Ming (Agents of Speech) explains differences and overlaps between speech therapy (ST) and occupational therapy (OT), aimed at parents of children—especially those on the autism spectrum. He defines ST as focused on communication (speech sound production and broader language: sentence structure, social communication, sign language) and OT as focused on functional daily tasks and sensory processing (fine motor, sensory regulation, cognition for task performance, feeding/swallowing). The video emphasizes frequent overlap (sensory issues affecting speech, fine motor tasks supporting school skills), recommends collaboration among therapists, and advises parents to seek OT when sensory or fine-motor issues impede participation; he suggests using both therapies when appropriate.
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In general, speech therapy is to help someone, child or an adult, to get their message across, which is all about communication. Occupational therapy is to help someone, also child or adult, to get on with their lives, to do their jobs. Basically, that's why it's called occupational therapy. A child's job might be to be a student, right? That's why they need to learn how to write, how to sit down, how to type and use their fingers and grasp things. And also adults also need these things if they had a traumatic injury. Okay, so my name is Ming, a speech therapist from agents of speech.com and today I want to talk about the differences between speech therapy and occupational therapy. In short, it's ST versus ot, right? I'm not an ot, so if you need help in the occupational therapy department, please go find a professional to do so. I'm going to now talk about the differences in detail. Okay, so st, what I do teaches communication. Is there a overlap between the two services? Yes, there is. I'll talk about that in a bit. But I'll first of all go through the major points that each therapy does. So communication is a big umbrella term. There are two parts to it at the very least. There are speech and language. Obviously there are more different, like branches. But in general there are only speech and language. Right? And speech is to deal with any mispronunciations, unable to say certain sounds. Is it because of oral motor difficulties or other reasons? That's in the speech department, all about making sounds. Right? Whereas language, on the other hand, is how we get. We encode our message. Right? We could tell someone with our eyes, right? We could tell some with our gestures. It could be sounds, speech sounds, it could be anything. Okay? So we teach these two departments in speech therapy because it's called ST speech therapy, people misunderstand that it's only about talking. It's not really all about talking. It's also about teaching language. Okay? Within language, there's a lot of stuff that can be done. It could be sentence length, grammatical structures. Right? Teaching them to use sign language, teaching someone the appropriate distance for a social communication. Right. Staying on topic, when to change topics. So it's really, really diverse and the range goes from zero to all the way. Like how I'm talking to you right now. Okay, so that's speech therapy, occupational therapy, on the other hand. Now if I'm getting any of this wrong and you are OT and you want to add anything, just put it in the comment section, okay? These videos are aimed to help parents anyways, so OT helps With sensory. Okay. That's at least from my perspective. From ST's perspective, that's what I think helps the most. Okay, so what about sensory? Children with sensory processing disorder diagnosis that often overlaps with autism. Okay. Or like speech related disorders. Because when we lose the sensory in our mouths or it's not balanced, it's difficult to move our mouths to make the sounds we want. Okay. Children with sensory processing disorders have either over or understimulated sensory. Okay. What does that mean? So before I lose you. Okay. When, when a child is overstimulated, that means they're trying to avoid sensory. So when you're trying to touch, you're to trying your child on the mouth or on the face or on shoulders, they try to avoid it. Maybe they're over stimulated and you need to get your child assessed and tested to see which one is the case. Okay. Sometimes, on the other hand, children might be under stimulated and they're like seeking. They're seeking for sensory. They're always like hitting on things. They're all always trying to like touch things and so on. And like most of the time it's not either or. Okay. It's. And like some parts of their body, they are under stimulated, Some parts of their senses are under. So it might be that their oral area is very sensitive, but at the same time their hands are under stimulated and they keep on like doing things. Right. They keep on touching things and tapping things and so on. So it really is down to the occupational therapist to tell you why this is happening and how to solve it. All right? So OT helps normalize