FAQ’s

What IS Occupational Therapy?

Occupational Therapists, (OT’s), look at the roles that individuals have in their daily lives.  People, including children have many different roles including those of child, parent, spouse, pet owner, home owner, employee, church member, neighbor, friend, car pool driver, golfer, sibling, card player, etc.  OT’s analyze what may be interfering with a persons roles due to injury or illness and help provide exercises that include the tasks within each of these roles, to help people succeed in carrying out these roles.  They also provide ways to prevent injury or illness so a person stays well to carry out their roles.  An OT will assess the physical requirements of an activity, as well as the cognitive, and sensory aspects to better understand what a person will need to successfully perform the activity.

What IS Sensory Integration?

Sensory Integration is how our body takes in information from all of our seven senses.  Yes, that is SEVEN senses.  We use our sense of taste, smell, sight, hearing and touch constantly during the day to provide information about the world around us.  It helps us determine what we should eat, how we should dress, and how we learn.  We also use the vestibular sense, which tells us where are body is in relation to gravity.  We know our head is up and not moving by feeling, even if we can not see it.  We also can “feel” when we are moving forward or backward, fast or slow.  One other sense is the proprioceptive sense.  This sense provides information to our brain as to where one part of our body is in relation to another.  For example, we know without seeing that our arm is above our head if we reach high up to the sky.  Sensory integration takes information constantly from each of these senses and organizes it in our brain so we can provide appropriate motor responses or non responses.  If a bee stings our leg, we usually cry out “ouch”, look to see where the bee has stung our body and then put our hand to the place where it stung us.  Based on one input, we have several different motor responses.  When information is not adequate or can not be organized efficiently by the brain, we have a hard time coordinating a appropriate response.  People can sometimes appear to have attention problems, hearing problems, and vision difficulties, be uncoordinated, have difficulty sitting or standing still, have trouble sleeping at night, etc.  Our staff is specially trained to work with Sensory Integration concerns.  Our center is dedicated to working with clients to provide exercises to help organize their brains.