About
Your child is a unique being. My individualized intervention program and my holistic and interconnected approach to your child’s treatment sets me apart as an Occupational Therapist, through pleasurable, child-led activities that focus on your child’s interest. Initial assessment occurs in a clinical, but naturalistic play environment that supports you and your child playing together. We integrate how your child relates to you and to objects that interest them. Together we come to understand how your child approaches relationships, play, learning, thinking, reasoning, problem solving and activities of daily living, including dressing, self-feeding, tool use and hygiene.
In order to support their learning, it is imperative that we understand how kids demonstrate curiosity. Their strengths and opportunities for growth need to be understood and differentiated from each other so that we can identify where the treatment process should begin and how treatment options or goals can be prioritized. Typically, parents seek out my services when their children show difficulties in: regulation/emotional regulation, attention, separation, socializing, play, functioning in the classroom, avoidance of people or activity, and participation. These issues influence their capacity to enjoy engagement with their parents and friends and impacts their level of curiosity. Curiosity is the basis for all age appropriate learning. Children with challenges in sensory processing/affect regulation can show hypersensitivity or under-reactivity to sensory stimuli, including emotion, touch, movement, sound, taste, or pain. These issues compromise their sense of mastery over the environment, and therefore in their level of curiosity in the world around them, in their sense of self and their positive self esteem.
MY SPECIALTY
After 40+ years of broad experience in Pediatric Occupational Therapy, I have come to focus on children who struggle in:
Sensory processing
Play
Affect regulation
Executive function
Relationships with peers or parents
Organizational or Emotional Performance in the classroom setting
Perceptual motor organization
Using the DIR/Floortime Model, my work is considered Best Practice and is empirically supported.
APPROACH
The best teacher for a child is his or her parents and/or primary caregiver.
Typically, parents and I collaborate to understand the developmental picture of your child. Because we want the child to learn, master skills, and raise the bar on their development, we focus intervention on learning within the relationship with you, the parent.
We follow your child’s lead and your feedback.
Your child is my teacher, and your observations as well as the teacher’s observations are my most important tool. I modify each session from your child’s response to the strategies provided in a previous session, and from your comments about how you see your child function. Normal development does not occur in a linear fashion, therefore our work is dynamic and flexible enough to meet your child at his or her developmental level. There are no checklists to follow, rather they are developmental concepts. The goals are continuously updated in accordance with your child’s progress.
There is no homework
Working collaboratively, parents learn strategies that can be incorporated into daily lives. Your child practices repeatedly throughout the day. We want the clinical work to generalize into their ability to function in their typical environment. The work is hard, but we know that for something to improve, we must practice often.