sensory disorders so that they can function better. And that's why when I see a child, if I'm working with an ot, hopefully if we're in the same center or in the same setting or at someone's house or at my place, the parents should ask the OT to do a session first before coming to me so that they're more ready in terms of sensory. Okay. Their behavior will be a lot more mild. It's a lot easier to get them to do things. So I would strongly suggest you look into some of the OT techniques to like regulate sensory so that you can teach them and it's easier for you. Okay. There are other things that I think will overlap with speech therapy. Okay. The first one is fine motor. Okay. Fine motor skills. If your child cannot write and he's. He or she is holding the pen like this with a fist and going like that, you know, chances are you need to see a OT for a child and they will teach them the correct way to. To write. Yeah. So fine motor is something that us speech therapists will do and also ABA therapists will do, but not in the way that OT will do for us. Fine motor just means imitation of. Of actions that are not gross. Meaning it's not like. Like this or like tapping the hair, tapping the table or clapping your hands. Fine motor is more like touching your nose, you know, like rubbing something, so on, so forth. It's just to increase the quality of imitation skills. We're not targeting the actual fine motor skills. Whereas OT would teach fine motor skills such as, like, painting, drawing, grasping things. Right. With different ways of grips and so on. I'm not entirely sure, like, what they do. Okay. And what they do is they break down the skill to, like, small pieces and teach the child step by step. All right, so that is why OT has got occupational therapy, right? Because if a child is. Needs to be a student, which is their occupation, they will need to know how to write, they will need to know how to grasp, they will need to know how to put on their school bag or put it down or, you know, keep balance in. In PE lessons and so on. Right. Okay. The other things that occupational therapists teach is cognitive tasks, which overlaps a lot with, like, ABA stuff and also with speech therapy stuff. So ABA, if you don't know, you can go to YouTube and type. What is ABA therapy? It's applied Behavioral Analysis. It's therapy that is for autistic children. Okay, so what cognitive tasks are there and how does it overlap? So usually for us speech therapists, we don't really put our focus there, but we do do matching and different, like matching and also categorization and stuff. And that's because it builds up the content, the language content, their. Their language skills in that way. Okay. We're just teaching the concepts there. All right? Whereas ot, their main focus is about their cognition. Right. And us is like, building up language. So it's a little bit different there. They are interconnected, obviously, but our focuses are different, and why we do it is different. All right, okay. So the other thing that we might clash is feeding. Okay. So OT will do some feeding, will do some swallowing. In fact, dysphasia is the name for the thing. The reason why it overlaps is. Is because that feeding or eating or swallowing, whatever, it has a lot of sensory components to it. Okay. And therefore, OT can use their knowledge to break down a certain motor pattern and then help them with it. Okay, what do I think about this? Is that I Don't. I don't care who does it as long as the skill is taught. No matter if it's feeding, swallowing, cognition, matching, whatever. If the therapist is confident that this way will work, you should try it. Okay. There's no. I think sometimes we take a lot of pride in our. Our subset of skills, and. Whereas, you know, nowadays we always talk about holistic. But the thing is, anyone can teach anyone anything as long as the system works. Right? Right. If the kid reacts better to a certain therapist, then that person should do the harder tasks. Right. And I really don't think it should be so set in stone that, oh, you need to do this, you need to do that, and I do this. Don't touch my stuff. Right. Like that. That's stage number one. Stage number two is collaboration. I'll help you do this, you help me do that. Let's do this together. Stage three is that, oh, we're all doing the same thing, but in different ways. Right. And so I think at the end of the day, is there, like, is it st ot do you choose one or choose all? Obviously, the answer is to get as much help as you can. I would say that, you know, if you can and you need, if you're willing and you're able to, you should get both types of therapy for your child, especially if they're on the spectrum. All right, I hope that answers your question. And if you haven't, you can go to agentsofspeech. Com Checklist. It's a list of tools and toys that I recommend to you if you want to start home therapy today. Okay, so that's all. Leave your comments down below and let me know if you have any questions. All right, See ya.
