Self Care / ADL Skills

Self Care Skills or ADL’s (activities of daily living) play a major role in a child’s overall functional growth, confidence and independence. These essential skills include the child’s ability to feed themselves using utensils appropriately and to perform toileting, bathing and grooming activities.

Deficits in this area may be due to an underlying problem. This may include impaired Sensory Integration or diminished Fine Motor / Upper Body Coordination. Children may also exhibit poor motor planning which affects their ability to sequence, time and grade motor activities.

You may see a delay in the initiation of activities, problems stopping or changing movement and/or difficulties combining motor activities.

Variations in development do occur and do not necessarily indicate a problem. However, if your child seems to be lagging in terms of their ability to perform certain tasks that are age appropriate; or if they have had a specific accident or illness that results in impairments in areas such as; cognition, language, memory or decreased body awareness, see your pediatrician for an assessment. It would be appropriate for your doctor to refer your child for an Occupational Therapy evaluation. Once the evaluation is performed a treatment plan is created to address your child’s functional issues and to improve independence in those specific areas.

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