How to Prepare for Occupational Therapy

Be prepared to spend up to one hour with us; the last 10 minutes are used to summarize your child’s plan of care for insurance purposes.

Tell us what you think; your clinician asks for your input to set treatment goals and when discussing your child’s initial evaluation. Know you are an important part of your child’s healthcare team. We ask parents to participate and observe, to best understand required home exercises, recommendations and goals of the therapy and to see overall progress.

What to Expect at Your First Visit

On your first visit an occupational therapist(s) will conduct an evaluation of your child, lasting about one hour. They will:

• Talk with you about your child, what the doctors have told you and your concerns
• Take a medical history of issues related to your child’s occupational therapy needs
• Talk with you about any previous therapies you’ve tried
• Ask questions about any problems or concerns you have about your child’s behavior and functional skills.

Therapists may take turns talking and observing. If two therapists are involved in the evaluation one therapist interviews you, while the other therapist may play with your child, see how they use various toys and we may begin to use a standardized assessment.

They’ll use one or a few standardized testing tools, which are painless and often fun, including:

• Peabody Developmental Motor Skills Test
• Bruninks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency
• Berry-Buktenica Visual Motor Integration Test
• Sensory Profile

For the child with an injury or congenital issue, other methods of assessment may include range of motion, strength and coordination assessments.

Children with a post-concussion injury may be tested using a variety of tools to assess memory, attention, ability to sequence through a task and problem solving.

The sessions will conclude with a preliminary plan of what to expect next. Once tests are scored our therapists will call you to discuss findings and therapeutic plans. Together with the parents' input, a plan will be developed to:

• Discuss your role in your child’s therapy and any specific training they would like you to have.
• Make sure you are comfortable with the therapeutic activities and exercises they would like you to do with your child at home
• Answer your questions​