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Occupational Therapy?

What do OTs do?

Challenges at home and play are frequently identified early by parents but the reasons are often unfamiliar to parents.

 

Seeking assessment plus guidance from an Occupational Therapist can help give parents direction as partners in helping their child succeed, and reduce confusing or challenging behaviours.

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Working with an OT can also improve age appropriate socialisation  successfully with peers, and avoid any decrease in self-confidence and self-esteem or in increased anxiety, which could each compound to act as a barrier to progress, especially once they enter school.

How does OT help?

Success within the academic and hidden curriculum of school is often more complex than within the home, as for many children the school environment has a significant effect on process and performance.

 

Social skills and social thinking are vital for group and paired work and social inclusion is considered a top priority for happiness at school for girls.

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The foundation of many academic skills and successes include good:

  • bilateral integration

  • gross and fine motor skills

  • eye-hand coordination

  • praxis skills (planning, organization, sequencing)

  • visual perceptual skills

  • memory

  • attention

  • sensory processing

Why use Donna?

Experienced Occupational Therapists excel at identifying which underlying components or skills may be weaker and determine how to remediate or compensate for those to allow the child to reach their full potential.

 

Successful occupational therapy ideally requires a coordinated effort between therapist, child, family and school, a team in which Donna works efficiently and comfortably.

 

Six years experience facilitating weekly small social skills groups, based on Social Thinking principles (Michelle Garcia-Winner) is a specialty area of Donna’s practice that works to help kids with weaker social skills, which are needed in all envirionments throughout life.

 

Many kids prefer to work on improving their social skills outside their school environment where  they can interact with peers with which they may have no social history.

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