Paediatric occupational therapy, Alderley

Cooee’s Occupational Therapists are all trained to take a relationship based, developmental approach to working with all children,  including children who are Autistic.

Our therapists adopt a neuroaffirming approach to working with children who have neurodevelopmental differences.  You can read more about that on our blog!

Children who are Autistic can benefit from Occupational Therapy to support their development and also to support families make adjustments and advocate for their children where needed.

Occupational Therapy can help Autistic children:

• develop play & engagement skills
• understand their own sensory differences
• learn interoceptive awareness
• strengthen fine motor, gross motor & coordination skills
• apply strategies to improve organisational skills
• complete activities of daily life

You can read even more about how OTs work with Autistic Children here!

Get started with Cooee by booking a Client Journey Planning Session!

Learning to write letters is a core part of a child’s first few years of schooling. Generally during children’s early years they learn to grasp a pencil or crayon and make marks on a page, then they learn to control this during their second to third year of life, and during their third to fourth year they start to draw shapes and create drawings of familiar scenes such as their family or house. These are the precursor skills to writing letters.

If your child has difficulty drawing in general, writing letters is going to be tricky. Cooee Speech Pathology offers a developmental approach to letter writing that is fun and engaging.

Reasons to seek assistance

• Your child is halfway through Prep and still cannot write all lowercase letters.
• Your child is in Grade 1 and still using capital letters in writing.
• Your child’s teacher reports that they avoid handwriting in class or appear exhausted after writing.
• Your child is in Prep/Grade 1/Grade 2 and cannot read their writing back to you (and you cannot read it).
• Your child is in kindergarten (4 years of age) and doesn’t engage in any drawing.
• Your child is in kindergarten (4 years of age) and cannot draw a house or person.
• Your child is in Grade 1/Grade 2 and is unable to place their letters on grade appropriate lines.

If you are concerned about your child’s handwriting, please call our paediatric occupational therapy clinic and book in for a short assessment session. Handwriting therapy is typically provided weekly.

What you can expect from paediatric occupational therapy

• Ability to write all letters in lowercase appropriately.
• Ability to draw a person or house appropriately.
• Ability to write all letters, upper and lowercase on grade-appropriate lines.
• Ability to write using a pencil with fluid finger movement and be less exhausted when writing.

Some children have increased difficulty keeping their body still or in one spot during carpet time or in the classroom, others find it hard to focus on what they need to, and others hide under desks because everything is too overwhelming. These are all signs of a child finding it hard to process the information coming in from the world around them.

If your child’s educator is reporting that your child is constantly on the go when they should be still, or they don’t seem to be registering what the teacher is saying, it might be time to see a paediatric occupational therapist to gain further insight to how your child processes the world and what strategies can be utilised to help them engage.

Reasons to seek occupational therapy for kids

• Your child is constantly on the go and won’t even sit to eat.
• Your child finds it hard to wind down for bed time.
• Your child finds it hard to sit still at kindergarten.
• Your child has difficulty responding to their educator.
• Your child is regularly covering their ears or becoming upset with certain sounds or touch inputs.

Please call our Alderley clinic to book your child in for a sensory processing assessment session. Depending on the outcomes of assessment a report may be provided with strategies to try and then a review session at a later date, or if paediatric occupational therapy is required, sessions should be booked weekly or fortnightly.

What you can expect from child occupational therapy

• Strategies to assist your child to better process and respond to the world around them.
• Ways to present things so that your child can understand.
• Tools to help your child regulate their body so that they can access their work in class.

Paediatric occupational therapists can provide assessment to find out why children might have difficulty following directions, following a classroom routine and organising themselves to complete tasks. These skills are known as our executive functions and help us to process what is happening at any given point and manipulate information in our head to respond appropriately.

By the time your child is three years old, they should be able to follow one or two step directions and be comfortable with a routine. By the time they are three to four years of age, they should be able to organise themselves and plan what they need to do to carry out basic tasks, such as getting the milk out and a cup ready for a cup of milk. By the time they are in Prep they should be able to predict a common routine e.g. at bath time they will put their clothes in the washing basket and get a towel ready; as well as follow multi-step instructions such as ‘get your book and pencil out, rule a margin and write the date’.

Reasons to seek assistance

• Your child cannot follow single step instructions by three years of age.
• Your child has difficulty organising themselves in play, such as getting a pan out and popping play food in to ‘cook dinner’.
• Your child is in Prep and has difficulty following two or three-step instructions.
• Your child cannot remember to do tasks that are part of their everyday routine, such as putting their bag in their room when they get home.
• Your child has difficulty planning out what they need to do for a task in the classroom.
• Your school-age child cannot get their thoughts on the page.
• Your child has difficulty holding concepts in their mind and using them in problem-solving activities e.g. strategies or formulas in maths or organising a story.

