Here at Helping Hands OT, Pediatric Occupational Therapy services are provided in the areas of Fine Motor, Handwriting, Self-Help, Visual, Sensory, & Self-Regulation skills.

Some pediatric occupational therapy service definitions:

• • Core Strength: Posture and hand use depend on the strength and stability of the core/trunk of the body.

 

• Hand Dominance: Using one hand as a skilled hand and the other as a support.

• Hand Use: Reaching, picking up, placing, using objects and toys. Using a variety of grasping patterns.
  
  

 

• Hand Strength: Gripping and holding to accomplish all hand-related tasks.

 

• Bilateral Hand Skills: Using two hands together. Hands often do different jobs and both need to be coordinated together, e.g., stringing beads, cutting with a scissors, folding a paper, or tying shoes.

• Dexterity Skills: Using fingertips with precision, picking up, holding, shifting, turning and placing small objects, buttoning, & tying shoes.

 

• Tool Use: Using the many tools of childhood including: crayon, pencil, paint brush, scissors, tape, ruler, and paper clips.

Helping Hands can assist your child in these ways:

 

⦿ Holding and Using crayons/markers/pencils: Fixing awkward or ineffective use of writing utensils.

⦿ Pencil Grasp: Holding writing utensils with an efficient and
mature pencil grasp.

 

⦿ Imitating / Tracing / Copying: Imitating movements, following simple directions, forming lines, and making shapes.

⦿ Representational Drawing: Drawing simple objects and ideas.

⦿ Printing:  Using conventional letter and number formations, writing without needing to trace or copy, writing with an appropriate size, placing letters and spaces correctly, writing legibly and quickly, hand strength and endurance to write for increasing lengths of time, and writing with ease and pleasure.

 

⦿ Cursive: Learning fast, automatic, and legible handwriting through the use of cursive writing.

⦿ Keyboarding: Using individual fingers and automatic understanding of key placement to build fast and efficient typing skills.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helping Hands can assist your child in these ways:

 

 

➜ Dressing Skills: Putting on and taking off clothes, shoes, and coats.

 

➜ Sequencing: Recalling the steps needed to do a self-help task, and then doing them in the correct order.

 

➜ Closures: Buttoning, zipping, tying shoes, opening and closing containers.

 

➜ Eating: Tasting a variety of foods, textures and temperatures.  Eating a variety of foods, biting, and chewing.

 

 

➜ Drinking: Independently drinking from cups and straws.

 

➜ Using Utensils: Using spoon & fork, cutting and spreading with knives.

➜ Oral hygiene: Brushing teeth or allowing others to brush teeth.

 

➜ Blowing Nose: Tolerating Kleenex & nose wipes, blowing into Kleenex, holding and blowing into Kleenex.

 

➜ Using Bathrooms:  Expanding on initial toilet training to use a variety of restrooms in school or the community.

Some definitions:

 

 

• Understanding Lines & Curves, Shapes, and Directions: Needed for reading, writing, constructing puzzles, and drawing.

 

 

 

• Using eye musculature to make vision more efficient and useful: Needed, for example, for catching a ball, copying patterns, reading from left to right, and keeping one’s place while reading.

 

• Recalling how symbols are formed without needing to see them: Needed for reading, writing, and drawing.

 

 

 

 

• Correctly orienting letters and numbers without reversals: Needed for fast and efficient writing and reading.

 

 

Helping Hands can assist your child in these ways:

 

 

★ Tactile / Touch: Letting someone help through touching, hugging, or holding hands.  Painting, gluing, getting messy, touching food, and washing face.

 

 

 

 

★ Oral: Tolerating tooth brushing, eating a variety of foods, chewing, biting, drinking from cups.

 

 

 

★ Proprioception: Understanding where one’s body is in space and how and where one is moving, avoiding obstacles when moving.

 

 

 

★ Auditory: Improving sound tolerance and learning to use accommodations.

 

Helping Hands can assist your child in these ways:

 

☑︎ Attention and Accommodations for a Need to Move:  Developing strategies to help children improve their focus, e.g.,  standing to work or movement breaks.

 

☑︎ Self Awareness of Emotions and Actions: Identifying basic feelings of self and others as well as the impact of one’s actions on others.

 

☑︎ Self-Regulation, Strategies and Accommodations: Learning e.g.,  Zones of Regulation, Yoga, and Mindfulness. Developing a menu of helpful strategies.

 

☑︎ Planning & Organizing: Developing systems of organization, using materials, and sequencing actions.

 

☑︎ Tolerating Frustration and Developing Perseverance: Building on success.

 

☑︎ Picture Communication: Using picture schedules and systems to aid in the child’s understanding, compliance, and independence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

☑︎ Growth Mindset: Identifying “set mindset” versus “growth mindset” and learning to believe in self growth.

 

Pediatric Occupational Therapy Services: video