What is occupational therapy?

Occupational therapy (OT) treatment focuses on helping people with a physical, sensory, or cognitive disability be as independent as possible in all areas of their lives. OT can help kids with various needs improve their cognitive, physical, sensory, and motor skills and enhance their self-esteem and sense of accomplishment.

Everett’s Therapy Routine

Everett receives OT 1 hour every Monday from Boost Kids (Shea). Shea has also helps him with feeding therapy and yoga. In addition to Boost Kids, he also receives 1.5 hours a week in therapy services from the local school system (speech, special ed, and OT).

A lot of what Everett’s therapy looks like is play. Which is pretty awesome, because a child’s most important job is playing after all. Everett needs extra help learning the appropriate skills and social interaction techniques to interact with other people.

Shea almost always starts Everett off with an obstacle course. This is one of Everett’s favorite things to do. He even pretends to make them at home (sometimes we do our own), or if we’re taking too long to start his session, he starts the course on his own! He loves his routines!

After the obstacle course they work on a variety of things from cutting skills to catching balls. They typically spend time working at the table (with things like drawing) and time working on more physical tasks. The physical tasks usually hit on a variety of areas, for example she’ll use a peanut ball and have him stretch to grab a puzzle piece with one hand and find it’s appropriate spot. She has him rotate his hands to work on motor planning, build muscle strength, and obviously the puzzle helps with more cognitive areas. Something you may not realize is that children with autism often have poor muscle tone, which leads to issues with balance in addition to limiting their fine/ gross motor skills. This is why the physical activities she provides are so important.

These types of activities that hone Everett’s fine and gross motor skills are really helping him to catch up to his peers.

When we started with therapy, Everett had issues with things like cutting, jumping, crab walking, and blowing bubbles. It wasn’t that he was incapable of learning it, he just lacked the motor planning capabilities. Over the last year he has grown leaps and bounds. He’s even crab walking on his own!

Shea just tested him for his yearly evaluation last week. He’s in a much higher percentile and scoring almost average in some categories! I’m so proud of him and his progress. Here are a few photos from his testing process. I loved being able to watch his skills and reasoning process.

Feeding Therapy

Here are a few photos from our feeding sessions.

When we do a feeding session, it’s always 30 minutes feeding and 30 minutes yoga. Feeding Everett is a challenge. He doesn’t eat most meats, veggies, and carbs. His diet is mostly hummus, guacamole, and fruit. We discontinued feeding therapy in the fall because we thought he was doing better and he was going to therapy right after school/lunch, so getting him to eat right away was tricky. Unfortunately, it’s starting to get worse again, so it’s looking like we’ll be starting up again soon.

Yoga

Boost Kids also offers children’s yoga classes. This is such a awesome thing. Yoga helps Everett strengthen his muscles, work on breathing skills, and he LOVES it! Every once in awhile, Everett will even request yoga during a regular OT session. Shea is awesome about accommodating his requests. One of the reasons why we love going to Shea is that she really goes out of her way to make Everett happy while still helping him achieve his therapy goals.

Yoga is truly one of Everett’s favorite things now. He brings his yoga pose knowledge home and loves working on various poses at home. His favorite is tree pose!

Home Therapy

The therapy doesn’t stop at those places either, we bring it home with us and utilize it when we can. One of the reasons we love Shea, aka Boost Kids, is that she’s willing to work with me to teach me strategies to use at home. We bring in a lot of equipment, especially from our favorite sensory shop, Fun & Function.

Here are some cool items that Shea has recently helped us with (all items can be found at Fun & Function):

Here is a weighted knot ball. Everett fell in love with this at Fun & Function HQ, and I asked Shea how to best use it for Everett. She showed me how to give him a workout with it, by having him lift it up and down a couple times and by throwing it back and forth. She also used it as a weighted lap pad while he did situps. She also suggested letting him hold it during screentime.

One of our favorites, is this compression roller. It almost instantly calms Everett down and it’s so fun to look at. In addition to rolling it across his body, he also rolls it across the floor when he does “push ups.”

Another favorite is this cool marble tracker. Everett likes to twist it into puzzles/knots and solve it. Shea recommended having Everett take lead here, limited only by his imagination!

Here we have sensory twists. This was one of the ones that stumped me. They looked fun and Everett liked squishing them, but I needed some fun activites to use them with. Shea set up little cones and let him bowl with them as well as toss them on the tops of the cones. It was such a fun game and easy to recreate at home, especially for our obstacle courses! She also said it could be a fun item for bathtub sensory integration, but we haven’t tried that yet.

We incorporate a lot into Everett’s home therapy, but we also have a lot of fun too. I try to make the activites fun, sensory friendly, and a learning opportunity. I’d love to talk more about our cool sensory stations and rad therapist, but alas, it’s bedtime and the wee beasties are definitely showing their inner monsters!

