Occupational Therapy for Children and their families

When your child is anxious and angry, tearful and demanding it is very easy to become frustrated, isolated and deskilled as a parent. Usually this is just a phase of the development process. However, when this phase does not end but continues to escalate, you begin to feel a failure and unable to cope in your parenting. Both you and your child feel unable to communicate effectively and it can quickly feel like hope has gone.

My experience tells me that timely intervention develops strong family relationships and coping strategies that will support your child to grow into an independent and confident adult. It is also never too late to change this cycle, it just might take us longer to get there.

I offer highly specialised mental health occupational therapy to children and their families to identify strategies to manage low self-esteem, anxiety and anger in the home. I will meet with you to gain an understanding of the current situation and how anxiety in the home environment is impacting on the family. I will then make recommendations based on this initial interview which may include:

Individual intervention sessions with you to put into place alternate parenting strategies – so you can become the expert parent for your child;

Sign posting to specialist services locally for you and/or your child as required;

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Motivational Interviewing techniques to support you to help your child to manage their anxiety;

Where indicated, an occupational assessment of your child to identify potential individual challenges that may be impacting on your child’s development. Example challenges may be: Autism Spectrum Disorder; Dyspraxia; Anxiety, Depression, Attention Deficit Disorder etc.

Following this assessment we will discuss potential referrals to local specialist services and/or intervention packages as required.