Miles & Marley : Occupational Therapy (OT)

Now the God of all grace,

who called you to His eternal glory in Christ Jesus,

will personally restore, establish, strengthen,

and support you after you have suffered a little.

The dominion belongs to Him forever.

Amen.

1 Peter 5:10-11

Miles has been receiving Occupational Therapy (OT) from Achievable Community Interaction Therapy (ACIT). As I've stated before because Miles' Occupational Therapists understood vision and vestibular issues it allowed him to make remarkable progress during Vision Therapy.

Miles now enjoys riding Roller Coasters

since fixing some of his vestibular issues

Occupational Therapy is another challenging therapy that requires a lot of hard work on Miles' part. His therapist, Lili, tries to make the work fun by offering challenges, games and plenty of encouragement. The enthusiasm that Lili has for her work tends to rub off onto Miles. Lili has helped Miles make major gains in many areas of OT and we are confident with continued help from ACIT that Miles will reach all of his goals!

Miles with Miss. Lili

Why Would a Person With Autism Need to See an Occupational Therapist?

Occupational therapy practitioners are skilled at assessing and improving a variety of physical, cognitive, and sensory skills that are an important part of a child’s overall development. They understand how the body and mind work together. Specifically, occupational therapists address skills necessary for sensory processing, fine motor and gross motor development, visual-perceptual/visual-motor skills, motor planning, self-help skills promoting activities of daily living, and social success. Occupational therapy often helps to remediate foundational skills that are critical for the development of speech and language.

What Does an Occupational Therapist Do for People with Autism?

Since people with autism often lack some of the basic social and personal skills required for independent living, occupational therapists have developed techniques for working on all of these needs. For example:

Provide interventions to help a child appropriately respond to information coming through the senses. Intervention may include swinging, brushing, playing in a ball pit and a whole gamut of other activities aimed at helping a child better manage his body in space.
Facilitate play activities that instruct as well as aid a child in interacting and communicating with others. For the OT specializing in autism, this can translate specifically into structured play therapies, such as Floortime, which were developed to build intellectual and emotional skills as well as physical skills.
Devise strategies to help the individual transition from one setting to another, from one person to another, and from one life phase to another. For a child with autism, this may involve soothing strategies for managing transition from home to school; for adults with autism it may involve vocational skills, cooking skills and more.
Develop adaptive techniques and strategies to get around apparent disabilities (for example, teaching keyboarding when handwriting is simply impossible; selecting a weighted vest to enhance focus; etc.)

In the case of autism, occupational therapists (OT's) have vastly expanded the usual breadth of their job. In the past, for example, an occupational therapist might have worked with an autism person to develop skills for handwriting, shirt buttoning, shoe tying, and so forth. But today's occupational therapists specializing in autism may also be experts in sensory integration (difficulty with processing information through the senses) and everyday activities which include: play, learning, developing independence skills, and interacting with others, and the occupational therapist works to help children make gains in these areas. Occupational therapy practitioners look at how individuals, tasks, and settings fit together. They address the many psychological, social, behavioral, and environmental factors that affect successful and independent functioning in a child’s daily living.

This info can be found at About.com and ACIT

As with AASL (speech) the Quantity and Quality of therapy has made a difference for Miles. The care, dedication and support they provide for their clients and parents is above and beyond what most clinics provide. We are very blessed to have these therapist in Miles' life and we look forward to seeing the successes he will continue to make under their care!

Marley patiently waits while Miles works