If your child receives pediatric therapy, you may have heard the term “whole child approach.” But what does that mean, and how can it benefit your child? This article explains how therapists use a whole child approach to better understand each child’s unique needs and support their progress.
How Whole Child Therapy Works
At Building Futures, a whole child approach means looking beyond a child’s diagnosis and considering all the factors that affect how they learn, communicate, move, and interact with the world around them. This helps therapists address the whole child rather than focusing on a single challenge or skill.
While a diagnosis provides important information, it is only one part of understanding your child’s needs. Communication, social skills, emotional regulation, movement, and sensory integration are all connected. When one area improves, it can often benefit other areas of development as well.
Why Whole Child Therapy Looks Beyond a Single Skill
By looking at how skills work together, therapists can create a more complete picture of your child’s needs and develop a therapy plan that is tailored to them.
For example:
- During speech therapy, therapists may consider how attention, play skills, social interaction, and understanding information affect a child’s communication.
- During occupational therapy, therapists may look beyond challenges such as handwriting to consider factors such as strength, posture, and sensory processing that may be affecting performance.
By addressing the factors connected to your child’s challenges, therapists can have a greater impact on progress.
Whole Child Therapy is Individualized
A whole child approach is the opposite of a cookie-cutter approach. Rather than using the same strategy for every child, therapists recognize that every child is unique.
Even when two children appear to have similar needs, they may differ in their:
- Interests
- Challenges
- Responses to play and learning activities
Because of these differences, therapy plans are tailored to each child’s individual needs and interests.
Whole Child Therapy Focuses on All Areas of Life
Therapists also consider how certain skills affect the child at home, at school, and in the community. This focus on real-life situations helps children use their skills beyond therapy sessions and supports a successful plan of care.
Contact Building Futures for Support
At Building Futures, we are committed to understanding each child as an individual and creating therapy plans that support meaningful progress.
If you have questions about our whole child approach or your child’s therapy plan, please reach out to Building Futures. We would love the opportunity to learn more about your child and support their progress.
