Spring is here and now is a great time to take your kids outside. Outdoor activities encourage your child to take risks, solve problems, and explore independently, and promote sensory, social, cognitive, and motor challenges.
Is grocery shopping with your child a challenge? With so many products competing for the shopper’s attention, the grocery store is a full-on assault of color, noise, and confusion. It can be a challenge for kids with sensory issues to navigate this environment. In recent years, grocery pickup and delivery have become available, and for…
What Exactly IS Stimming? An easy way to understand stimming is as an action that people use in order to either make themselves have more energy or to calm down. The more accurate explanation is that the connections in our brain work best when we are able to organize the information sent from our environment…
Have you heard about teletherapy? Teletherapy is simply therapy, over the internet, through a live video connection. The treatment is very similar to what a child receives in person; it’s just done using a computer. If you’ve ever used FaceTime or Skype you’ve used the same type of technology that teletherapy uses. Teletherapy can be used with…
Play-dough has been around for ages and is a near-universal childhood toy. As an adult, even I love to knead and roll the stuff! But as much fun as play-dough is, it’s also a great choice for kids with delays and disabilities. Following are a few ways play-dough can help kids with special needs: Stress…
A few weeks ago, I shared some guidelines for how to recognize if your baby may benefit from occupational therapy, and in that post I explained that a person’s “occupation” doesn’t have anything to do with a job (at least not in the therapy sense), but actually encompasses what a person needs or wants to do…
“Why does my child often seem disorganized? I told him the same thing five times and he still did not remember! He has trouble planning and checking his work…It is difficult for him to switch from one activity to another or one thought to another. It is even difficult for my child to get started…
Many people equate the word “occupation” with a 9-to-5 job, clocking in and out, putting food on the table and a roof over their family’s heads, so sometimes people are confused when we say that their child could benefit from occupational therapy! No matter where we are in the lifespan, from infancy to older adulthood, we…
Many of my clients have great attendance to occupational therapy. I will see them for either one or two sessions per week, depending on their needs. Since occupational therapy is a client-centered profession, each session is individually tailored with two things in mind: first, the client’s immediate needs (such as their current sensory processing ability);…
A friend of mine approached me recently, concerned because her 5-year-old son’s teacher had suggested he needed to be evaluated by a psychiatrist for ADHD. The teacher colorfully described him as “inattentive” and “highly distractible” but “very smart.” Knowing that I work in pediatrics, my friend was desperate for a second opinion. I knew some…