YouTube clip by Ming @ Agents of Speech explaining what occupational therapy (OT) does for children. Ming contrasts OT with physical therapy (PT) and speech therapy (ST), describes OT’s main areas of focus—fine motor skills, sensory profile, and cognition—and notes OT can cover life skills and overlap with speech therapy on feeding and oral-motor issues.
Occupational therapy. I'm not an expert, but the big difference is that they deal with anything head down. In PT is head down, ST is neck up. Right? That's how they talk about it in the hospital. OT is all about fine motor. Why is it called occupation? It's because we're thinking about how to rehabilitate or habilitate. Occupational therapist also works for children who are on the spectrum, or like any child who is born with a deficit or disorder. And occupational therapy from my perspective. Brief overview, Fine motor skills, sensory profile. Those are big camps. And then the third big one is cognition. Sometimes OT also goes into any life skills. For instance, what overlaps with ST and OT is that they do sometimes feeding, eating stuff, and also some oral motor stuff.
