Your Child's Difficulties
Playing With Others
When parents are asked what they want most for their child, the answer is often “to have friends.”
Before a child can engage in play and build relationships with others, they must first:
- Develop self-awareness and an understanding of their own identity.
- Recognise their ability to move, interact with objects, and communicate their desire to do so.
- Build trust in others and feel secure in an environment that encourages exploration, play, self-expression, and growing confidence through play.
In play development, the child moves through the stages of:
- Exploring their environment (exploratory play)
- Playing by themselves (solitary play)
- Playing next to another person, sometimes noticing and observing what the other person does (parallel play)
- Emerging interest in communicating and playing with others (interactive play),
- Playing with another (cooperative play).
Each child has a unique learning and processing style, and they may spend varying amounts of time in each stage before progressing to the next. Some children may also need adult support to help them make sense of their experiences and observations.
For children with processing challenges, it is important to offer play opportunities—through objects, toys, and social interactions—that support their sensory, learning, and communication development needs.
We ask:
- What draws the child in? What makes them stay?
- What makes the child leave?
- What draws them back into the play relationship?
Some children may become visually distracted by objects and toys, making it difficult for them to shift their focus from an object to a person due to visual-spatial processing challenges. In these cases, engaging in body-based games and activities tailored to the child’s unique processing style can be beneficial.
If you have concerns about your child’s play or social interactions and would like guidance on how to best support them, please contact us for a consultation.
Sharing
Sharing is a complex skill to master. There are many foundation skills required for children to be able to share space and objects with others.
Children need to develop awareness in several key areas:
- Self and others – Transitioning from a “me-centred” understanding of the world to recognising both “you” and “me.”
- Object permanence – Understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight.
- Spatial concepts – Grasping the difference between “here” and “there,” recognising that when something moves, it is no longer in its original place.
In addition to awareness, children must also trust the person they are sharing with and be emotionally ready for sharing. This may begin with brief exchanges, such as letting go of an object and receiving it back after a short time.
Some children may struggle with sharing because they have not yet developed an understanding of what it means to share, how to interpret another person’s intentions, or how to take on someone else’s perspective.
If you would like to learn more about sharing and how to support your child in developing this skill, please contact us for a consultation.
Talking
Every parent hopes their child will learn to talk, as talking is one of the primary ways people communicate in our society.
Talking serves many purposes, including:
- Expressing needs and desires.
- Sharing ideas.
- Building and maintaining friendships and relationships.
- Negotiating, arguing, protesting, clarifying, and apologizing.
- Expressing emotions.
For many people, talking feels as natural as breathing—an essential part of being human.
However, challenges arise when children do not develop speech as expected. There is often a misconception that if a child does not talk, they are not communicating, which can lead to unnecessary pressure to speak before they are ready or if speech is not their preferred form of communication.
We help parents understand why their child may not be talking right now. Possible reasons include:
- They are not developmentally ready.
- They need to build foundational skills such as shared attention, engagement, listening, and participating in back-and-forth interactions.
- They lack opportunities to speak, perhaps due to frequent questioning or siblings speaking on their behalf.
- They feel anxious about speaking because their speech is often corrected or judged.
- They have difficulty coordinating the mouth muscles needed for speech.
We also help parents recognise how their child expresses themselves and communicates their wants and needs, providing strategies to build vocabulary through everyday activities.
Our approach focuses on boosting the child’s self-esteem and confidence in communication. When needed, we may introduce Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) systems to reduce the pressure of talking and support the child in feeling competent as a communicator.
A key part of our work is guiding parents in understanding their child’s development and the natural progression of speech. If you have concerns about your child’s speech development and would like guidance on how to best support them, please contact us for a consultation.
Responding
Children may have difficulty responding the way we want them to respond for many reasons:
- They might not feel confident enough to respond;
- They might not know what to say;
- They might not have heard or understood the question;
- They may not have enough time to respond.
