One of the important life skills that children should be taught from a very early age is maintaining a daily routine of self care and independence skills.
This includes personal hygiene, getting dressed, brushing of teeth, brushing of hair and brushing of teeth, among other things.
Heidi, our Occupational Therapist, recently hosted a workshop for parents and staff at Die Sterreweg aimed at guiding and encouraging parents on how to install these skills with their children.
Depending on the skill set and functionality of children, ideas specific to these were given on how to make all these every day activities fun and easy to learn and to do.
The importance of learning these skill sets promotes self esteem and helps to improve cognitive and fine motor skills. It also instills feelings of pride, independence and a great feeling of belonging.
By building good habits and establishing good routines, our children and youth decrease the care burden by being able to do so much more for themselves.
Grading various activities and working on mastering these through various guide steps allows children to become comfortable with some more complex tasks.
Encouraging all adults that work with the children to use the same instructional words and phrases also helps with understanding the task at hand. Repetition is great for remembering. Creating a fun little rhyme or song with a catchy, known tune is often incredibly well received and assists in making the idea stick!
Thank you Heidi for always making these workshops so fun and informative!
