Insightful Occupational Therapy

11/07/2024

Teaching toddlers about emotions is their first step to learning about how to manage their emotions as they get older.

Emotional activities help toddlers practice identifying and managing their feelings healthily. This reduces negative behaviors like hitting, biting, or throwing tantrums. These activities teach toddlers that it's okay to have different feelings, fostering better social skills and the ability to form lasting friendships and cope with challenges.

How Do I Teach My Toddler Emotions?

Incorporate emotion words into daily vocabulary, such as happy, sad, excited, scared, and surprised. Label your child's emotions to help them identify different feelings. For example, if your child is crying, you can say, "I see you are sad. Would you like a hug or a tissue?" Also, label your emotions to help them understand, like saying, "I feel happy about that story" after laughing at a funny story. Incorporating emotive words throughout the day is a great way of helping children understand the name of the emotions and how they feel.

How Do I Teach My Toddler Emotions?

Incorporate emotion words into daily vocabulary, such as happy, sad, excited, scared, and surprised. Label your child's emotions to help them identify different feelings. For example, if your child is crying, you can say, "I see you are sad. Would you like a hug or a tissue?" Also, label your emotions to help them understand, like saying, "I feel happy about that story" after laughing at a funny story.

You can also play with toys and games that encourage identifying and expressing emotions. Provide toys like dolls or puppets that show various emotions. Sing songs, read books about feelings, act out scenes from stories, role-play different scenarios, or use art and music to explore and express emotions.

The key is to create a safe and supportive environment where toddlers can explore and express their emotions, helping them develop healthy emotional habits for life.

08/07/2024

Struggling to find activities to keep your kids occupied this school holidays?

Consider doing some cooking with them! Not only is it fun, but there are so many opportunities for your children to build their skills throughout the cooking process. Here are some benefits of cooking for children:

1. Builds Confidence
Giving your children a bit of freedom in the kitchen will nurture your child’s self-esteem, confidence, and sense of self-worth.

2. Develops physical skills
Stirring, measuring, rolling, squeezing and spreading are not just great ways to build strength, but it also allows young children to develop their fine motor and hand-eye coordination skills.

3. Connection and Communication
As you cook with your child and discuss what you are doing, giving instructions, and having a laugh together, the child is learning new ways of explaining processes and cooking terms, while enhancing the parent-child connection.

4. A sensory experience
Cooking is such a good way to engage all your child’s senses. Let them immerse themselves in this ultimate sensory experience, let them use their hands to mix items together, smell and taste all the safe ingredients you are using and allow them get messy!

5. Promotes cooperation and sharing
If sharing the experience with more than one child, the children have a great opportunity to practice sharing and cooperation. Taking turns mixing, cracking one egg each, having one child pour the milk in while the other pours the melted butter, etc are all good examples of implementing this skill while cooking.

6. Reading and Mathematics skills
Involvement in cooking can utilise reading and mathmatical skills to match the child's level of literacy and numeracy. They can read the recipe, count objects, work with fractions and measurements, etc.

7. Strengthening cognitive skills
Cooking uses a lot of cognitive skills including problem solving skills, maintaining and dividing their attention, using their working memory, planning, prioritising, organising, increasing safety awareness, developing a concept of time and patience.

These skills are required in everyday life, and the more we can practice these skills with our children, the more natural these skills will become.

04/07/2024

Do you know of a child who, despite their best interests, just can’t seem to sit still? Or maybe a child who is constantly on the move, running instead of walking, jumping off things? It sounds like this child is seeking sensory input through the vestibular system.

Growing up, we were told that there are 5 senses – vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch. But these days, it is recognized that there are 8 senses, with the additional three being vestibular, proprioception and interoception. I’ll talk about the latter two over the next week, but first I want to share some information with you about the vestibular system.

The vestibular system is a part of our inner ear that helps us keep our balance and understand where our head is in space. It is like a sensor that tells our brain if we are moving, standing still, or spinning around. This system works together with some of our other senses to help us stay upright and move smoothly.

Young children often seek movement because their vestibular system is still developing. When they spin, swing, or jump, they are giving their vestibular system lots of information to the brain to process. This helps their brain learn how to balance and move more effectively.

As children get older and their sensory systems mature, some children continue to seek movement, or vestibular input. It can help children focus and learn better. When some kids move around, it wakes up their brain and body, making it easier for them to pay attention and understand what they are doing. This is why you often see children fidgeting or moving around in their seats—they are trying to help their brain stay alert and engaged.

Movement can also help children regulate their emotions. When kids are feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or upset, moving around can help them calm down and feel better. Activities like swinging, running, or spinning can have a soothing effect on the nervous system, helping children feel more balanced and relaxed. This is also why we rock and bounce babies that are upset, as we know that this has a calming effect on the body.

But this isn’t the same for all children. Some children are sensitive to vestibular input. This includes kids who don’t like spinning or swinging, or kids that get travel sickness. These children might move their eyes a lot more when looking for things instead of moving their head, as moving their head provides vestibular input.

Everyone’s tolerance and enjoyment for vestibular sensation is different. It is a very powerful sense that can change our alertness and the way we perceive the world. As long as your child is not sensitive to vestibular stimuli, you can tap into the calming qualities of the vestibular system for your child by providing them with games or activities that involve a lot of big body movements these holidays.

01/07/2024

To support our children with their emotions, we need to meet them where they are at. When your child is upset, it is not the time to educate them. Simply be with them and connect and this will help them experience emotional regulation.

