Pediatric Occupational Therapy is a holistic profession that engages your child in meaningful activities that help develop the child’s ability to function in everyday tasks that are typical for their age.
Providing services for infants and children through young adulthood. Sessions are held in your home or community setting within a 20-mile radius of Fargo-Moorhead area.
What is Pediatric Occupational Therapy?
Believe it or not, children DO have occupations. Occupations are simply those daily activities in which your child engages, and that are essential or important to your child and family.
An infant’s occupations include learning to feed successfully, learning to self-regulate for sleep, learning to move, and learning to socially engage with others through eye contact, cooing, smiles and giggles.
For the toddler, daily occupations are all about learning through play, learning to feed themselves, learning about social interactions alongside peers or siblings, and learning to communicate their wants and needs.
As children get older Occupational Therapists address a child’s ability to function as independently as possible with their self-care tasks, their ability as a student, as well as social skills for developing and maintaining friendships.
And although it seems to happen way too fast, children eventually grow into young adults. At this stage Occupational Therapy may address functioning in further education, transitioning to independent or supported living and employment as well as functioning in the community.
How do I get my child started in Occupational Therapy?
1. Contact us
Contact us and we will answer your questions and discuss your concerns to determine how your child may benefit from Occupational Therapy services.
2. Complete initial forms
After scheduling an Occupational Therapy evaluation you will receive directions to sign up for our secure Client Portal where you be sent all of the necessary initial paperwork to complete.
3. Evaluation
Evaluation is completed with parent/caregiver present. A follow up phone call is completed to discuss evaluation results and recommendations.
4. Treatment
If treatment is recommended, frequency and duration will be discussed based on assessment findings, goals, child and family priorities. The parent-child relationship is key in supporting your child in their development. Treatment is a commitment by parents as well as other individuals that are important in your child’s life. Occupational Therapy treatment will focus on a combination of interaction with your child, and parent/caregiver training with recommendations. There will be significant focus on carry over of these recommendations into your child’s daily activities in order to achieve best outcomes and consistency over time.
5. What to expect on the therapy journey
We take a collaborative approach throughout the therapy journey for you and your child. You are the expert that knows your child’s strengths and the gifts they offer to others daily! You also know challenges, needs, and issues affecting daily experiences that you would like to make easier. We value your input in sharing these experiences and you can never ask too many questions. As we help you with strategies and activities throughout the therapy journey, please keep asking and sharing how things are improving, changing, and/or what things may not be working. Parents are an active part of the child’s Occupational Therapy experience, and needs, strategies and your priorities may change several times over the course of treatment. That’s ok and we work collaboratively to keep moving forward!
6. Ending the Occupational Therapy Journey
How long a child may be receiving Pediatric Occupational Therapy services is unique to each child, their needs, child/family priorities, and therapeutic recommendations. For some children, home programming with recommendations may be the only intervention recommended following an evaluation. For other children 1-2 times a week may be recommended, or 1 time a month may be sufficient to meet needs.
We re-evaluate and collaboratively review progress and success of strategies with each session to guide us in determining length of the treatment journey. A child is going to have changing needs with changing development. Therefore many families often seek out therapy services again after a period of time, because their child is now having difficulties with their daily activities at a different developmental stage.
Pediatric Occupational Therapists can support your child from infancy through young adulthood. There may be a point in time where you feel your child is no longer benefiting from Occupational Therapy services and you have the right to end services at any time. Therapy services can also end when the child, parents and caregivers are able to carry over strategies and recommendations independently, or when goals have been met.
We help you figure out the WHY behind the difficulties. Pediatric Occupational Therapists evaluate and treat skills in the following areas that can affect a child’s development and participation in their play and daily activities:
Fine and Gross Motor Skills
Fine motor skills – hand and finger strength, endurance, grasp, control, and coordination needed to manipulate objects during play, self care, and other daily activities.
Gross motor skills – strength, endurance, coordination, postural control and bilateral skills a child uses to functionally move about their typical environments to complete age appropriate tasks.
