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Occupational Therapy For Autism Can Help Sensory Integration Dysfunction And Dysgraphiais an extremely beneficial autism therapy. Occupational therapists are trained to help you overcome disabilities so that you can perform activities of daily living and tasks for gainful employment. These occupations must be age appropriate. The occupation of children is play along with social, communication, and behavior skills. These activities are affected by difficulties with sensory perception.
Sensory integration dysfunction is the improper neurological interpretation of sensory information. Dysgraphia is poor fine motor control resulting in poor handwriting. Thus, occupational therapists help to integrate and organize these neurological connections so that the child can more fully function and participate appropriately with their environment. Your occupational therapist should have considerable experience and training with autism as well as sensory integration dysfunction and dysgraphia. Most likely your occupational therapist will schedule weekly visits for approximately one hour. Part of the session may be spent on fine motor skills and handwriting. The rest of the session may be spent swinging, climbing, jumping, and many more gross motor activities. These activities will look like play, but they actually help with motor planning, sequencing, balancing, and motor control. My children also used The Listening Program simultaneaously with table activities and Sound Health with floor activities. Your occupational therapist may also recommend any or all of the following items to provide appropriate proprioceptive inputs.
The duration of occupational therapy is variable. The sessions may occur over 6 months to several or even many years depending upon the severity of the problems. You need to make sure that enough time is devoted so that new neurological connections can be made and improvement can be sustained. The rate of improvement is also variable. Some individuals improve slowly and steadily. Others improve by leaps and bounds. Still others may plateau between episodes of improvement. Overall, you should see considerable improvement in stimming, handwriting, social skills, communication abilities, and behavior. The occupational therapist should also design and explain a home-based program. This program is often called a sensory diet, and is used to further integrate and organize the sensory systems. You can even design your own sensory diet with help from these following books. The implementation of this daily sensory diet will enhance the therapy sessions. In addition, the sensory diet will be a life long process. Barbara Smith, MS, OTR has many creative ideas for home-based occupational therapy. Occupational therapy for autism is an effective therapy that should be considered for most individuals along the entire autism spectrum.
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