How Does Occupational Therapy Help Kids With Autism?

Any person who is suffering from the ASD (Autism spectrum disorder) would have problems in speaking and interacting with other people, his/her activities, interests and play skills would be badly affected for sure. Occupational therapy helps all children with autism to develop these skills in school or at home. It is a therapy which helps to enhance skills to deal with day to day activities. The therapists would work with your children by showing them to daily situations and then help them to enhance the skills required to get a winning outcome. It can be life- long therapy also which totally depends on the disability level your child is suffering.

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Manage and cope with Emotions

It is really necessary to successfully cope and manage with emotions. Your children should be able to understand other person emotions and interact with them properly. All the children with autism face a lot of problems in this area and have a hard time reading emotions. With the help of an occupational therapist, children with autism would get more help in dealing with their emotions problems. The therapists would use different types of methods which include video modeling, games, and other role-play activities.

Peer interaction and social skills

The most common peer interaction and social skills include communicating with others effectively, understanding the conversation flow, maintaining eye contacting while speaking, respect and understand other emotions or feeling and being able to read other’s body language and cues. Your child with autism would be facing all these problems and you would be worried about it.

An occupational therapist would help your children in understanding the rules of social interaction. There are several early intervention center Dubai which would help you in assisting with all of these skills It would include the use of peers as models, role- play and taking the help of unique ways to aware your children about social norms and various rules of social interaction.

Sensory processing

It would be better for you to understand that more than 75% of kids with autism would have difficulty with sensory processing for sure. You need to understand that sensory processing includes the ability to take in and understanding the information properly within our environment.

If your children are suffering from the problem of autism, then he/she would surely have over-reactive sensory systems, where his/her body would be processing information from the environment more than the limit. Sometimes it can lead to the child feeling over-stimulated and overwhelmed. Occupational therapists would have a clear and better understanding of the sensory system and how sensory problems can badly affect participation in various vital activities which includes dressing, eating, sleep, and bathing.

Time management and Family Routines

You need to understand that children with autism do best with consistency and routine. Most of the children on the autism spectrum would have very high skills and visuals aids are very helpful for them.  

For helping your family’s and child days and transition go smoothly, your occupational therapist would work by going through your family’s daily routine and the task of your child which need to be completed.

The occupational therapist also helps in developing visual aids to help your child with completing the task in order to assist with time management and organization. By doing this, your children would be learning more easily and more effectively.

Source: https://www.authorea.com/users/260564/articles/362519-how-does-occupational-therapy-help-kids-with-autism