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A simple and useful strategy is using a check in and check out for classroom and therapy sessions. Pictures can be used to help students with complex behavioral challenges express their arousal level, feelings, or activities they plan to do before and after learning and therapy sessions. It helps with organizational skills at the beginning […]

I recently attended an introductory Focusing-oriented therapy course taught by Dr. Robert Lee in New York City. Focusing-oriented therapy guides clients to access a “felt sense” of their body for problem solving and improved mental health.  A listener empathetically guides the focuser through a sequential process of integrating consideration of an issue, their bodily “felt

A common reason that coping strategies don’t improve behavior is that they were not optimally developed or practiced. Affective coping strategies for children with complex behavioral challenges are based on their Sensory Profile, a preference assessment, and if needed a functional behavioral assessment such as the QABF (Questions About Behavior Form). Massagehttps://www.cmbaware.org/ First, come up

While I need to begin with full disclosure that “I am a research geek” I think it is important for OTs to review the current research, as illustrated by recent research regarding weighted blankets. The heading of the research study in the journal Pedatrics heading bullet states that the study adds that weighted blankets do not

To develop interventions that help improve interoceptive awareness in adolescents with complex behavioral challenges I recently completed the MABT (Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy) Level 1 training and interoception research. Sensory processing and interoception are atypical in adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (DuBois et al., 2016) and mental health challenges (Khalsa et al., 2018). Recent

Recent interoception research, theory, and assessment necessitate an expansion of multi-disciplinary collaboration and the sensory processing frame of reference (DuBois et al., 2016). Interoception involves the nervous system registering, interpreting, and integrating sensory input to represents the current condition of the body. Interoceptive input is the primarily unconscious monitoring of our internal body sensations that

While individualized sensory processing intervention guided by the (SP) Sensory Profile (Dunn, 2014) significantly improves behavior done to receive sensory input (e.g., by using an activity analysis to develop activities providing similar more appropriate sensory input), intervention combining the SP with the (QABF) Questions About Behavior Function provides significantly better outcomes (Sandee et al., 2023;

An occupational therapy assessment item involves having youth identify which finger I touch, with their eyes closed. It’s taken from the Miller Assessment for Preschoolers, and often doctors watching me evaluate youth are surprised I do it with high school students with typical intelligence and a history of PTSD, especially when they make repeated errors.

Sensory matching is an evidence-based strategy for replacing repetitive self-injurious behavior with an alternative activity that provides similar sensory input. Sensory matching is consistent with the evidence-based behavioral intervention of (NMS) non-contingent matched stimulation (Davis et al. 2013). Behavioral and sensory modulation theories are integrated in the sensory matching strategy to functionally replace repetitive self-injurious

The arousal level strategy helps children and adolescents by facilitating awareness of how their extreme arousal levels contribute to misbehavior. As such, it prepares youth to for arousal level modulation towards a quiet alert state that improves behavior. The arousal level strategy uses consistent traffic lights and smells to promote arousal level awareness. Some children