Fine and Gross motor skills are often interdependent. Example: Sufficient trunk stability and head/neck control is needed for a child to safely swallow and use their arms/hands to feed themselves.
Self Help Skills
Skills needed to develop independence with tasks such as dressing, bathing, feeding, drinking, toileting, personal grooming, sleep, and functional mobility to complete these tasks.
Instrumental Activities of Daily Living
Higher level skills that are required to not only take care of yourself, but to live independently. Examples of IADLs include activities such as meal prep, chores, cleaning, managing money, taking public transportation, shopping, work, leisure, safety and emergency responses.
Sensory Processing
Understanding, processing, and organizing sensations in environments to be able to respond in appropriate ways to everyday situations.
These sensations include the basic 5: vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell and 3 lesser known senses: vestibular (movement and balance), proprioception (sense of position and movement of body in space) and interoception (sensations related to the internal state of the body). When children have difficulty in one or more of these areas, it is termed Sensory Processing Disorder or SPD. Children can be over-reactive or under-reactive (or a combination of both) to sensations. When these sensations are not detected appropriately and not working together well, they may interfere with participation in activities at home and school, or in community settings affecting learning and social experiences. You can learn more about Sensory Processing Disorder at:
https://www.spdstar.org/basic/about-spd.
Visual-Perceptual Skills
The skills that help us interpret, analyze, and give meaning to what we see. Visual perception is all about your brain processing what you see, helping you to make sense of it and then directing your actions accordingly.
Examples of core Visual Perceptual skills are: Visual Memory, Visual Sequential Memory, Visual Form Constancy, Visual Figure Ground, Visual Spatial Relations, Visual Closure, and Visual Discrimination.
Visual-Motor Skills
The skills that emerge from the integration of visual skills, visual perceptual skills and motor skills that allow us to use our eyes and hands in a coordinated and efficient way. Visual-motor skills are the foundation for many of a child’s activities, including cutting, coloring, writing, catching or kicking a ball or tying shoes.
Cognitive Skills
In children, the progressive building of learning skills, such as attention, memory and thinking that enable children to process sensory information and eventually learn to evaluate, analyze, remember, make comparisons and understand cause and effect.
Social-Emotional Skills
A child’s ability to interact with others, including helping themselves and self-control. Social-emotional skills help us manage emotions, show empathy and understanding. Social-emotional skills allow kids to understand and recognize their thoughts and feelings in order to connect with others and build healthy relationships. These skills help children communicate and express themselves in the appropriate way in different environments and with different people.
Rates
Always FREE: Initial phone consultations to ensure we are a good fit for each other.
Occupational Therapy Treatment Session
$ 120
Session- Sessions held in home within 20 mile radius of Fargo-Moorhead
- On a case by case basis we can determine if Telehealth/Video-Call sessions are appropriate to meet your needs, especially if outside of our travel radius.
Please contact us to discuss this option. This option available for any resident of ND or MN. - Preparation of materials for treatment session
- Typically up to 1 hour in-home/in-community time with child and parent/caregiver present
- Completion of documentation for each session
- Travel time to/from your home
Occupational Therapy Evaluation
$ 250
Evaluation- Sessions held in home within 20 mile radius of Fargo-Moorhead
- On a case by case basis we can determine if Telehealth/Video-Call sessions are appropriate to meet your needs, especially if outside of our travel radius.
Please contact us to discuss this option. This option available for any resident of ND or MN. - Review of history, intake forms and scheduling
- Preparation of materials and paperwork for evaluation
- Completion of screenings, formal and informal assessments
(typically 1-1.5 hours in-home) - Scoring and interpretation of test results
- Completion of evaluation report
- Phone call to review results and recommendations
- Travel time to/from your home
Services
We are here to help you and your child through Pediatric Occupational Therapy, Guide and Grow Sessions and Infant/Child Massage
Conveniently schedule online for Guide and Grow Sessions & Infant/Child Massage.
Call or email to schedule any of our services.