A little therapy update: What is OT anyway?

Let’s talk about OT or occupational therapy. What is it and why does Ella need it?

Occupational Therapy is all about fine motor skills. The four biggest and most challenging areas for many children are coincidentally the areas in which they must fail in order to receive funding in the province of BC: washing, feeding, dressing and toileting. Ella however, will fail, inevitably as she is doing very well in all of these areas. In fact, Ella’s fine motor skills are almost on par with her peers. As mentioned before, she is 90% potty trained, spends hours putting on and taking off her clothes (which eventually end up scattered all over her floor),  she has no problem feeding herself and often tries to use a knife and knows how to brush her teeth, wash her face and hands and takes charge at bath time shampooing and rinsing her hair.

The next goals for us consequently, has to do with preparing Ella for Kindergarten. The biggest aspect of this is understanding the structures and rules which govern the classroom so that she can focus on being in kindergarten and learning through play instead of how to manage a new environment and how to sit still during circle time or follow instructions. In the OT department this takes the form of hand-eye coordination and writing. But just like in many other areas of life, writing is best developed once you know the basic foundations and “rules”. For example, how to hold a pen. Ella has held her crayon correctly even before Jakob and has always been left-handed…just like her grandpa. And while we have encouraged her to create using different mediums it has been…shall we say, freestyle.

We started with tracing circles. I will have to figure out the best way to upload some of the pdf’s we use. But to give you an idea, I just did one “o” inside of the other to form a track and put a sticker at the top. Then we say “go, go, go STOP” when she gets back around to the top. She could always draw circles, they just always came many at a time.

But now that we are introducing the alphabet and phonetics (which I will get into more when I talk about Speech and Language develop), we have started tracing letters.

The other thing we had never done with Ella were things like beading….go figure. I was able to get a ridiculous deal on a tonne of Melissa and Doug stuff so I not only did a little Christmas shopping but bought some things in the name of Occupational therapy. When using the beads again, we incorporate speech and give Ella a choice – “Do you want blue or yellow?” This is part of our goal to have Ella respond to questions appropriately even if she doesn’t have the exact sound or word. The point is the response and whichever she looks at, grabs for, or says, then that is the one we give her.

One of the birthday presents I stashed away however, was discovered prematurely when the parents were out and while I was a little annoyed, however, the pure joy they both get out of making art is a quick remedy for any ill-feelings.

So there is our little OT update. We couldn’t be happier with our therapy right now. I feel supported in my goals for Ella and she is developing in leaps and bounds. I hope you find it helpful. Have a beautiful colour-filled week!