks. Occupational Therapists focus on three areas, the child’s skills and abilities, the environment and the activity and work on providing the right fit in all three areas to enable a child to complete their self-care tasks as independently as possible. Whether this requires enhancing the child’s skills and abilities, accommodating the environment or modifying the activities, Occupational Therapist plural work closely with the child and the family to enhance functioning and improve performance in self care activities.
- Dressing (Zippers, Buttons, Laces)
- Brushing Teeth, Hair
- Toileting
- Planning & Sequencing
Helping Children DO and PLAY
Feeding
Occupational Therapists work closely with children and families on the meaningful tasks of Feeding to enable independence and enhance the feeding experience. Click Here to learn more about our Feeding Therapy services. Read More
- Picky Eater
- Refusing to Eat
- Use of Cutlery
- Gagging/Choking While eating
- Difficulty Chewing
- Fear of Eating
- Behaviours Around Eating
- Environmental Factors Affecting Eating
- Sensitivity to Food Textures
Helping Children DO and PLAY
Sensory Needs
Our sensory system helps us to understand the world around it. The sensory system is comprised of the ability to take in sensory information from around us and all parts of our body, organize, process and interpret that information in our brain, and respond to that sensory information accordingly. Although we are accustomed to learning about the five senses, we actually have 8 sensory systems: Proprioceptive System, Vestibular System, Interoceptive System, Tactile System (Touch), Auditory System (Hear), Olfactory System (Smell), Visual System (See), Gustatory System (Taste).
When children have sensory processing issues, they have a difficult time receiving and responding to the information from their senses. These children can present as being either hypersensitive (overly responsive to the stimuli around them) or hyposensitive (under-responsive to the stimuli around them).
Children who exhibit hypersensitivities tend to appear very sensitive to the stimuli around them. What is seen as typical environmental stimuli such as sound or light appears to be too loud or bright for their systems to process. These children appear to cover their eyes or ears often.
Children who are hyposensitive to the world around them, tend to appear to want to interact heavily with their environment to receive the sensory feedback they crave. These children may exhibit behaviours such as crashing into things, bumping into walls, touching things around them often etc.
The Proprioceptive system receives input from our joints, muscles, body and provides awareness of where our body is positioned in space. Our body needs to be able to understand the amount of pressure it needs to exert to complete certain task, i.e. lifting a tissue paper requires less work and effort than lifting a heavy box. The proprioceptive system allows children to gather information about how they are moving and utilizing space. Proprioceptive activities tend to use heavy work to provide pressure to the joints and allow for more awareness of where a child’s body is in space.
The Vestibular system is located in the inner ear and assists us with understanding where our body is in space. The position of our head tilt, gravity, linear or angular movements all contribute information to our vestibular system to assist with posture and provide feedback to allow for appropriate responses to our environment. Vestibular sensory input is very powerful and is recommended to be guided by the recommendations of an Occupational Therapist.
The Interoceptive system senses how we feel and what is happening inside our bodies. The sense of feeling hungry, cold or hot, needing to go to the bathroom are all related to the interoceptive system. Receptors in our organs send message to our brain to determine how the body is feeling. The purpose of the information is to assist the body with maintaining a balanced state. If the body needs energy, it may signal and provide a feeling of hunger. These feelings will then be addressed and allow the body to return to a state of homeostasis.
Occupational Therapists work with children to assist with determining if a child is hypersensitive or hyposensitive to any of their five senses. These sensitivities can impact a child’s abilities to optimally function in their activities of daily living throughout their day. The Occupational Therapist can provide strategies to address these sensitivities which can enable the child to engage with their environment in a more productive and effective way.
Self Regulation is an important skill for children and adults of all ages. The ability to understand and label our emotions, understand what triggered our emotions, become self-aware of our emotional reactions and build-ups and understanding how our reactions impact others are all key factors of self-regulation. An Occupational Therapist can guide children in these areas of emotional self-awareness and teach strategies to assist a child to calm and organize themselves when they feel they are in an intense emotional state. Strategies in self-regulation assists children with controlling their responses to their emotions rather than just reacting to them.
Helping Children DO and PLAY
Visual Perception
Visual Perception refers to the ability to recognize, recall, discriminate and interpret visual information that is seen. Visual perception is an underlying skill that children require to engage in various activities throughout their daily lives such as writing neatly on a page, avoiding letter reversals when printing, copying off a board, finding items in a cluttered desk, organizing and sorting items etc. There are various components to Visual Perceptual Skills. Occupational Therapists can work with children and families to enhance a child’s visual perceptual skills that may be impacting their performance in every day activities.
Ability to remember the features of a form previously shown.
Ability to visually relate the position of objects to each other.
Ability to recollect information that has been presented visually in a sequence.
Ability to identify objects if only partial components of the object are seen.
Ability to identify objects even when presented in different sizes and/or positioning in space.
Ability to visually identify the similarities and differences of a form.
Ability to attend to specific detail in a space while phasing out unnecessary information.
Helping Children DO and PLAY
Attention / Organization
Attention is the most underlying cognitive function one needs to be able to complete a task. If a child is having difficulty attending to a task, they will have difficulty completing that task effectively and efficiently. Movement is known to assist children with being better able to focus and attend to a task at hand and to enable learning. Providing movement breaks allows for blood and oxygen to flow to the brain optimizing the brain for learning. Children may appear to fidget as their bodies are seeking the movement their body is craving to focus and attend to the task at hand. Occupational Therapists work with children and their families to provide strategies to assist with focusing to enhance their functioning in every day activities. Further strategies can be provided to work on organization of self and belongings including checklists and visual schedules.
- Completing Tasks
- Fidgeting
- Organizing of self and belongings
Helping Children DO and PLAY
Diagnoses
Our Occupational Therapists can work with children with various diagnoses to assist with optimizing their level of functioning and enabling children to complete the activities that are meaningful to them as independently as possible.
- Learning Disabilities
- Developmental Delay
- Down Syndrome
- Autism Spectrum Disorder
- Cerebral Palsy
- Many more!
Why Choose Developing Hands
Pediatric Occupational Therapy?
At Developing Hands, we are truly passionate about what we do and the services like occupation therapy, speech therapy, Physiotherapy, osteopathy and more we offer. We strive to provide legendary service with every point of contact for the family. We have proudly served our community for over 12 years as leaders in Pediatric Therapy and Family Services and continue to work diligently to provide the highest standard of excellent care.
Our Occupational Therapists are fully licenced and regulated practitioners and have a range of years of experience working with babies, toddlers, pre-schoolers and school aged children. Our Occupational Therapists work collaboratively with our multidisciplinary team, as needed, to provide a holistic treatment plan for your child.
Please Contact Us for more information about our Occupational Therapy (OT) services.
Locations We Serve
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NOTE: Clinic visits are by appointment only