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As the applesauce hits the floor and his shirt, I knew it was coming. After turning off the tv before he was ready, I knew it was coming. After taking a phone call, interupting his music, I knew it was coming. Screaming, crying, kicking, hitting, and pinching.

I stand there and take it all.

I try to tell myself it’s just a phase, he can’t control it, or it’ll be over soon enough, just tough it out. I know that there has to be something better out there. Some magic word or phrase, some As Seen on TV miracle that will make it easier. I know I can’t be alone, but at that moment, when I’m holding back tears, I feel it. Epic, soul crushing loneliness and despair, wondering how my life got to this point. I quickly shove it away, I have a 3ft 6 bomb to diffuse after all.
That bomb? It’s my 3.5 year old Everett. He’s on his 5th meltdown of the day. Each one, progressively worse than the last one, so I know this one is going to be a battle royale. The one that is going to take at least an hour to come down from.
That day? It was a little over a month ago. Since then, I’ve been trying coping strategies nonstop.
Looking at Everett, you wouldn’t know he isn’t your average 3 year old. He makes fart sounds, loves helicopters, and is obsessed with music. You wouldn’t know that behind that sweet smile, he’s seeing the world in a way even I have issues fathoming. His world is full of hidden triggers, just waiting to go off.
The worst part of the triggers? New ones pop up all the time. Take for instance the vacuum cleaner. He used to LOVE LOVE LOVE the vacuum. I couldn’t keep him away from it. Now? I turn it on and he runs away terrified. Every day I’m discovering new triggers. Every. Day.
Welcome to the day in the life of a mom with a kiddo who has sensory processing disorder.

After trying countless methods to diffuse the ticking time bomb in my house, I’m finally feeling more like a professional hostage negotiator and less like the hostage. My head starts spinning when I start trying to list all the (anti)meltdown methods, discipline strategies, and tips I’ve tried. Lucky for you, I’m going to share some of the better ones I’ve found.

Method 1: Divert Divert Divert

Redirection folks. That’s what EVERYONE says first. “Oh your 3 year old is dragging the dog around the house by his tail? Obviously he needs heavy work! Redirect him to start XYZ!”
Pros: it refocuses their attention, and keeps you from having to put him in straight jacket. It also teaches them that the current action is unacceptable and helps them find better outlets. It works great for the long run.
Cons: it’s EXHAUSTING. With Everett constantly testing boundaries, redirection takes a ton of work, especially on the lovely 3.5 hrs a night of sleep I’m averaging.

Time In/Out

“That’s it! You can’t keep throwing blocks at your brother! Time out!” *Cue screaming and crying*
VS
“I see you’re throwing blocks at your brother. Why? Are you not wanting to share or are you wanting mommy’s attention? I think you need some time to reset and then we can address this. Let’s go to your sensory corner and do our reset xyz”
Time out pros: immediate negative consequence and removes them from the situation.
Cons: I feel like it loses it’s effectiveness and you don’t find the root of the problem.
Time In Pros: You take the time to listen to your child and find the root of the issue (children aren’t inherently “bad”), then provide them tools to help reset the balance.
Cons: it takes time and you aren’t always in a situation where you are able to give them the time needed. Also, with Everett still not having a great vocab, I can’t always figure out what the problem was.

Calming Corner

This is one of my faves. I’m actually in the middle of making a super rad one for Everett with the help of a few fantastic companies! The corner is a place where they go to self reset. You limit the outside influences (light, sound, etc) and provide a basket of sensory gear (weighted lap pad, headphones, lacing games, picture books, fidgets, etc).
Pros: it’s a great way for them to self regulate, it can help prevent and minimize meltdowns. It creates a safe place for the kids.
Cons: it can be expensive based on what you get and it can require a decent amount of space.

Breathing/Yoga

We recently started yoga with Everett’s new therapist. It has been AMAZING. I’ll be doing another blog about our experience and tips in more detail later, but here are a 3 breathing techniques:
1. Hot cocoa breath -make your 2 palms into a cup and smell or breathe in deeply like smelling hot cocoa. Then it’s too hot so blow out gently into your palms.
2. Trace the #8 in the sky or on the floor. Breathe in on the way up and out on the way down.
3. Billy Goat Gruff breaths. Open one palm and your fingers are the ‘mountains.’Use your other index finger as the goat trying to get to greener pasture. As your index finger traces up the opposite finger you breathe in and then breathe out as it traces down the finger on the open palm. (5 deep breaths)
There are a couple great kids yoga books you can find, if you’re looking to start yoga at home.
Pros: it gives both you and the kiddo time to calm down, it helps strengthen mind and body, and it teaches the kiddo coping methods for the long run. It’s also fun!
Cons: I’m not a yoga teacher, so sometimes it’s awkward for me to help him. Getting a pro to help with yoga can be expensive.




I have a couple more methods I’ll add in a bit, but right now it’s dinnertime! Be back soon!

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