OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY

The information provided here is aimed to help you identify issues your child is experiencing and what an occupational therapist can do to help.

Difficulties in the following areas can be helped with occupational therapy:

• Gross Motor Skills
• Fine Motor Skills
• Visual motor control & Perceptual Skills
• Self Care Skills
• Attention / Concentration Difficulties
• Handwriting Difficulties

Occupational Therapy is helpful in the following conditions:

• Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Down’s Syndrome
• Developmental Delay
• Sensory Processing Disorder / sensory integration disorder
• ADHD / ADD
• Cerebral Palsy

Common difficulties treated by Occupational Therapy:

Gross Motor Skills

Gross motor skills are essential to movement & participating in activities. It includes actions such as rolling, crawling, walking, jumping, climbing stairs etc.
Find out more about Gross Motor Skills & how OT can help.

Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor coordination involves precise, controlled hand movements to perform tasks such as cutting, pasting, coloring, and writing.
Children that have difficulty with fine motor skills will typically struggle with handwriting & tasks involving zips, buttons, laces, and cutlery.
Find out more about Fine motor skills and how OT can help.

Visual Motor Control & Visual Perceptual Skills

Visual Motor Control is the ability to coordinate visual information with motor output & Visual Perception is the ability to recognize, recall, discriminate & make sense of what we see.
Children with visual perceptual difficulties often struggle with tasks like copying work from the board, putting clothes on correctly, catching a ball, forming letters properly between lines.

Self Care Skills

Self-care involves all the routine activities necessary for childhood independence such as dressing-undressing, feeding, toileting, brushing & bathing.
In order to facilitate learning for the child, we break down each targeted activity into easy-to-learn steps. By using sensory integrative techniques & cognitive strategies, role modeling, PECS, environmental cues, repetition of skills, we tend to foster independence in self-care skills (ADL).

Attention/ Concentration Difficulties

Concentration is a skill acquired by children over time. An effective concentration requires motivation, processing of instructions, body awareness and the ability to sit relatively still for the extended period. Children also need to be able to filter out irrelevant visual and auditory stimulation.
When a child has difficulty with attention/concentration they often miss instructions & have difficulty completing tasks.
Find out more about attention & concentration skills and how OT can help.

Handwriting Difficulties

Handwriting requires a combination of many skills. If a child has difficulty with one of these skills, their overall writing performance may be weakened.
Development of effective handwriting requires gross and fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, visual perceptual skills, memory, and concentration.

Common conditions our OT helps with

We regularly provide OT assessments and treatments for the children with conditions listed below:-

Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a group of developmental disabilities that cause significant social, behavioral & communication challenges. Children have narrow & specific interest areas, repetitive behaviors, or to be over-sensitive or under-sensitive to touch, sound, taste, smell, sight etc.
We aim to identify day to day difficulties & provide treatment & techniques to manage them.

Down’s Syndrome

Down’s syndrome is a genetic condition that causes some level of learning disability & characteristic physical features. Down’s syndrome may struggle to develop their independence & self-care skills at the same stage as their peers.
Our OT will help the child to achieve maximum independence in activities of daily living & will also train parents to help the child in achieving his goals.

Developmental Delay

Developmental delay refers to a condition in which a child does not achieve his milestones ( physical & mental ) age appropriately. Delays can be in areas of gross motor skills, fine motor skills, speech & language, cognitive skills, social & emotional skills and skills required in performing activities of daily living (ADL).
Our OT can provide one to one treatment sessions, to help and train the child in completing the lag. OT will also train parents to help the child accordingly.

Sensory Processing Disorder

How a child processes and response to sensory information – sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch – can be reflected in their emotional reactions. Some children find everyday activities such as dressing themselves, overwhelming and distressing. Our therapists are skilled in helping children develop the ‘sensory integration’ necessary to manage in these circumstances.

ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)

ADHD is a condition with symptoms such as inattentiveness, impulsivity & hyperactivity. Children with such disorder find it difficult to focus on one particular activity, appear restless, has trouble in organizing & planning.Our OT can help the child in organizing strategies and by providing Structured Sensory Integration Therapy or “Sensory Diet”.