Common Referral Criteria for Occupational Therapy Includes:
Gross Motor: (Upper Body Strength, muscle tone, trunk stability)
- Slumps in chair
- Holds head up with hand
- Fidgety in chair
- Leans on things when standing
- Tires easily (fatigues before peers, difficulty finishing assignments)
- Muscles seem tight and rigid
- Muscles seem weak and floppy
- Low Endurance
- Tremors
- Difficulty with hopping, skipping, running, compared to same age peers
- Clumsy or seems to not know how to move body; bumps into things
- Tendency to confuse left and right body sides (after age 6)
- Falls frequently
- Reluctant to participate in sports or physical activity
Fine Motor: (grasp patterns, hand/wrist strength, in-hand manipulation)
- Awkward grasp on pencil/scissors
- Writing pressure too light/too heavy
- Drops things easily
- Flexes wrist when writing/cutting
- Experiences hand fatigue/pain
- Excessive hand perspiration
- Poor isolation on fingers on keyboard
- Writing not fluid
- Tries to avoid drawing, coloring, cutting, or writing
- Non-dominant hand fails to hold paper stable when writing/coloring
- Shows inconsistent hand dominance if older than age 6
- Difficulty manipulating fasteners
- Written assignments illegible (spacing, letter height)
- Immature/awkward scissors grasp
- Difficulty with keyboarding skills
Visual Perceptual/Motor/Handwriting/Oculomotor: (body perception, visual perception,
visual motor integration, eye-hand coordination, visual focus and tracking)
- Poor letter recognition
- Poor letter formation
- Poor letter/word spacing/alignment
- Inaccurate or slow copying/reading
- Difficulty completing reading/writing (loses place, omits words, add words)
- Poorly organized writing
- Cannot think of what to write about
- Poor drawing skills
- Unable to accurately draw a person
- Letter/word reversals (past 1st grade)
- Difficulty coloring within boundaries
- Difficulty staying on lines with cutting
- Confuses right/left (past kindergarten)
- Poor alignment of numbers in math
- Poor memory for written directions
- Poor spelling skills
- Moves head back and forth while reading
- Eye watering/rubbing/squinting
- Poor eye-hand coordination in gym
- Does not recognize or fix own errors well
- Difficulty with mazes and/or dot-to-dots
- Difficulty copying designs with manipulatives or on paper/graphs/dot maps
- Rubs eyes, squints, head close to paper
- Difficulty duplicating shapes, words, and numbers from the board, book, or model
- Looses place on page (reading or writing)
Sensory Processing: (touch, visual processing, auditory processing, movement, body
awareness)
- Avoids or has difficulty with eye contact
- Is easily distracted by visual stimulation
- Seems not to understand what was said
- Seems overly sensitive to sounds
- Appear reluctant to participate in sports
- Distracted by lots of noise and games
- Unable to follow 2-3 directions
- Prefers to touch rather than be touched
- Often seems overly active
- Avoids getting hands messy (art)
- Hits or pushes other children
- Seems more sensitive to pain than others
- Oblivious to bruises/heavy falls
- Complains that others hit/push him/her
- Mouths clothing/objects frequently
- Difficulty making friends
- Tends to prefer to play alone
- Has strong desire for routine/sameness
- Intense and easily frustrated
- Has strong outbursts of anger/frustration
- Lacks carefulness/Impulsive
- Bumps into things frequently
- Moves in/out of chair while working
- Falls out of chair
- Seems clumsy
- Seems to deliberately fall or tumble
- Distracted by background noises
- Fearful moving through space (swing)
- Avoids activities that challenge balance
- Avoids playing on playground equipment
- Extremely picky eater; often refuses foods kids typically eat at school/daycare
Chatterboxes offers quality Speech-Language & Occupational Therapy in Boston, MA. We also offer flexible service options for your family. Call us today at 617-969-8255 or visit us at 121 Mt Vernon St, Boston, MA 02108.