Paediatric Occupational Therapists provide skills to child and their families so they may participate and engage in activities which are meaningful to them.
If you consider “occupation” as anything that ‘occupies time’, your child already has many occupations e.g. eating, sleeping, dressing, playing, learning, drawing, running around, socialising with peers, attending to a task, and the list goes on. For a list of areas occupational therapists can work in, check out our What is OT? page.
We often divide these activities under 7 main areas:
- Self Care Tasks (e.g. toileting, dressing, eating)
- Fine Motor Skills (e.g. handwriting, opening containers and food packets)
- Gross Motor Skills (e.g. running, jumping)
- Executive Functioning (e.g. attention, planning, problem solving)
- Sensory Processing (i.e. how a child responds to the sensory environment)
- Emotional Regulation (i.e. how they control their emotions)
- Play and Social Skills
If your child has difficulty in one of these areas, or across a range of areas, Occupational Therapist may be able to help. If you are unsure whether your child needs Occupational Therapy, feel free to contact us and we can talk through some of your concerns.
