Occupational Therapy - Maharat Learning Center

Occupational therapy aims to increase independence in activity participation while also promoting age-appropriate development. Occupational therapy employs a holistic approach that incorporates physical, neurological, social, cognitive, and sensory development. Through comprehensive assessments, our occupational therapists can identify the physiological or cognitive impediments that lead to the challenges your child is experiencing in his or her everyday life. Accordingly, we will provide an individualized treatment plan that may focus on:

Our Services

Gross Motor Skills

Gross motor skills are the big movements we make with our bodies such as crawling, walking, jumping, or catching a ball. A child with delayed gross motor skills may present with inadequate coordination to engage in playground games with their peers, or they may not have the motor planning skills to dress independently. Our therapists can assist your child in developing these skills, by improving their movement, stability, postural control, and balance.

Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills involve the coordination of the smaller muscles in the hands and fingers. These skills are necessary for academic performance, fastening clothing, and more! Our Occupational Therapist (OT) can help your child develop their fine motor coordination, enabling them to complete their daily tasks more independently.

Visual Perceptual Skills

These skills involve the ability to organize, interpret, and provide meaning to visual information. Our OT can help your child develop his or her visual motor/perceptual capabilities, which are necessary for everyday tasks like handwriting, playing, and reading.

Self-Help and Independent Living Skills

Occupational Therapy focuses on improving the skills needed to make a child as independent as possible. Depending on a child’s age and ability this could include, self-feeding, dressing, brushing teeth, showering etc. For adolescents, independent living skills may include being able to follow a ‘To-do’ list or order food in a restaurant, etc.

Social and Play Skills

A child's social and play skills with peers can be improved by occupational therapy through functional play, taking turns, sharing, expressing emotions, interpreting social cues, and so on. We offer a social group where children can practice these skills and establish peer relationships.

Use of Adaptive Equipment & Assistive Technology

Our OT can help you determine if your child will benefit from utilizing adaptive equipment or assistive technology and will teach you how to utilize it appropriately to improve your child's functional abilities.

Sensory Integration Therapy

The term ‘Sensory integration’ is used to describe processes in the brain that allow us to organize and respond to information received from all our senses. Sensory processing deficits are thought to produce difficulties with behaviour and life skills. Some children may be hyperreactive to environmental stimuli such as loud music, or bright fluorescent lights while other children may be hyporeactive to environmental stimuli meaning they fail to detect or register it. Some children will seek out sensations and engage in self-stimulating behaviours like rocking back and forth, head thumping, and oral exploration of inedible objects while other children will avoid sensations, they find uncomfortable.

Sensory integration therapy is intended to assist children with sensory-processing issues (including those with ASDs) in dealing with the challenges they have while processing sensory information. Play-based therapy sessions may include the use of equipment such as swings, trampolines, slides, as well as messy play activities. Our OT can assist your child to better accept and respond to sensory input, whether it’s tolerating changes in clothing, reducing sensory craving for improved control, or experiencing new food textures.