Little Ones
Occupational Therapy & Speech Language Pathology
Sometimes children need a little help to achieve all of the things that they need to do, want to do or are expected to do.
At Little Ones we understand how difficult and overwhelming this process can be, but we want you to know that you are not alone. We are here to help.
What is Occupational Therapy?
Occupational therapists help children, and their families identify and target challenges in the areas of self care, productivity, and leisure. An OT can help children achieve independence in daily tasks (such as feeding, dressing and mobility) and help them to become more productive students by providing fine motor, emotional regulation and sensory strategies. Occupational Therapists are great at seeing the big picture in a child’s day, and working with the people who surround them to look at all of the components that affect a child’s ability to complete an activity. We can collaborate with family, schools, and other professionals working with your child.
An initial assessment with an Occupational Therapists could include formal evaluations using standardized assessment tools, or more informal discussions and play. Consultation is almost always beneficial with teachers, educators, family members and sometimes, multiple initial visits in different locations are needed in order to capture the big picture and develop a comprehensive plan.
A Little Ones Occupational Therapist can help with:
Fine Motor Skills
Fine motor skills are those movements that involve the smallest muscles of the body, especially in the hands and fingers. We can work on handwriting, pencil grasp, or more general fine motor movements.
Emotional Regulation
Emotional regulation is our ability to manage our emotions throughout the day and make adaptive responses to the emotions we are feeling. As children grow, they can learn and practise skills to recognize and identify their emotions, and figure out what strategies work to help keep them regulated throughout their activities.
Executive Functioning
Executive functioning includes many cognitive abilities that include attending, planning, problem-solving, memory, organization, and impulse control.
Feeding / Picky Eating
Mealtimes can be tricky for a number of reasons. An OT can help sort out some of the reasons for your child’s eating preferences and provide strategies to work through the sensory component (texture and smell) of a picky eaters mealtime routine.
Mental Health / Anxiety
Often in collaboration with a mental health provider (counsellor, psychology), we can help children and parents identify what is making their kids anxious and work to develop strategies to manage.
Neurodivergent (ADHD, ADD, ASD)
We can create individualized care plans with you and your child while supporting your child’s strengths, unique abilities and authenticity. We can augment services that are already in place and we can help you advocate for programs and services that may benefit you and your family.
Play and Social Skills
Play is a child’s primary occupation! Learning to play in groups is a skill that is often tricky to learn for many kids. Our goal as occupational therapists is for your child to recognize, express and healthily manage their emotions and behaviours in group and one-on-one settings and teach them self advocacy skills to play the ‘social game’ at home and school.
Self-Care Tasks
Self-care tasks are activities we do daily to take care of ourselves. Examples of self-care tasks are getting dressed, eating, toileting, sleeping or personal hygiene.
Sensory Processing Differences
Everyone has a sensory processing system and we all have unique preferences. We can help kids develop strategies to manage their own unique sensory profile across different environments.
Speech-Language Pathology
Speech-Language Pathologists have expertise in speech and language development as well as communication disorders. Overall, SLPs are concerned about communication. They can help with speech (how sounds are spoken) S-LPs look at both receptive (understanding) and expressive (talking) language. SLPs can help promote the development of prelinguistic skills, along with assess, and treat a wide variety of communication difficulties. SLPs are also trained to recognize, assess and treat difficulties with feeding, eating, drinking and swallowing.
Most children will receive a formal assessment during the initial visit with a Speech-Language Pathologist. For young children, although we try to complete a standardized assessment, the assessment is frequently play-based. For older children, usually a standardized speech and language assessment would be completed, as well as interviews and observations in different situations. Following the assessment, results will be provided and a treatment plan will be designed to meet the individual needs of the child and their family.
A Little Ones Speech-Language Pathologist can address:
Speech delays and disorders
Speech sound delays and disorders encompass any difficulty a child has with perception, motor production, or pronunciation/articulation of speech sounds. We can work together on intelligibility and accuracy of speech.
Language delays and disorders
We can help with the expressive use of language – verbally or nonverbally, as well as the understanding of language, whether that is spoken or written language.
Fluency disorders (stuttering)
Stuttering can be a normal part of child development. We can help differentiate typical versus atypical stuttering and treat any non-developmental stuttering.
Voice and resonance disorders
Some examples include nasally produced speech, hoarse voices or pitch adjustments. An oral-motor examination is completed and referrals to other professionals are commonly recommended.
Cognitive-communication deficits
A cognitive-communication deficit refers to an impairment in thought organization, sequencing, attention, planning or problem solving. An SLP can help by completing a thorough language assessment to provide strategies for life and academic success.
Pre-literacy and literacy skills
An SLP’s role in literacy development involves an assessment of the foundational skills required to become a Reader/Writer. These skills include phonological awareness, reading comprehension/fluidity, morphological awareness, and decoding. An auditory processing assessment may be completed as well.
Social communication difficulties
Social communication refers to the unwritten rules of interacting with others. An SLP can help a child learn to use language for different reasons (e.g., greeting versus information gathering), to change their language based on audience (e.g., teacher versus peer), and to follow rules for conversations (e.g., turn-taking, facial expressions, how to introduce a new topic).