We help parents understand their child’s unique processing profile and use strategies such as Observing, Waiting, and Listening (from Hanen Parenting Programs) to support their child’s communication.
While some children are responsive in conversations, they may find it challenging to initiate discussions or come up with topics to talk about. Others may struggle to stay on topic or follow the flow of conversation. Understanding what another person is thinking, feeling, or experiencing during a conversation (Theory of Mind) can also be difficult for some children.
Sensory processing challenges may further impact how and when a child is able to respond.
For school-aged children, fear of being laughed at or ridiculed can also be a barrier to responding in conversations. Because communication is a complex process, we work closely with mental health and medical professionals to provide comprehensive support.
If you have concerns about your child’s ability to respond in conversations and would like guidance on how to support them, please contact us for a consultation.
Understanding
Understanding what is happening around and to us allows us to feel safe and secure. If we do not understand our surroundings, we may feel lost, confused and even out of control.
Children who have difficulty understanding their experiences may feel distressed, anxious, or overwhelmed. When they struggle to comprehend what is happening, they may express their big emotions through challenging behaviors.
We work closely with families to explore what it means for a child to have challenges understanding their world. We help families understand how children make sense of their lives and how they navigate and manage their experiences based on these interpretations.
Some children:
- may not be able to understand their own bodies;
- may not be able to understand other people’s bodies and what their intentions are;
- may not understand why others cannot read their intentions;
- may not be able to communicate their intentions clearly;
- may not understand their routines;
- may not understand why things need to be a certain way at certain times with certain people and not others.
Children may benefit from visual cues and information presented in a way that matches their developmental level. Additionally, some children’s sensory processing profiles may vary depending on the situation. For instance, the same experience or interaction might be perceived differently on different days, at different times, or with different people.
If you have concerns about your child’s understanding and would like guidance on how to best support them, please contact us for a consultation.
At My Therapy House, we recognize that children:
- Learn best through movement and hands-on experiences.
- Understand the world by interacting with objects and their environments.
- May require “movement breaks” between stationary activities.
- Can benefit from using a heavy cushion to provide deep pressure while sitting still.
- May find it helpful to sit on a cushion that allows movement to maintain focus.
- Need their feet on the floor or a footrest for grounding and stability.
We work with parents to understand their child’s sensory profile and identify activities and routines that can support optimal learning. We also help children develop concepts like “in,” “on,” and “under” by moving their bodies and objects in a sensory-motor environment.
If you have concerns about your child’s ability to sit still and would like guidance on how to best support them, please contact us for a consultation.
Sitting Still
When children start school, there is often an expectation that they can “sit still.” The assumption is that if a child isn’t sitting still, they aren’t paying attention, listening, or learning.
Some children need to move in order to focus, listen, and learn effectively. For instance, a child may need to walk to better engage in conversation, while another may feel sluggish or distracted if they sit too long.
Concentrating
Children with sensory processing or integration challenges may have difficulty attending and concentrating.
Certain environmental factors can contribute to this:
- Too noisy or visually busy or cluttered, such as too many people moving around or an excess of objects in sight.
- Meaningless or unengaging experiences, where the child feels bored, uninterested, or doesn’t understand what they are hearing, seeing, or experiencing.
In these situations, some children may become dysregulated, which might look like the child:
- Leaving the situation
- Throwing things to change the situation or gain attention
- Giggling or acting out inappropriately
- Talking about unrelated topics
- Playing with something else
- Appearing unable to focus on a task or interact for any extended period.
Other factors, such as feeling tired, hungry, overwhelmed, constipated, worried, anxious, or depressed, can also impact a child’s ability to attend to tasks and concentrate.
Attention and concentration are skills that require time, patience, and ongoing support to develop. We work closely with educators and medical professionals, and if a child continues to struggle with attention and concentration in ideal communication and learning environments, we may refer them for further medical consultation.
If your child is having difficulty with attention and concentration and you would like strategies to support them, please contact us for a consultation.