School-based OT: What do parents want to know? (Part 1)

Parents are often looking for ways to support their child’s development by incorporating therapy techniques, strategies, and ideas at home. In order to truly implement new ideas and strategies, it helps when parents feel that therapeutic strategies for home are manageable and that their efforts will truly improve their child’s participation in daily activities.

Research by Benson et al. (2015) shows that parents of children at school receiving occupational therapy want to know two things:

1. What is being done with my child during OT intervention?

2. What can I, as a parent or caregiver, do at home to support my child?

Parents, hopefully, this can answer some of your questions and at least lead you to seek out more information from your child’s school-based OT.

Question 1: What is being done with my child during OT intervention?

Answer: The first thing to understand about occupational therapy in schools is that it aims to support a child in their role as a student, across the school day. What does this mean? Well, for starters, let’s look at all the different occupations that take place at school.

Occupations at school include (but are not limited to):

• Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) - self-care skills such as dressing/undressing with coats, jackets, backpacks, and shoes, eating & drinking at snack time or lunch period, managing school materials (books, pencils, crayons, scissors, glue sticks, etc.).

• Play - structured play activities such as gameplay in physical education classes, or unstructured play activities such as during recess, on the playground, and/or free time at school.

• Social Participation - communicating with others, building relationships with peers and staff, social-emotional learning, and managing behavior and emotions.

• Education - helping kids to participate in academic learning tasks - reading, writing, math, science, and social studies classes. Engaging in active learning tasks - handwriting, cutting paper with scissors, typing & keyboard skills, coloring, etc.

• Health Management - taking care of physical and mental health, learning about sensory health and sensory processing, and managing one’s sensory processing needs during the school day.

• Work - skills & tasks that build work readiness, such as preparing items for use (i.e., setting up materials for science experiments), keeping an organized desk/workspace during learning activities, throwing away or cleaning up items after activities are complete (getting rid of the trash, putting classroom supplies back where they belong, following directions).

What is My Child Doing in OT at School?

If your child receives OT at school, what they do during OT sessions will depend specifically on their IEP goals and objectives. Maybe your child is getting play-based therapy with lots of changes in body position or use of equipment like a swing to help build their muscle strength and fine motor skills so they can utilize a pencil with ease. Maybe your child’s OT is collaborating with the teacher to build in games, practice, and strategies for muscle strength development all day long. It is possible that your OT may work with your child individually in the classroom, or in a quieter 1:1 therapy environment. They may also work with your child in a small group to foster social participation and play skills with peers. Your child’s therapist might even be working with them in a natural context of the school day to build real-time skills in real-life situations (such as working on handwriting legibility during language arts class, or scissors skills during art class). If you have any questions about what the OT is doing with your child, contact them or your child’s case manager. During your child’s annual review IEP meeting each year, ask the OT what types of activities they like to do and why.

This leads us to the next big question for parents: “What can I do at home to support my child?” We will save this for our next post. Stay tuned!

Reference:

Benson, J., Elkin, K., Wechsler, J., & Byrd, L. (2015). Parent perception of school-based occupational therapy services. Journal of Occupational Therapy, Schools, and Early Intervention, 8, 126-135. https://doi.org/10.1080/19411243.2015.1040944