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Pediatric occupational therapy helps children perform essential learning and developmental activities. By practicing different occupational tasks, children begin to develop and strengthen fine motor skills, hand and body motions, coordination, visual perception, and muscle development. How can you tell if your child needs occupational therapy to help with these skills? The following signals may help answer this question. Your child may benefit from occupational therapy if: They have poor concentration and do not pay attention to specific tasks. Their hands tire easily or if they have weak fine motor skills, such as grasping a pencil. They are under or overly..  - Read More

The act of playing is extremely important in childhood development. Through different play activities, children are able to understand their environment, develop physical coordination, practice social skills and gain self-confidence. Occupational therapy helps children develop such skills, as specific toys are typically used to achieve goals while allowing the child to have fun. The Hands on Fun OT Program comes with a specialized kit of toys that are to be used during each occupational therapy activity worked on at home. All of the toys included provide appropriate challenges so that your child will learn while having fun. Each item builds..  - Read More

Visual perception, or visual processing, is the brain’s ability to make sense of what the eyes see. It plays an important role in development, as it affects a child’s ability in reading, writing, solving math equations, memory, completing puzzles and many other skills. Weak visual perception holds a child back from accomplishing these daily tasks, which can cause low self-esteem and a decline in academic performance. Occupational therapy can be very beneficial for strengthening visual perception in children. Through different OT activities, a child can improve their ability in visual tasks, stay engaged in academics, complete self-care tasks, develop a..  - Read More

Autism is classified as a developmental disorder that affects brain functions, creating social impairments, difficulty in communication and restricted behavioral patterns. While there is a wide spectrum of the severity of autism, some autistic children could greatly benefit from occupational therapy services. Children with autism typically suffer from sensory problems and are delayed in developing certain behaviors and social skills. Occupational therapy can help a child with their independence and competence because it focuses on the performance enhancement of daily activities. Some of the challenges that occupational therapy can help a child with autism overcome include the following: Feeding themselves..  - Read More

Before you start implementing occupational therapy practices at home, we suggest performing a postural analysis on your child. This kind of analysis helps to identify which muscle groups are over or under developed. By examining your child’s entire body, you will be able to assess the balance between the flexor, extensor and rotator muscle groups from their head to their toes. Please see below for the definitions of these muscle groups. Flexors work to bend a joint. They create motion and activate other muscle groups. When you flex a muscle, your flexors contract and pull on the bone, creating a..  - Read More

Fine motor skills are precise thumb,   finger, hand and wrist movements. These small movements can range from picking up objects to using a pair of scissors, and are extremely important in any child’s development. Many parents may not know how developed their child’s fine motor skills should be at certain ages, so we have put together a timeline for you to follow and check against. Newborn – 3 Months: Babies will react to objects and try to reach for them, but will be unable to grab them. As vision develops and it works with grabbing, infants will be able..  - Read More