What do therapy sessions looks like
As each child is totally different, each treatment session is totally different. One aspect that is certain, your child will not know that they are having therapy. They will know that I am there to help them build on their strengths, learn about themselves more and challenge themselves to help improve things that can be ‘tricky’. My aim is to make sessions play based as much as possible and for the children to learn through fun, joyful experiences.
Read more below:
Therapy approaches
Below are samples of the approaches I use with children. I always have a plan for each session but I adapt my plan depending on what the child brings to the session. Flexibility is extremely important to maintain rapport and work on specific issues that become apparent as we are ‘playing’.
Rapport first, listening, observing and checking in even as we walk from the classroom to the therapy room helps me judge how to tailor activities to help ensure the session goes well. Always trying to make it fun helps develop neuroplasticity in the brain (see resources for more information).
Self Regulation
Is your child struggling more than their peers to sit still, have varied attention, can follow requests sometimes but depends on how 'they are feeling/what they are doing', having reports that your child is struggling with class routines or listening at school but is no problem at home? Your child could be struggling with regulation difficulties.
Regulation is very important and affects so many areas in our lives.
Coping with 'big' emotions and impulse control are just 2 areas of regulation.
It’s not about ‘fixing the problem' for the child but helping them, initially with our support (co-regulation with the parent/teacher and therapist) to establish self awareness and coping strategies. Then we move on to develop self regulation to change the re/action to situations.
The alert program and/or zones of regulation are just 2 ways of supporting a child. Others are using the DIR floortime approach and sensory integration (see below and in qualification section for further information). This area is a huge area and often needs a combination of approaches to help first understand what is happening for the child and then providing strategies to help them grow.
Attention difficulties
Thorough assessment is needed to ascertain the cause of the lack of focus.
‘S/he is just ignores me and zones out but s/he can focus for ages on Lego or screen time.'
This is an extremely complex area. There are a lot of different reasons including issues with postural control, eye issues, auditory processing (how the child hears and processes verbal information, filtering of sensory input (focusing on the non important stuff), issues with regulation (engine too high or too low), unaware of own body needs (temperature control, hunger, toileting) among other areas.
Click on the photo to take you to resources for further information on sensory integration.
Sensory integration (SI)
SI is the process of assimilating sensory information from our body and enviroment for use.
To simplify this complex subject:
- Think about a computer - our senses (hearing, vision, touch, taste, smell, movement/vestibular, force regulation and joint position/proprioception, how we feel internally/introception) are what is imputed or keyed into a computer,
- Our brain, midbrain and brain stem in particular processes that information (correctly and usefully or misfiring)
- The output or outcomes include our attention, self-regulation, movement, social interaction, expression of self and self esteem.
Children on the Autism spectrum
Supporting children to achieve their best selves
I thoroughly enjoy supporting parents help their child achieve their maximum capacity. I used a wealth of experience and different skills to support these children. They may benefit from the SI, DIR, ILS, developmental gross and fine motor therapy as I use a child centred approach looking at each child uniquely where their strengths and concerns are
Gross motor Skills
Children do not need to be the best in sports but they do need a sense of achievement and belonging.
I help with reaching developmental milestones, upper body and lower body coordination, strength, motor planning and skills. Lack of bilateral coordination and crossing the midline can have an effect on fine motor skill development and writing. These areas can greatly affect a child's self confidence and social skills in the playground.
I also help children who have received a diagnosis of dyspraxia. See qualifications section for more information.
Link
Fine motor and writing
Children are often referred to me as disliking writing and/or messy writing but this can often be result of another issue rather than a cause.
Children dislike doing something they know they are not good at. Often parents and teachers encourage more practice if writing is illegible. That can often only help a little. The issue could be issues with fine motor development, hand dominance, visual perception or multistep sequencing. It could also be unrelated to writing and could be due to upper body strength issue or need for support in specific areas for example placement and spacing on the page, size of letters.
Visual Perception skills
Does your child struggle to:
-find items although they are right in front of them,
- Keep writing organised on the page,
-Write letters or words backwards or reversed,
- Struggle with ball skills or other gross motor skills or appears uncoordinated.
Then your child might have problems with visual perception skills.
After careful assessment, we can work out if this area is indeed an issue and what subsections are potentially a problem as there are subsections of motor related (eye tracking or teaming together, hand eye coordination, copying skills) and non motor related (figure ground, form constancy and visual closure).
Play skills
Play skills are the work skills for all children. They can help us eventually with our academic study and also when we go out into the work environment. Children should be playing with a very wide variety of toys and be able to use their imagination to use toys in lots of different ways.
Play skills help us develop our likes and dislikes but also our ability to compromise. They help us learn how to do activities with multiple steps and sequence them in an organised fashion. We learn how to problem solve and learn about our/others emotions in a safe environment and find ways to use toys in different ways by observing others and experimenting with ideas. The DIR approach works well to improve this area (see qualification section for more information.
Interaction with peers and adults.
Sometimes it is possible to see 2 children with similar concerns.
It's easy to understand how paired sessions are used for helping improve areas of interaction but they are not just used for this. This can be a very powerful tool. They can develop skills by learning off each other or realise their own difficulties by seeing them occur with a peer. They can also take pressure of a child and see that their difficulties are not uncommon.
Intergrated listening system iLS
Using specific music that has been carefully selected by experts for evidence based practice to help with brain and body organisation and emotional organisation. It can help children and adults with ADHD, ASD, focus. I sometimes recommend parents use along side their child with different programs as there is a program for meditation.
This tool is not used as a stand alone therapy approach but can be used by providing gentle and specific stimulation in order to activate the neural pathways used in the processing of sensory information. Neuronal connections in these pathways are strengthened and new connections are established through repeated sessions of multisensory input. After initially starting this in therapy sessions, parents take the kit home and practice in between sessions.
Working with parents and children on zoom
This has to be child specific with regards what I can offer.
Working with a child face to face is the best way to make changes but during covid and with other specific cases, I have also offered zoom sessions with children or parents. Please contact me if you want to know more about this option to see if its suitable for you. An assessment will likely to be recommended first before this can be an option.
Working within the classroom
This is really useful for children who struggle to generalise what we are learning in sessions in other environments.
With young children, it can me joining their play in the classroom where they feel safe and build on rapport.
With other children, it helps to take skills we have been working on and practice them within the class envirnoment.
Behind the scenes and Communicating with parents and teachers
Working face to face with children is only part of my job:
We are a team. Parents,teachers and I work together to ensure that we are all working in the same direction to help your child. I love working in schools so I can feedback straight away to teachers and also find out weekly how the children are progressing.
I want and expect parents to be fully involved and thus I use a family friendly app called seesaw to update parents regular with photos, videos and descriptions of our sessions plus ideas of how they can help at home.
Seesaw link
I also offer teaching sessions to schools, for teaching staff and educational assistance. This can be formally through a presentation or informally with staff joining sessions or 1:1 teaching. I also do parent talks. All of this is free of charge.