An Occupational Therapist for baby sleep? Yup! Here’s how I can help.

If you don’t know what Occupational Therapy (OT) is, you’re not alone. If you thought you knew what OT was but find yourself surprised that my role focuses primarily on family sleep, development, and parenting, instead of handwriting you’re also not alone!

As a belated celebration of Occupational Therapy Month I’m uncovering the way OTs look at solving problems and why thinking like an OT is a great way to support families through the challenges and uncertainties of sleep and parenting in the first three years.

SKILLS FOR THE JOB OF LIVING

Occupational therapy focuses on the ability of a person to do what they need and want to do.  

For an infant or child, things they need or want to do may be learning to breastfeed or bottle-feed, reaching for a toy, negotiating a conflict with a sibling, or learning how to play Snakes & Ladders.

For parents, this may include learning to stay calm during parenting challenges, getting enough sleep, and figuring out how to get dinner on the table!

THREE THINGS I ASK WHEN I WORK WITH YOU

When working towards changing things in order to achieve what you want to achieve as a parent, there are three areas that I address: 

1. Who you are (or who your baby is: temperament, strengths, needs)

2. Where you are (your environment: physical and emotional), and

3. What you want to do or want your baby to be able to do (the “thing” that you may find difficult that leads to you reaching out). 

When life is going fairly smoothly, these three areas tend to compliment each other quite well.  

 So what does it look like to work with an occupational therapist to support baby sleep?

Working through an occupational therapy lens to support you with sleep may involve:

1. Exploring your baby’s environment (e.g. setting up a calm sleep space, removing or reducing hazards, choosing developmentally appropriate toys, improving the air you breath);

2. Exploring your baby’s activities (e.g. daytime activities that promote sleep pressure, shifting naps, adjusting sleep associations to invite sleep more easily, sensory activities that calm a child for sleep);

3. Exploring your perspectives (e.g. how important is this to me? How might I approach this to get closer to my goals? Is there a different way to look at this that uncovers a solution to the problem that I hadn’t thought of before?)

4. Exploring your parenting style (e.g. what has been working, what hasn’t been, and where are you feeling conflict or uncertainty)

5. Explore your baby’s development (e.g. what stage of sleep development they are in, and how does that impact your parenting approach, what other aspects of development are changing and how might this be impacted sleep?)

SO, THEN…….WHAT IS OT?

Occupational therapy is the art and science of enabling engagement in everyday living, through occupation (Townsend& Polatajko, 2007, p. 372). I often use the word “activity” since most people think of paid employment when they think of “occupation”. Another way to word it is to think about how your time is “occupied”: what do you spend time doing?

Occupational therapy enables parents and children to perform the occupations that foster health and well-being. In the first three years this means a lot of focus on eating, sleeping, playing, and gaining new skills (babies AND parents!). It means finding a balance with all of our activities and responsibilities during the day, and having flow.

Having flow means that who we are (our temperament, our abilities, our strengths), where we are (our environment), and what we do are all aligned. When these things are not well aligned, changing one of them (ourselves, our environment, or our activities) can make a big difference in how we feel.

When it comes to babies and young children, it’s often helpful to focus on changing their environment (which includes changing your knowledge and perspective on things!). But exploring health issues, sensory regulation, and development are all ways to support change too!

IT’S RARELY JUST ABOUT SLEEP:

Occupational therapy looks holistically at many aspects of your baby’s and your family’s lives. Here are just a few of the ways that support can extend beyond the main reason a family reaches out for support:

• You want to understand infant development in order to feel informed about how to support it;

• You want to explore gentle parenting strategies to get more satisfaction, joy, and confidence out of supporting your child;

• You have concerns or questions about your child’s development even though things seem to be going pretty well;

• You want to explore ways to adjust your home environment (simplifying, making healthier) to better support your child's development.

• You are concerned about your child’s sleep (wondering if it is typical, and if it is, how to support it and support your own sleep, too!)

The holistic approach of OT allows us to look broadly at the challenges families face, and to appreciate that every family is unique. This means the solutions needed to solve challenges will look unique too.

Sometimes it is about shifting expectations; other times it’s shifting routines; and still other times it is about discovering a root cause to the challenge and making a plan to resolve it. But always, it’s about listening to you and what goals you have for your baby and your family.

Warmly,

Heather