KidSkills Pediatric Occupational Therapy, Vancouver ADHD Specialist

01/31/2026

We love obstacle courses! It’s a great OT tool to learn about our body in space, to practice motor skills, response inhibition, to get a movement break, to transfer between activities, and to use it as a fun tool when we work towards sensory processing/cognitive/self-regulation goals.

01/29/2026

How do we choose our clients?

It’s true that initially clients choose us, because they were referred to us by another professional, by a school, by recommendation; because they know about our expertise, because they liked how we communicated with them on the phone during the initial intake.

However, we also need to carefully choose our clients. We want to make sure it’s a good fit, that the child needs to see an OT and not another professional. We want to make sure that we can support this child according to what the caretakers shares with us. Each OT has their expertise.

It requires the OT to ask different questions. It requires the OT to be true to themselves, have integrity, to be honest and also to be assertive.

01/16/2026

01/14/2026

I usually don’t remember my dreams, but this morning I did. I remembered my frustration as I was on my way to take a bus to the place I needed to go, when I noticed that I had left my bag at the school I had visited earlier with my brother.

Was did this dream want to tell me?
Was it about the struggles we have in our lives that keep pulling us backwards and frustrate us as we strive to move forwards?

Was it about the fact that my 87 year old mom cannot change for the better, and that we and her new caretaker need to accept her as she is now, and work with what we have?

Was it about the singer that I watched competing in a singing competition, who had lost her voice and had to sing with the voice she had?

I’ll never know, but I just know that life teaches us that only when we move through those barriers, we grow and get better and better, and that we need to push through, and we can do it!

12/29/2025

How do we know as parents of vulnerable children when to push the child and when to reduce demands? It’s all depends on the equation of wellbeing: Resources vs. Demands.

If the demands placed on a child are greater than their resources (his abilities, the support he can get, etc.), that child will be in distress, and that means we will need to lower demands. That’s it.

12/28/2025

Our brain is always looking 👀 for answers that will help it complete or close a subject. It’s looking for causation, but this causation often entails judgments. If a child doesn’t behave as socially expected, we may say things like: it’s emotional, it’s behavioural, they seek attention, their parents don’t set enough boundaries, and often, it’s sensory - a referral to OT is required, etc.

When it comes to atypical children, who have a different nervous system, unexpected or challenging behaviours can often be interpreted in a different way, and there can be more than ten different reasons that underlie their behaviour.

For example, if the child is perceived as violent, it may be that:
1. They may experience something painful or disturbing.
2. They may be interested in something that the other person have and want to engage with it or get it.
3. Being forced to do something they don’t like or they are not successful of or that what they like doing is not permitted.
4. They don’t understand where they are being taken to and what for.
5. Accumulation of stress that causes emotional pain and outbursts.
6. Anxiety.

When it comes to atypical children, we need to give up our automatic judgements and dig in deeper to find the actual causation for a challenging behaviour in order to find the right solution.

12/22/2025

A common case: Parents refer their child to OT because the child displays tactile hyper-responsiveness that limits their tolerance to clothes, and causes the child and their family to have a stressful morning.

As for any other reason for referral, we need to take an holistic view, and assess the child’s function in other areas of their lives. If we focus only on the child’s sensory processing skills, we will not be able to do an accurate assessment and we will not be able to see results.

11/05/2025

Bring it on 😁🤩🥰

11/03/2025

When I was young, I had to occupy myself quietly in my bedroom, while my mom had her holy rest and nap between 2:00-4:00pm. She was a nurse, and as a post traumatic, she suffered from insomnia. I did not know it back then, but I knew that she really needed her sleep.

We also could not play outside between those times. We lived in an apartment building and that was the rule.

Sometimes we cycle back to our childhood experiences and they magically become a main part of our future occupation…

So what could I do on my own? Reading books, Puzzles, Tangram, copying designs with a stencil, drawing/doodling, colouring mandalas, making parquetry designs. I was good with shapes and colours. I was good with visual analysis and synthesis, and metacognitive skills, and I loved it!

In the afternoon or evening I would sometimes play Mastermind, Checkers or Dominos with my father. On the weekends we played Monopoly and my dad and I competed on finding puzzle pieces, while assembling a 1000-10,000 jigsaw puzzles in the dining area.

It’s so funny how some of those games and activities have become the main therapeutic tool in my OT practice. It’s so magical how I teach kids ways to develop those executive skills that I practiced back then as a very young child.

11/02/2025

So much beauty around us this season. WOW!!!

11/01/2025

This dog is currently an emotional support dog solely for the therapist 🤓

She may be able to become a therapy dog for clients in the future…

However when a client asks to see her, we invite her over to say her friendly hi.

09/19/2025

This was an amazing learning experience and guess what? I can see myself in the recording of each of the learning modules for a whole year, because I was an active participant!

That’s how learn, by asking questions, by conversing with the instructor and her team, by looking to find answers to questions that I’ve had for a while.

Highly recommended for all mental health practitioners out there!

I now feel more equipped, and curious about the implications of the shift in my perspective!