Ella's OT Student Blog

Some people see the world as black and white. You either do option A or option B. How boring would life be if there were only two options for everything?! Our lives could be somewhat unique, but there would always be someone who was the same. As in life, there are shades of gray in therapy. These gray areas can be the way the therapists adapts the session specifically to the client or it could be a grey area because there is not much research on the topic. Before I got into OT school, I was observing in an out patient that specialized in the treatment of children with Autism. This clinic offers OT, PT, speech, and food therapy. I was observing a session with a therapist and she warned me that the next kid was a bit stubborn and would probably fight with us about some issue. We do the session and there were no issues. I thought the kid was having a great day. The therapist asks the kid to put on his shoes, cue the meltdown. The child started to stomp and scream that he was NOT going to...

In class this past week we were asked to watch the TED talk "Why We Need Universal Design", presented by Michael Nesmith, who is deaf. He begins his talk by telling a story of what happened to a friend of his, who is also deaf. His friend was going down the hallway and another man was walking towards him. The friend and the man started doing that awkward dance when two people both go the same way down a hallway. The friend saw that the other man was blind. The blind man starts to speak to the deaf man. The deaf man tries to sign that he is deaf, but realizes that the blind man can't see it. The deaf man tries to type a message to the blind man, but realizes that he can't see that either. The deaf man takes the hand of the blind man, puts it on his ear while shaking his head no. The blind man then understood that the man was deaf. They both laughed and went their separate ways. In this example, Nesmith was showing how people have to adapt to be understood. Nesmith ...