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Understanding Sibling Issues
Raising a child with a disability or chronic illness poses many challenges. Some of these challenges focus on the relationship between the siblings in the family. These crucial relationships are examined in this article.
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Occupational Therapy: Self Dressing Skills: Snakey and the Jumbo Music Block
By: Renata Bursten, Dragonfly Staff
Children with general developmental delays can be slow to learn to dress themselves. Learning how to dress yourself makes a real difference in the personal independence of a child, but it's not all that easy to learn. A good way to learn is to start by learning how to UNDO on a toy in front of you. Then practice doing the fastenings up. When the oversized fastenings on the toy are mastered, try doing fastenings up on someone else, and only then on yourself, which is hardest. Then watch your child enjoy not needing to ask for help!
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PLAY Tip
Adapting Signs for pre-verbal communication
Many hearing children use Sign instead of or before verbal communication. But what do you do if traditional Signs are physically difficult to master? Adapt them!
For example, the traditional Sign used to indicate "I need to go to the washroom" involves putting the thumb between the third and fourth fingers in a fist and waving the fist. If the child can't manage the hand position you could try using a plain closed fist waving instead.
Sign-based communication can help improve communication skills, lower frustration, improve manual dexterity, and teach children that hands can be used for meaningful activities.
You will find a good group of Sign resources in Dragonfly's book section.