Today we will be talking about occupational therapy. In December, we started OT with a new therapist. We absolutely love her! It is nice in therapy to change things up because different therapists have different ideas.
Kemett does OT two times a week. Below we will talk about some of the things we are working on:
Things Kemett is working on:
- Puzzles: A year ago, I talked about how Kemett was not interested in puzzles. I never thought the day would come when Kemett would even look at a puzzle. One day in November or December, he pulled a puzzle out and did it, and then proceeded to do 5 more puzzles. So, he obvioiusly was paying attention when we were working on it. Now he is interested in them, and we have actually moved up to jigsaw puzzles. He sometimes requires hand over hand cueing to correctly place pieces, but has started to identify where pieces go and is much better at seeing the “whole picture” versus individual puzzle pieces. They are harder, but he is interested in them.
- Bilateral Coordination Activities: He has improved on bilateral coordination activities in general, including putting caps on markers, holding paper while cutting, putting legos together/taking apart, stringing beads on a shoestring/pipecleaner and many more. Kemett does this in all of his therapies. He is pretty good at this and has a high attention span for it.
- Feeding: We do not work on this much because Kemett is doing really well with using his spoon/fork during meals. We will start working on some open cup drinking soon. Because of his low tone lip closure around the cup can be difficult.
- Drawing Lines: We are working on horizontal and vertical lines right now. He is getting really close to this. His coloring has gotten better and he really enjoys it. He continues to switch hands, although has recently demonstrated more use of right hand dominance.
- Cutting with scissors: Kemett is able to close the scissors, and is working on opening them up as well. This will be a skill he will need for school next year.
- Body Awareness/Safety: Kemett is getting much better with safety which means he falls less and catches himself more. The school has even noticed that he is so much safer. We still are working on body awareness. Due to his low muscle tone, it is often hard for Kemett to feel his body in space, like we can. Also, he never looks down so that makes him prone to tripping on things more easily. So we work on getting him to look down, make obstacle courses, etc.
- Object Manipulation: This is a fancy way of saying throwing, rolling, kicking, catching balls. This is one thing that Kemett doesn’t seem interested in at all. He just lays down and says night night or all done when we try. In hippotherapy he is closer to actually throwing a ball! He has shown increased interest when provided with visual input (using a mirror) and when using toys OTHER than balls, such as throwing bean bags, stuffed animals, etc.
- Upper body strength: (Prone positions) He completes other activities on his stomach to increase endurance and, back and neck extension. Kemett reads books on his stomach, on elbows. He reaches up to turn the pages. All of this helps with his back and arm muscles.
- Color sorting: I know he knows his colors, but sometimes calls everything green. But if you have him sort, he always gets them right. We are working hard on colors, shapes, etc to get him ready for next year.
- Playdough (gluten free)/Therapy Putty: This helps strengthen Kemett’s hands. We use gluten free so that he does not have an allergic reaction. His school also uses gluten free playdough.
- Independence: As with school, we are working on Kemett becoming more independent at home. We will soon start working on dressing himself in OT. We also are working on getting in and out of his carseat, going up and down the stairs, putting his plate on the counter after meals, putting clothes in the hamper, etc. It is so important to encourage Kemett to complete in age appropriate activities on his own to show him and the world how independent he can be!
I am happy that these activities, for the most part, Kemett enjoys doing even outside of therapy. He loves doing art- painting and coloring, doing puzzles, playdough, etc.
Thank you for the great question and support!