“Wait…you are an occupational therapist…who works with children? Aren’t there child labor laws prohibiting that kind of thing?”
This was a real question. I had been an occupational therapist for only a couple of years at the time, but I remember thinking that the guy asking me was not that smart or not that worldly. Either way, I had to figure out how to answer him to hopefully enlighten him, because SURELY he should know better! (Haha)
Over the many years I have now practiced as an occupational therapist, I have come to expect questions like this one. Some people introduce me as a speech therapist (“you do work with kids with special needs, right?!”); some people introduce me as a physical therapist (“well you are kind of like a physical therapist because you work with muscles and help people get stronger.”). To be honest, some days I feel like a speech therapist, and some days, I feel like a physical therapist, but I am neither of these. I am an occupational therapist. I also work with children. So what does that mean, and what the heck do I do?
Occupational therapists work in many different areas, and that is because the “occupation” part of our title was given to us many years ago, when an occupation was better understood as any activity that a person spent time doing. Occupation certainly could be a job, but it could also be past times, hobbies, or any meaningful activity that a person participated in. Now that occupation is synonymous with a profession or work, the profession of occupational therapy gets a little misunderstood. Hopefully, I can help shed some light on that!
Occupational therapists work with individuals of all ages, of all abilities. One of our superpowers is to analyze a task or activity to figure out why a person might be having difficulty with it. You can find occupational therapists in hospital settings, outpatient settings, schools, nursing homes, and also in the home health setting after an illness or injury. You may even find occupational therapists in some non-traditional places, like in dance studios working with dance teachers to assist children of all abilities; or corporations working on the ergonomics of the work environment. We occupational therapists can show up in a variety of settings, helping identify the difficulties in tasks and modifying those tasks to allow individuals to work smarter and become more successful and efficient. So that is why we work with children…to identify what their strengths are and what areas are contributing to their challenges.
Working with children, occupational therapists assess a variety of areas. Typically, the parent or caregiver will identify some concerns and/or tasks that his child is having difficulty with, and the occupational therapist will assess many factors that contribute to the child being successful with the task. Those could include, posture, strength, attention, sensory processing, visual perceptual skills, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, sequencing tasks, and much, much more. Once the underlying challenges are identified, the therapists will work directly with the child and family to help strengthen the problem areas, make modifications until the child is able to effectively complete the task independently, and help educate the child, parent, and other caregivers, such as teachers, to ensure that the child is successful in the occupations he wants or needs to participate in his daily life.
It is not new news that children on the autism spectrum typically have difficulty with communicating and socializing. This, in fact, is criteria for obtaining an autism diagnosis. Many times parents notice these differences as first signs that their child may not be developing along the typical developmental sequence. Parents may notice difficulty connecting with their child or that their child seems to enjoy playing with objects more than playing with them.