When people with disabilities have access to occupational therapists, this can be extremely valuable for helping them achieve their goals by being active and becoming independent.
What Occupational Therapy Aims For?
The aim of occupational therapy is to improve the health and wellbeing of patients by assisting them with daily activities. The activities covered here range from self-care activities like bathing, dressing, and preparing and eating food to more practical ones like working, participating in community activities, discovering and engaging in hobbies, and interacting with others.
Occupational therapists specialize in identifying what is important to patients – their goals and aspirations – and determining how best they can achieve these things. The person with the disability might need to adjust his or her environment in order to make the activity more accessible, or the activity itself might need to be adjusted so that it’s within their skill set.
There Are Three Main Ways To Summarize An Occupational Therapist’s Role:
- As part of their work, they help their patients enhance their knowledge and skills.
- By finding new ways to do activities, they can assist the person with a disability to continue to do them.
- A person with a disability is provided with an environment that is tailored to meet their needs
Occupational Therapy And Learning
Most people don’t realize how common learning disabilities are. One out of ten people suffers from a learning disability. A child might have difficulty with speech, listening ability, or a number of academic subjects, such as math, writing, or reading, as a result of this.
It is possible for people of all intelligence levels to have learning disabilities, regardless of how skilled they are in one area. Early intervention is crucial for managing the challenges that children with learning disabilities face, and some warning signs to watch for include:
- Having difficulty focusing on one thing at a time, and being easily distracted
- In particular, the handwriting is messy and poor
- Speaks in the wrong way when ordering sentences
- Reverses the order of letters in a writing
- Has particularly clumsy movement for their age
As soon as you observe these issues in your child, it’s a good idea to speak with your physician so that the diagnosis of a learning disorder can be received and then speak with the best pediatric occupational therapy specialist as soon as you can.
How Occupational Therapists Can Help
Occupational therapists work closely with children and families with learning disabilities to design a schedule and approach that is uniquely tailored to each child’s unique challenges and abilities.
There are a wide range of things that an occupational therapist may recommend or conduct within that scope, including:
Adjusting The Environment
An occupational therapist will observe where a child studies or learns, and will provide recommendations on what additional equipment should be introduced into that environment. For example, a child may benefit from having access to a specific tool.
Adjusting The Schedule
As part of the occupational therapy assessment, the occupational therapist will look at the child’s routines to determine if they are appropriate for their learning disabilities. Children may benefit from more frequent, shorter breaks, for example. It might also be beneficial to structure their day in a particular way. In order to improve the child’s outcomes, the occupational therapist will help develop a new routine.
Assistance With The Learning
Additionally, the occupational therapist will help the child develop and use learning techniques. A cognitive behavioral therapist might help the child learn self-regulation and improve their alertness, for example. A sensory assessment might be conducted or tools might be provided to improve writing skills.
Depending on the specific nature of their learning difficulty, as well as their general personality and preferred working conditions, every child experiencing learning difficulties will have very different needs. For children with learning disabilities, occupational therapists are invaluable due to their ability to develop solutions without any hard-and-fast rules.
Children can be frustrated or even distressed by most learning environments that are designed to be “one size fits all”. Children learn better when the occupational therapist tailors the environment for them, resulting in a happier and more fulfilling learning experience.
Occupational therapy is just one of the many therapy options that Hope AMC Dubai can help you find. Book your appointment today!
