Occupational Therapy

Primitive reflexes are the building blocks of learned skills and motor development, coordination skills, cognitive skills and behavior patterns. Each reflex has an associated sensory -motor movement that we look for to determine age appropriate use of reflexes.  Reflexes that have not properly integrated can look like behaviors, difficulty with coordination, feeding difficulties or sensory impairment. 

Eating is one of the most multisensory activities that kids and adults do.  If your child struggles with eating due to smells, touch, taste, texture and is avoiding or eating too much, pocketing food, or gagging, this might be a sign of feeding disorders. Occupational therapy services use a sensory approach to feeding to help your child explore more foods and assist families with less stress at mealtimes. 

Difficulties with handwriting, grasping, manipulation of fasteners on clothes, using utensils or playing with hands can lead to functional difficulties in school, play, dressing, and eating. 

Occupational Therapists frequently use tools to assist patients with participating in activities important to their daily routine. These might include adapting current equipment, toys, feeding utensils, or assisting with adding equipment to the home to assist with routines.  This also might include splinting, bracing, or use of technology to best serve our patients. 

If your child struggles with daily routines such as getting ready for school, dressing, toilet management, brushing his teeth, or participating in group activities such as church, there could be an underlying problem with processing and regulation.  

We have several tools and strategies used for teaching children mindfulness, and build awareness of their feelings.  Frameworks such as; Zones of Regulation, Social Thinking Curriculum, and Alert Program gives us the tools to help support positive mental health and skill development to serve children who have trauma or emotional and behavioral developmental delay. 

If your child has difficulty visually exploring toys or his environment, loses sight of objects in view, or appears to have difficulty with tracking or fixating on objects they may have a visual processing impairment.  Children sometimes also have difficulty with perception such as locating objects, recognizing shapes, light/dark changes, face recognition. 

Therapists are trained to rehabilitate musculoskeletal injuries and post injury conditions using strengthening, mobility, and stabilities activities.  Frequently seen injuries include brachial plexus injury, fractures, hand and wrist injuries from falls, knee pain during growing, foot pain, ACL tears, concussions. 

Kids In Motion has a comprehensive bowel and bladder program that includes biofeedback games to help children identify and use the muscles needed for toilet management.  This program is non-invasive and parents are encouraged to participate throughout the duration of this training to help children get the most out of the program.  

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Children can be under or over responsive to the many stimulus in their day to day environments.  Responses such as disliking noise, not responding to name, avoiding or seeking the dark, covering eyes, avoiding getting messy, difficulties with dressing, rubbing or scratching, craving or avoiding foods, excessive chewing and mouthing, or walking on toes are a few of the common signs of sensory processing dysfunction. 

Children who have difficulty with higher level cognitive tasks such as time management, organization and planning, and poor judgment may benefit from occupational therapy.  We frequently treat children who have difficulty with attention, flexibility in thinking and problem solving,