As part of my occupational therapy assessment class we've been visiting a nearby school/development center. Today we had to perform a play assessment, a standardized assessment and an interview with the teacher on the child. Yikes! We worked in groups of 5 and we did very well, actually! And it was a LOT of fun! A lot! Does this mean I'm sold on peds???? I'm not sure yet. Everything is fun when you first try it! haha.
I was terrified at first, but then I realized, I'm great with kids and all kids love me because I'm fun! It's true, I'm not being facetious, I'm lots of fun!
Anyway, we administered the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency on a 4-year old boy (who was adorable, btw, seriously, just too cute!). We started off by playing Duck, Duck Goose, then we played catch with a large, soft nerf ball, then catch with a tennis ball, then we constructed an obstacle course (I had to model it for him, imagine my big self crawling through tunnels and laying on a scooter! haha), then we rolled him on a scooter, then rolled him on a scooter while he held a hula hoop and I pulled him (we made train noises), then we played Simon Says (you can learn a lot about cognition, proprioception, and motor skills from this game, wow!), then we sat down and drew lines, circles, X's and crosses (as I drew I made sure to make noises, like rolling my tongue, to make it more animated for him) and then we finally started the test.
The test is a lot longer than we anticipated, and because we were all new at it and had no time to prepare, it took ALL five of us to do it! LOL. We took turns with each module and we all helped set up to keep it moving so he wouldn't get bored. By the end he was definitely antsy and we tried to speed it up again. The BOT is very long and I don't know how any kid sits through it. We didn't do all the modules because our kid was technically too young (but we needed the practice) and we were short on time--we were, after all, interrupting his class time.
Afterward, we interviewed the teacher. This normally happens first but she had a class and we had to wait for her to finish. The interview went very well and we learned a lot about our kid, how he interacts and how to conduct an informative interview.
By the end, I was sweaty, dirty, and tired. But, I learned that I need this type of constant stimulation because, just like a kid, I get bored very easily. I am a Sensory Seeker (more about that at the next post) so I need constant stimulation. Working with kids may be for me. We'll see.
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