My Default Button for 2020: What Could Be Possible If I Allow the Space

By Julia Grover-Barrey OTR/L
Founder of In-Tuned®

The beginning of this new decade comes with challenges AND endless possibilities. On my last scheduled, out of the home office, workday of 2019 this became clearer to me.

I was in a team planning meeting concerning a student with an intellectual disability who had been receiving special services for many years to support her in the school environment. We can all agree a child with a diagnosis of intellectual disability, or mental retardation has a hard-wiring and structural impairment effecting how their brain operates, thus limiting thinking, reasoning, judgment and adaptive functioning. We come to accept they will always have deficits in particular skills, so we expect less.

I admit I have fallen into this trap.

When I initially started working with this particular student, like many students who are referred for occupational therapy in schools we started working on handwriting. Why? Because writing ABC, 123 and your name are building blocks to recording your knowledge and how you will be graded during your academic career. The fine motor and handwriting work went on and on, until I put it aside and pretty much stopped working on it altogether. Maybe in part giving up, thinking or even saying out loud “This student is never going to be able to write her name. She can’t even recognize her own name written by someone else…so let’s work on other stuff.” We had always worked on other things, but eventually having ditched handwriting we spent more time on the “other stuff”.

In the case of this particular student the “other stuff” was the key to help unlock the door barring her ability to write her own name. So we spent the time providing vestibular input to her inner ear in a number of ways, including use of tuning forks, a rotation/spin board, which she did in various positions (prone, supine, all 4’s) and audio engineered sound through bone conduction headphones at various frequencies.  The inner ear is one of the gateways into the nervous system and it can be used to access a lot of neural real estate. We also spent time repeating rhythmic motor patterns requiring reciprocal use of the arms and legs to get sensory information flowing from the right to the left side of the brain, back and forth, widening the neural pathways. Her parents did the home challenges I had given her to do last summer, mostly consisting of bouncing and catching a ball in different patterns.

This student no longer has issues with writing her own name, legibly copying word lists and sentences, she is also reading. She has, by far, achieved more than was expected, because she was given the possibility of more, allowed the space for more.  And what’s even more miraculous, is “the system” isn’t satisfied with exceeding of previous expectations and exiting the student from services, but unanimously agreed this student’s potential is endless and will keep providing her service, even in the face of fiscal restraint.

We can continue to create these situations of possibility, even in the face of what appears to be permanent structural challenges.

Have a Happy New Year with endless possibility,

Julia