Why we encourage the "wrong" things

By Jessica Jordan, MS, OTR/L

Parenting looks different on everyone, and sometimes our “OT homework/ home exercises/ parent education” may challenge those parenting styles and types.

What I mean by this is that as practitioners we often encourage play based activities or exercises which may be exactly what you are asking your child to NOT do for another purpose that may not be apparent.

For example, when I was working at an outpatient clinic that focused on sensory and feeding goals, I often had to encourage many of my families to allow their child to get messy when they eat. This was encouraged for sensory exploration, child led autonomy, and encouragement & development of fine motor skills aka a pincer grasp and tool use. 

Hearing that now as a parent myself may make me cringe depending on the day because I can already anticipate the clean up going into that. However, for a child that is learning, we as parents and caretakers need to provide ample opportunities of unstructured, sensory, exploratory play! With this particular family, that was very hard for the dad to accept as he was raised in a family where mealtimes were always structured, organized, and clean.  It may be hard to make changes in structured activities, but often it can lead to practice and development of a new skill!

A few other recommendations you might hear us recommending at the park include allowing your child to climb the slide or even propel down head first, swinging on their belly, and/or standing on unsteady surfaces (all of which should have adult supervision).  Many of these recommendations focus in on providing your child with additional sensory input, specifically vestibular input, as well as targeting executive functions such as planning, organization, task initiation, attention, flexibility, risk taking, and problem solving.  Let us know in the comments below what activities you adapted with your child to work on additional skills.