What is
Occupational Therapy?
Sum of Us Kids Occupational Therapists love helping your kids to be their best in all aspects of their lives.
Occupational therapists (or ‘OTs’) helps people to go about their day-to-day activities more easily. For children and teens struggling with any part of their development, this can range from their handwriting, to making new friends, to concentration, or longer-term challenges such as being on the autism spectrum.
Our OTs help children with a whole range of developmental challenges.
Here are just some of the things we help with:
- Autism Spectrum Disorders
- Dyspraxia
- ADHD
- Sensory Processing Disorders
- Handwriting
- Fine & gross motor co-ordination
- Social skills and self-regulation
- Self-care skills
- Feeding skills
Occupational Therapy FAQs
Things to look out for:
Movement
- Clumsy, trips often, seems a bit uncoordinated, finds it hard to throw and catch a ball or participate in organised sports activities.
Writing
- Finding it hard to hold a pencil correctly, form letters or numbers, write sentences, plan writing tasks and write age appropriate text types.
Hand Skills
- Struggling to cut basic shapes, draw simple figures or play with small objects (like beads, LEGO® or marbles)
Behaviour
- Meltdowns, finds it hard to cope with change, lack of resilience, highly emotional.
Social Skills
- Finding it hard to make new friends, pick up on body language or understanding the expected behaviour in a range of social settings.
Self-care
- Struggling to get dressed by themselves, tie shoelaces, organise themselves, or use cutlery correctly.
Eating
- Fussy eating.
Sensory Regulation
- Has difficulty regulating self due to sensory processing difficulties
Organisational Skills and Motor Planning
- Motor planning is the ability to conceive, plan, and carry out a skilled, non-habitual motor act in the correct sequence from beginning to end. … The child with motor planning difficulties may be slow in carrying out verbal instructions and often appears clumsy in new tasks.
