Occupational Therapy at Little Sunshine Pediatric Therapy, LLC

ADL stands for Activities of Daily Living which means self care and self help skills such as toileting, hygiene, feeding, eating, dressing and functional mobility. IADL stands for Instrumental Activities of Daily Living which safety, community participation, performance skills, meals and so much more. Does your child struggle to use snaps or have poor safety and/or social skills? Occupational therapy can help with these skills with ensuring adaptations and modifications are in place as needed while providing education to caregivers and/or parents to target and strengthen specific muscles.

Does your child struggle with poor emotional self control or have difficulties with memory during their daily routines? Executive functioning skills helps your child perform everyday tasks that requires them to think, act and figure out what to do. Their brain uses their executive functioning skills to retrieve information from learned experiences and/or may use the new information to help solve or figure out how to navigate through a problem.

Can your child find a object that your request in the family’s junk drawer? This skill helps kids locate and find information quickly on a printed page.

Does your child struggle to hold scissors upright or become frustrated with coloring activities because they can’t stabilize or hold the crayon? Are they struggling with grasp patterns and can’t pick up smaller toys. They may benefit from occupational therapy services to target fine motor control and precision skills. Fine motor skills are important and impact the way children can grasp, manipulate and hold objects and/or classroom tools. Handwriting skills also can be affected by fine motor control and postural control that impact your child’s academics.

Your child should be able to recognize objects, letters and/or numbers that are different fonts, sizes and partially hidden.Your child should be able to recognize objects, letters and/or numbers that are different fonts, sizes and partially hidden.

Did you know that Occupational Therapists can help your child with their gross motor skills? They can help work on targeting endurance, strength, posture control, core and other areas of concerns related to gross motor skills. Gross motor skills requires your child to use their large muscles to complete movements such as running, going up and down stairs, skipping, playing on playground equipment and other higher level movements that may be challenging.

Does your child crash into the floor or likes to cover their eyes and/or ears often? They may be trying to regulate their central nervous system. Sensory processing skills can be tricky to navigate but occupational therapists specializes specifically in this area. Sensory processing simply means your nervous system just received a "sensory" message and the brain will receive and organize this message with appropriate behavior responses. Some kids may struggle with motor planning, tactile discrimination, gravitational insecurity, vestibular-proprioceptive difficulties, poor body awareness and delays with auditory discrimination which means their nervous system is not processing the message correctly. Do you want to learn more about sensory processing skills? Reach out and contact our Occupational Therapist!

Does your child struggle to know where to go when given directions? Do they seem unsure where and what to do with their bodies? This skill helps your child navigate as well impacts academics such as lining up math problems.

Can your child identify if a letter or number is partially incomplete? This will help with higher level for reading speed.

Your child should be able to distinguish the differences and similarities when looking at toys, pictures, books, etc.

Can your child recall the order or sequence order of pictures, words, items and etc after viewing them? This can impact your child's academic with copying accurate information or recalling a series of letters and numbers for homework. Visual Discrimination: Your child should be able to distinguish the differences and similarities when looking at toys, pictures, books, etc.Can your child recall the order or sequence order of pictures, words, items and etc after viewing them? This can impact your child’s academic with copying accurate information or recalling a series of letters and numbers for homework.

Do you have concerns about your child’s visual perceptual skills? Visual perceptual skills are skills to process what your child’s brain and eyes interpret and understand about their environment.

Your child should be able to scan such as top to bottom or left to right which impacts reading skills.

Occupational Therapy

ADLs and IADL Skills

Executive Functioning Skills

Figure Ground

Fine Motor Skills

Form Constancy

Gross Motor Skills

Sensory Processing Skills

Spatial Relations

Visual Closure

Visual Discrimination

Visual Memory

Visual Perceptual Skills

Visual Scanning