Dynamics’ Therapy@Home offers you quality and hassle-free therapeutic services in the comfort of your home. In addition to Occupational Therapy, we also provide home-based Speech Therapy, Applied Behaviour Analysis Therapy, Counselling and Educational Therapy. This article will focus on Therapy@Home for Occupational Therapy.

Children spend most of their time at home, and as such, a conducive home environment can play a vital role in enhancing the holistic development of a child with special needs.

Parents usually ask, “What can I do to engage my child at home?” or “How do I play with my child?”

Therapy@Home for Occupational Therapy
Home-based Occupational Therapy aims to address these questions by observing and understanding your child’s routine and providing them with opportunities to learn and adapt everyday skills in a familiar (natural) environment — their home.

The therapist will focus on developing both basic and instrumental activities of daily living. And simultaneously facilitate your child and other family members’ participation and engagement throughout the day, thus allowing the whole family to manage and spend meaningful time together at home.

Dynamics’ home-based Occupational Therapy is developed based on the widely used Routines-Based Intervention (RBI) Model that takes on a family-centred approach. The RBI model is a collection of practices that are integrated into your child’s daily routine, take place in your child’s natural environments and engage the entire family.

Some of the critical questions to ask when deciding on an appropriate home-based intervention include:

• What is everyone doing and what is your child doing?
• How is your child participating in this activity? (engagement)
• What can your child do for himself/herself? (independence)
• How is your child interacting with others at this time? (social relationships)
• How feasible is this time of day for your child and family?

Strategies for Active Engagement at Home

Here are some strategies to help you actively and effectively engage your child at home:

• Know your child’s interests.
  It is important to understand your child’s interests before implementing real-life changes.
• Set up a play area and a play routine
  It is vital for parents to understand the importance of play and to incorporate playtime into the child’s routine throughout the day. Age-appropriate toys and learning aids are also essential to a successful play setup.
• Spend time with your child.
  A child’s meaningful participation and engagement can increase tremendously when parents spend time with their child consistently and regularly. Your child looks up to you as their role model and through spending quality time with you, they can learn (and catch) good values and essential life skills.
• Develop a structured schedule.
  A structured schedule can improve your child’s quality of life with purposeful “occupational engagements”. You can work with your child’s Occupational Therapist to plan and develop an appropriate schedule for your child.