What is Occupational Therapy?

Welcome to part 9 of my What is Occupational Therapy, series of posts. This series is meant to help educate my readers as to what Occupational Therapy is all about, more specifically, what Occupational Therapy is for children on the Autism Spectrum or with Sensory Processing Disorder.

These videos are filmed by me, while at Occupational Therapy  with my youngest, Emmett. I hope you find these videos beneficial in some way.  My hope is that they can help you better understand what is meant when you hear someone say, “we have OT today”. I also think this is valuable for those of you with children that are going to be starting OT soon and would do better if they had some idea of what to expect.

Part 9

In this edition, you will see Emmett climbing a rope ladder. This helps to build his upper body strength among other things. Basically, Emmett picks out a stuffed animal friend that he wants to rescue. The friend is placed on the higher rungs of the ladder. Emmett’s mission is to climb the ladder and rescue his friend before crashing to the mats. As the exercise continues, the friend is placed higher and higher on the ladder, forcing Emmett to climb higher in order to rescue it.

This is the first time Emmett has tried this particular exercise. He has always avoided it because it frightened him. However, for some reason, he decided to take it on and he did really well. His favorite part is crashing down to the mat, after rescuing his little friend.

Lights, Camera, Action

Before you watch the video below, please keep something in mind. These sessions are geared for Emmett’s particular needs and may not represent what you child will experience when participating in Occupational Therapy. This should however, give you a much better idea of what to expect during your child’s OT sessions.

Now that you are informed, please enjoy.

[youtube width=”720″ height=”480″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ichrrG0_OgM[/youtube]