We had the opportunity this semester to apply some of our classroom teachings when we went to the Eccles Early Child Development Lab School. While going through our classes this semester I have been trying to decide what population I think that I would like to work with. One of my interests growing up has always been to work with children. For one, I think kids are fun, but the other is that they present a different challenge than many other populations. During this semester in our special populations course, we have worked on learning the different developmental milestones that children reach from infancy to adulthood. They go through so much growth biologically, but also cognitively and socially. This is what I see as the challenge of Pediatric Physical Therapy. Each age group and each individual child is different and requires us as therapists to quickly adapt to their needs to provide the best care and to obtain the most optimal results in therapy. As we observed children in a preschool setting I really learned that kids attention is hard to hold until you find something that really interests them. Regardless of wether I am treating children or adults, I think this is an important concept to remember. Each session of therapy should catch the attention of my patients and keep them interested. Some of the things we learn in class is about how to optimize children's behavior based off of the feedback we give them. This concept really helped me learn how to best approach teaching and guiding actions we intend for a patient to do. Especially for little kids, the instruction needs to be very basic. They have a hard time listening to long drawn out explanations. I have already tried to apply this to my own children when getting them to do certain things and I've seen it help with their performance when playing or learning new things. I feel like regardless of a desire to work with children these same principles and ideas can help us with any demographic of patient we choose to deal with. Each patient needs to know that we are there for them, that we have individualized their treatment to them, and that we are invested in their successes. I have appreciated getting to take this class and look forward to either one day working with kids or applying these principles to treat whomever it is that I end up treating.
Attached is a paper that I was able to write as a group of three other classmates based off our observation of a 4 year old preschool class. We tried to observe specific milestones being practiced based off the Peabody Motor Development Chart. We then used principles we have learned during the semester to see how we can apply our observations to our treatments.
Attached is a paper that I was able to write as a group of three other classmates based off our observation of a 4 year old preschool class. We tried to observe specific milestones being practiced based off the Peabody Motor Development Chart. We then used principles we have learned during the semester to see how we can apply our observations to our treatments.
eccles_early_childhood_lab_observation_paper.pdf | |
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