By admin 
Most parents who leave a doctor’s office with a referral for their child to Occupational Therapy (OT) wonder: what is this? What is this Occupational Therapy for? Does my child really need it?
OT is an important tool to assist in doing a broad spectrum of daily tasks starting from getting dressed up, brushing the teeth to even a series of operations at work place.
Childhood is testing and learning periods wherein children start developing all that they need for their entire life. Playing, apart from being a time filler and a booster for imagination, is a safe area in which children try all the actions, skills, and attitudes they will use throughout their lives. In play with toys and games, we train ourselves to jump, to run, to bend down but also to do practical things. Playing is a child’s main occupation. Known as typical children, they manage to discover many things intuitively or through a simple act of trial and error.
Children have an instinct for discovery and curiosity. Children with disabilities, however, may have motor and intellectual impairments that make this journey towards childhood development milestones more challenging.
In this article we will talk about how and when this professional can help children with disabilities to develop the autonomy necessary for a life with greater independence.
What is occupational therapy?
Occupational therapy is a field of healthcare that focuses on helping people perform everyday activities that are important to them, especially when physical, emotional, cognitive or social difficulties interfere with this ability.
Occupational therapy is a higher education profession, regulated by Decree-Law No. 938/1969 and shares the same professional council with Physiotherapy.
However, as I mentioned a little while back, OT is more related to everyday tasks change according to somebody’s age and routine. In this regard, it is a very important ally for the development and encouragement of the skills of people with different types of physical, motor, sensory, psychological, etc. barriers.
Caring for a child with disabilities, you are sometimes wondering whether physiotherapy and speech therapy are enough. Below, we explain why, if the child has been referred for occupational therapy, it is indeed important.
Each therapy deals with one thing
When the child’s disability is motor (and is related to muscles, bones, vocal and auditory systems) he/she will need the support of a physiotherapist and/or a speech therapist to help him/her achieve these milestones.
When the disability is intellectual or due to some stiffness or absence of limbs and movements, the Occupational Therapist is the professional who comes into action. This is because the demands and activities involved in daily tasks require more specialized support.
It is worth remembering that the therapies mentioned here are complementary and that the same child may need all of them at the same time, in order to be able to perform as effectively as possible in their daily lives. Children with intellectual disabilities generally need support to fully develop their speech and movement skills.
They do not work exclusively with children/people with disabilities. They can be requested at any time a child or an adult has difficulties in their daily activities, including people who suffered accidents, making their daily tasks difficult, people who suffered a stroke, cerebral palsy, and so on.
It’s easy when you know how!
Everything we do automatically on a daily basis has a series of small commands behind it that we give to our brain. However, when we are learning, it is not that simple.
Think about the number of commands you need to give yourself to perform the task, such as eating with a fork and knife: stretch your arm towards the cutlery > open your hand > grab the cutlery > make the movement of gathering the food, and so on.
In addition to a sequence of commands, we cannot forget that each person with a disability is unique and will face their own barriers. A child who is missing one hand will need different strategies to do the same task than one who has both. This is where Occupational Therapy comes into play!
Occupational Therapy Resources and Strategies
Although we have a common sense “right way” to do each thing efficiently, each person (typical or not) develops their own way of doing some things.
Occupational therapy works to develop resources so that most tasks can be performed by children or adults with disabilities.
From a psychological and sensory point of view, it also helps to overcome the barriers of cognitive rigidity, which prevents many children from touching objects with unpleasant textures, or from trying things that are different from what they are used to.
Children with disabilities: autonomy for what?
There is still a common belief that people with disabilities are completely dependent on others to do anything. This idea is obsolete and unfounded!
As children become more capable of overcoming obstacles, they should be encouraged to do as many things as possible on their own. It is the role of parents and guardians to put their children through a variety of situations without assuming that child is capable or not.
As adults, we need to encourage children with disabilities from an early age to do a variety of activities on their own, allowing them to make mistakes, get frustrated and find ways to solve problems.
Children with disabilities are responsible for showing the world their own limits. We need to give them the opportunity to discover things and to be the protagonists of their own lives.
Autonomy not only brings meaning to the life of a person with a disability, it also prepares them for adulthood and old age.