Fine Motor Development for Your Child with Autism

Occupational Therapy addresses any deficits in fine motor skills, sensory development and oral/motor sensory.

Developmental Milestones

Know what skills your child should be doing at their age and facilitate any they are not.

Educate yourself as to what skills are coming next and begin challenging those skills now so your child has them mastered by that next age level.

Interesting fact: Did you know that each developmental skill builds a foundation for the next developmental skill?

Visual Motor Skills

The ability to coordinate your hands with your eyes or your feet with your eyes is the foundation of most skills.

A child must be able to coordinate the eye and the hand to button, zip, write or cut.

A child must be able to coordinate the eyes with the feet to step, jump, hop or skip.

Sensory Integration / Behavior

An immature sensory system can make a child feel dizzy, nauseous, or even angry/upset.

The inability to take in sensory information from your environment and filter out what is important and ignore what is not important can lead to behaviors.

An immature sensory system can be matured such that behaviors are controlled.

Oral Motor / Feeding

Health and nutrition can be negatively impacted if a child is not taking in a variety of food sources.

The ability to take in a variety of foods such that one’s nutritional status is optimized is essential for brain and body growth.

The ability to each a variety of foods is necessary to fit in socially to your peer group.

Picky Eaters or children who will not eat a variety of foods and textures can cause stress to themselves and those around them.

Occupational Therapy can help address all of the above developmental challenges.