If you are concerned about any of the above, we suggest calling the clinic and booking your child in for an executive function assessment session. Following assessment a report will be provided with strategies to assist with improved function and a review session scheduled.

What you can expect from paediatric occupational therapy

• Strategies to help your child follow directions appropriately at home and school.
• Strategies to help your child to plan what they need to do.
• Modelling and coaching to support your child develop these important skills.

Playing with other children can be a tricky thing for some kids. There are lots of factors to consider in play, including being able to manipulate objects to use in play, being able to plan a play sequence, knowing how to respond to another child, knowing how to negotiate and being able to communicate with other children.

Occupational therapy for kids focuses on helping children achieve their occupational roles, which includes being a player and a friend. Children typically will play on their own until nine to 12 months of age, then start to look onto other children’s play. Following this, at around two years of age, children begin to engage in some parallel play (playing beside another child but play is independent). Interactive play with other children starts around two-and-a-half years to three years of age. Between three and four-and-a-half years of age, children’s play evolves a lot and they start to play working towards common goals and problem solving together in imaginative play sequences and games with rules.

Reasons to seek occupational therapy for children

• Your child is 18 months to two years old and isn’t onlooking into other children’s play at all.
• Your child is three years old and isn’t interacting with other children in play.
• Your child is four years old and still prefers to play on their own, doesn’t show interest in play with others and isn’t joining in on group games or imaginative play.

Play therapy is typically provided fortnightly and on occasion consultatively. Please call our child occupational therapy clinic and book in for a play assessment session if you are concerned about your child.

What you can expect from child occupational therapy

• Improved ability to engage in imaginative play.
• Improved ability to play with and interact spontaneously with peers.

Fine motor skills

Typically children begin developing their fine motor skills from around three to six months old, when they start to use their hands and grasp objects. Children start to refine their skills over the next six to 12 months, where by 18 months of age they start to use pincer grips and isolate fingers. By two to two-and-a-half years of age, children can typically grasp a pencil and make marks on a page. By three-and-a-half to four years of age they should be able to draw basic shapes such as circles and squares, as well as starting to draw diagonal lines and be interested in connected drawing e.g. drawing a person or a house, as well as be able to manipulate small objects within their hands and fingers.

Gross motor skills

Children start their gross motor development right from the get-go, pushing against you and their cot walls to get feedback through their joints about how their body moves and works. Core strength and stability is central to most gross motor activities.

Paediatric occupational therapy focuses mostly on core stability rather than all gross motor skills, as this is important for body regulation, stability in seated postures and stability for fine motor activities.

Reasons to seek assistance

• Your child is four years old and cannot manipulate small objects in their hands.
• Your child is four years old and refuses to draw or cannot form the lines in the above paragraph.
• Your child is four years old and isn’t able to draw a basic house or person.
• Your child is W sitting (sitting with legs in a W or M pattern when you look down over them).
• Your kindergarten-aged child cannot stay seated in an upright position while playing for longer than ~10 minutes.
• Your child raises their shoulders to write or draw.
• Your child is really wiggly when doing a seated activity.
• Your child constantly moves fast when in the playground or classroom and isn’t able to perform slow, controlled movements.

Call the clinic to book your child in in for a gross or fine motor assessment session with our child occupational therapists. Handwriting therapy is typically provided weekly.

What you can expect from occupational therapy for children

• Improved finger movement when drawing.
• Improved grasp patterns.
• Improved ability to maintain a strong stable posture when doing tabletop tasks or sitting on the floor at carpet time.
• Decreased wiggliness.
• Improved connected drawing skills.
• Decreased avoidance of tabletop tasks.

As children grow and develop from a young age, they learn what feelings are and how they can regulate those feelings. From infancy they experience upset when their basic needs aren’t being met and quickly learn that there is someone that will help them with satisfying these needs. As children move into their toddler years (around two to four years of age) they begin to learn how to manage their big feelings alongside a parent or caregiver and they learn strategies to help them cope.

Children begin to learn what is an appropriate emotional response to certain events and how they can manage themselves in these situations. Over the first few years of schooling they start to refine these skills and regulate their emotions and body to be able to engage in everyday life.

Reasons to seek occupational therapy for kids

• Your child has regular emotional outbursts about seemingly nothing.
• Your child gets worked up over something upsetting or frustrating and they don’t know how to calm or you can’t help them calm.
• Your child has regular meltdowns for prolonged periods of time.
• Your child finds it hard to describe what they are feeling and therefore can’t manage what they are feeling.

Emotional regulation therapy is typically provided weekly by our paediatric occupational therapists. If you are concerned about your child, please call us to book a short assessment session.

What you can expect from child occupational therapy

• Ability to recognise emotions based on body cues.
• Upskilling children and their caregivers to help co-regulate emotions.
• Improved understanding of appropriate responses to emotions.
• Improved ability to manage emotions at school and home.