Empowering Play

08/19/2025

MORE FINE MOTOR --->> https://mommyevolution.com/fine-motor-skills-activities/

08/15/2025

New blog post 👀 Tricks for Transitions! For kiddos who have a hard time moving from one activity to the next:

It can be rough if you're trying to take care of your child's basic needs and they're fighting you every step of the way because they don't want to stop playing to brush their teeth. Transitions can be tough for kids, especially if they're moving from something fun to something less exciting. Their....

06/12/2025

Looking for cheap and easy activities to entertain your child and support their fine motor development?

Here are some activity ideas that use common household items:

While there are tons of fun and fancy toys that help build fine motor skills, there are also plenty of fun activities you can do with materials you already have at home! We all know that kids sometimes prefer to play with the box toys come in vs. the toys themselves, so why not build on that creativ...

10/31/2023

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201911/kindergarten-teachers-speak-out-children-s-happiness

10/17/2023

One of my goals for Empowering Play is to explore ways to incorporate nature into therapy sessions. For now, I am moving some of my sessions into my client's yards (the lovely Texas Fall weather is a great motivator). It's amazing how much being outside in nature can benefit us all! Timbernook and Richard Louv are amazing resources to learn more the benefits nature can have for children's development.

So true. We see this often in our woods. 💕

09/03/2023

I run into this SO OFTEN as an occupational therapist.

Kids have been forced and expected to trace and write letters and words and sentences before the bones in their hand were even fully-formed yet.

They weren't allowed to play outside in the mud and get dirty, or play with playdoh freely and squish it everywhere, or explore utensils freely when they ate. They weren't allowed to climb on high things at the playground and strengthen their shoulders and their core, to fall down and land hard on their bodies and their joints.

They were expected to sit still and keep quiet for longer than their bodies were capable of doing.

They learned to be silent and compliant but they also learned that they didn't do anything right, and that they just couldn't. That they were just bad at it. That writing was just hard and bad and it was going to be hard and bad and not fun forever.

And then they got referred to OT for me to somehow fix it.

We. Have. Got. To. Stop.

(I write about this with some frequency, and I even have a tag on my website for all the posts about this: "making writing meaningful". https://www.occuplaytional.com/tag/making-writing-meaningful/ )

[Image description: a quote by Carol Black. "Let me repeat this: When you push a child to do something she developmentally cannot do, you create a profound belief that a) I hate this; b) I can't do this; c) I will never be able to do this; and d) There's something wrong with me. All, I should point out, profoundly disabling beliefs."]