07/04/2024

Check out our new newsletter about not just Insightful OT, but also our sister company Function Lifestyle Day Supports. I haven't worked out how to share it to Insightful OT's website (🧐), so here is a link to the newsletter on the Function Lifestyle page :)

Function Lifestyle Day Supports is a division of Function Lifestyle Group. The Lifestyle Day Program focuses on the benefits that each person can achieve by engaging in as many different sensory experiences as possible with a strong focus on multi-sensory environments and activities.

01/04/2024

If you are looking for something for your young children to do this school holidays, consider getting out the art smocks, slimes or water beads, as not only will you be providing a fun activity, but also an opportunity to strengthen your child's brain development. Check out my latest blog for more information about sensory or messy play!
"Have you ever seen an 8 month old playing in a bowl of spaghetti, with as much food on their face and high chair as what was left in their bowl? What about a 4 year old playing in a sandpit with a mix of sand and water? While we might see a big mess, children see a fun activity and they don’t even realise that they have set themselves up for a learning experience. These activities are examples of messy play, or sensory play. And they are a very important part of child development."

Function Lifestyle Day Supports is a division of Function Lifestyle Group. The Lifestyle Day Program focuses on the benefits that each person can achieve by engaging in as many different sensory experiences as possible with a strong focus on multi-sensory environments and activities.

14/02/2024

My newest blog has just been completed: "Tidying up a bedroom uses a lot of skills we take for granted, and some kids and teens struggle with these skills."

Tidying up a bedroom uses a lot of skills we take for granted, and some kids and teens struggle with these skills.

29/01/2024

To round off the school holidays, I took my 4 year old to a playground that he hadn’t been to before. He was really excited to play on the new playground, and I was excited to have a few minutes to myself while he played. As my timid 4 year old who shies away from anything that is unfamiliar started to play, I noticed an expression of fear on his face. He was tackling a wobbly bridge and he was really uncertain about it, but at the same time, he was giving himself encouragement to give it a go. I called out, “You can do it!”. Step by step, he cautiously walked across the bridge, and then when he reached the other side, there was a look of achievement and satisfaction on his face as he called out to me to celebrate in his accomplishment. He then went over to the monkey bars and for the first time, hung onto the first rung of the monkey bars with his feet off the ground. “Mum, look at me!” he shouted proudly. It went against every motherly instinct not to rush over there to “save him” while yelling, “be careful!”. Instead, I stayed seated and said, “Well done, you did it!”

Some fear is a normal and a necessary part of childhood. It is a sign that a child is starting to understand what is safe and unsafe and the way the world works while trying to make sense of what this means for them. With time and experience, they will come to figure out for themselves what is safe and unsafe. If kids don’t push through this fear, their skill development can be limited. Over time, they will also realise that they have an incredible capacity to cope.

As parents, it is ingrained into us to protect our children from tasks that we determine to be dangerous. Some of these activities, while frightening to us, are learning opportunities for children; they’re a way of learning about the world around them. Too much fear can inhibit children from trying new things, while not enough fear can lead to them participating in dangerous activities. As adults, we have a great privilege of teaching young people about what is safe and unsafe, while facilitating environments and opportunities to help them learn and grow in skills and confidence, allowing them to achieve a sense of satisfaction, and that trying new things can be very rewarding.

31/12/2023

Welcome to Insightful Occupational Therapy, an OT service that supports individuals, OTs and organisations. "Providing insights to engage, evaluate and educate"

31/12/2023

My website is now up and running. Please feel free to check it out. I have also written a blog on the difference between tantrums and meltdowns, and the approaches to support a child through both of these. I hope you find it interesting!

Welcome to Insightful Occupational Therapy, an OT service that supports individuals, OTs and organisations. "Providing insights to engage, evaluate and educate"

31/12/2023

As another year draws to a close, we frequently find ourselves reflecting on the year that has passed and come up with idealist hopes for the new year. These “New Years Resolutions” seldom last, and according to Psych News Daily, 64% of people abandon their New Years resolutions within a month. These are often diet and exercise related, and are often repeated more than one year. This year I encourage you to try something a little different. Rather than thinking about what you want to do in the new year, think about who you want to be and how you are going to achieve this.

The difference may be subtle, but it is a much more powerful way to shape goals. So firstly, who do you want to be? What do you want you to be? Do you want to be a mother involved in your child’s schooling? An influential leader? A baker of fabulous cakes for family birthdays? A vegetable grower?

Roles are very important as they shape our identity, but so many times in our fast-tracked life, we lose track of who we want to be, instead just doing the things that we need to do to get by. We often lose track of some of the things that used to be important to do simply because we “don’t have enough time”. Therefore, some of the roles that we used to have just slip by.

Roles shape our identity and give us a sense of purpose and accomplishment. If we let slip some of our previous interests, our identity also changes. When going through a stressful time at work in the past, my roles were limited to worker and mother. I didn’t have time for anything else and I didn’t feel like myself. And I wasn’t myself, because when I let some of my other roles slip, my identity and self-perception also changed.

I needed a conscious reflection of who I had become and who I wanted to be. I had to reconnect with my past interests by rearranging my time and allowing time for myself. This enabled me to participate in previous roles and gave me a sense of fulfillment.
As part of your end of year reflection, I encourage you to reflect on who you have become, and find out who you would like to be. To do this, inspire yourself by asking yourself the following questions:

• What am I going to do that refreshes me and makes me feel good?
• What makes me happy and how can I do more of this?
• What are my hopes for 2024?

With these questions in mind, instead of developing hopeless New Year’s Resolutions, I hope that you can determine how to make 2024 a productive and fulfilling year, with whatever productive and fulfilling means to you.