How Does Occupational Therapy Help Young Children

    7:50PM Mar 25, 2024

    Speakers:

    Priscilla W.

    Cindy Croft

    Gina Gibson

    Keywords:

    childcare provider

    kids

    child

    parents

    sensory

    services

    sensory processing

    behaviors

    work

    podcast

    hard

    occupational therapist

    provide

    cindy

    skills

    occupational therapy

    seek

    frazier

    school

    support

    Welcome to Inclusion Matters produced by the Center for Inclusive Child Care, aka, CICC. Were located at inclusivechildcare.org.

    Welcome to Inclusion Matters, a podcast of the Center for Inclusive Child Care. I'm Cindy Croft, Executive Director of the Center, and I'm here with my colleague Priscilla Weigel, assistant director. Hi, Priscilla. Hi Cindy, good to be here. And we're excited today to have Gina Gibson with us. She's an occupational therapist, with Frazier in Minnesota. And so we're going to do some series on sensory processing and some other things that she works with as an OT. And so welcome.

    Yeah, thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

    So first, before we begin, could you tell us a little bit about your role as an occupational therapist?

    Yea, so I'm an Occupational Therapist at Fraser. So my day to day role works with kids on building their independence, so that they can do their self care skills, they can work on their fine motor skills. And then we work a lot on sensory processing. I also partner with community organizations to help make experiences more sensory inclusive and inclusive to people with all needs and abilities and across all ages.

    Okay, great I bet that's very interesting and really helpful for the organizations who are trying to provide positive things, experiences and also those individuals who are used to feeling like, oh, no, this person is not going to understand me, and they're not going to know what I need.

    And also to get our families out in the community and get to have those experiences that all other families get to have as well.

    That's great support. So today, we wanted to talk with you just because of the work that we do out in childcare, there are a lot of questions about occupational therapy, and what that means and what that does to support children in their development. So we thought we just asked you to just give a little background on occupational therapy and what kind of supports you provide.

    Awesome, yeah, so when we're describing occupational therapy to the parents of the children that come in, to meet us for the first time, we kind of break it down into three areas. So they're those self care skills, fine motor skills, and then sensory processing. So depending on the child's age, that's going to be indicative of what skills they should be able to do. And then we kind of compare them to other kids at their same age level to see if there are some areas where there are delays, where some services could be helpful to help them catch up.

    So typically, I would guess that either their parents or other professionals who are spending time with the child know of some behaviors that would make them think there's something more going on here, we need to seek further help. What are some of the things that bring people in to you?

    Yeah, I think a lot of it is pretty evident with attention span. So when kids are having a hard time coming and sitting at a table, and really focusing on activities, that can be a big red flag to parents that something is seeming different, a lot of parents kind of compare kids to if they are a second born, they might compare them to their firstborn, and say, I remember my other child was doing this at this age and now this child is seeming to have a harder time. So it's kind of that difficulty with engagement. Sometimes, imitation skills can be hard. So if you are building a tower with some blocks, and then you ask your child to do it, and they're having a hard time understanding that imitation, that can be another reason why they might seek us out for services.

    Okay, alright, so one thing that we do a lot of is we support childcare providers, and including children, and also helping them have those healthy experiences. And so we get some calls from folks who have concerns about these very things, but also additional things like some behaviors, some behaviors that might be seen as challenging to a provider a childcare provider. So what are some things that are common that you note, in addition to that attention, and, and sitting at the table and those things?

    Yeah, I think especially with little kids, a thing that gets brought up to us a lot is, is this a behavioral problem or is this a sensory problem. So really trying to find a way to differentiate those between those two options, that's going to be important to then know how to provide an intervention because if it is surely something that's more behavioral, and you're providing with sensory supports, then you might be reinforcing a behavior, rather than if it truly is a sensory difficulty and you're say, having a child take a break, or maybe take a timeout, then their body is missing some sort of sensory support. So we have to do a lot of analysis of these behaviors to figure out what's causing them in order to then be able to provide those interventions and it's tricky.

    Yeah, I would bet that it is and we know we're going to talk in a later podcast about more that more of that process. And that process of determining whether or not that child does have a disorder. Or if it's behavior, then that's something that you can work with the childcare provider, the parents and that child, right, that whole to work on patterns and those things. But Cindy, did you have something you wanted to add? I'm sorry, I didn't want to cut you off.

    No, but I was I was curious. So you work? Would you go into childcare programs to provide services? Or typically do children have to come to you?

    Yeah, so at Frazier, we offer all outpatient services. So the families come to us. A lot of the kids that come to us for services also get either in home through school, or they might have at their school services as well. So sometimes those services kind of overlap, but they do have different focuses. So our occupational therapy services in the outpatient setting focus a little bit more on those life skills. So some of the sensory skills versus the school setting might be a little bit more based in like academics. So we are a medical service. So we're provided through health insurance, versus the school is a free program, as long as kids qualify. Some kids who don't qualify through the school can qualify for medical services. So the requirements are a little different.

    So people who are listening to this podcast are probably childcare providers, or teachers in classrooms, and so I'm thinking they, they're listening, and they might be thinking, oh, I have a child in mind that I think that they tend to have, they're tending to have maybe some unusual sensory sort of reactions, but I don't really know what to do. And I know when in a follow up podcast, you're going to talk about how you would evaluate a child, but just in those very, very early stages where the provider working with the child, what would you say that they should maybe be looking for or doing just in this early stage before an OT has gotten involved? Or there's been a medical intervention or there's been a school, early childhood special education intervention.

    Yeah, I think a lot of parents start getting asked these questions at their Well Child visits. So their doctors might be the one that initiate the conversation. If parents are noticing things on their own, they could bring that concern to their doctor, and their doctor might refer them to an organization like Frasier to do that more in depth evaluation. Some of the things that I think are, are the most well thought of sensory difficulties have to do with kids who are very reactive to loud sounds. But then on the opposite side of that is the kids who have a hard time filtering out background sound, so then they might not be responding to their name, or they might not be following directions, because they're hearing everything else that's happening in the room at the same time. You might see kids who have a lot of sensitivities to the textures of clothing, they might not like certain fabrics, or feeling that tags touching their skin. They might really be seeking out things in their environment by kind of bumping into things or seeming clumsy and not necessarily aware of their room, or there's those kids who are just in constant movement. They seem like they could spin and spin all day long and never get dizzy. And so then they have a hard time with those seated activities. So kind of when it when it's something that's interfering with their ability to get through just their regular daily routine, that's when it's something where parents would maybe want to seek out some additional support,

    Great, that's very helpful. And so for anyone listening, probably then the they would, that next step would be to talk to the family and see if they're noticing anything and then talk about a referral. And then and then we'll talk more about that in a subsequent podcast. Thank you so much, Gina. Yeah, very helpful. Yeah. I'm sure people listening are thinking oh, that is they may have a child in mind. Or they may be thinking, yeah i remember a child I had who had some of those characteristics. So thank you very much.

    That's all for now. See you next time.