pediatric occupational therapy

Joyride, Part 2: Riding a Bike

| Patti Webb

“I think it’s also one of those quintessential kid activities that parents actually look forward to teaching.”
Oh, how young and naïve we were three years ago…

My girls had been riding their first bikes (with training wheels) for about 3 years. Since our neighborhood is on a steep hillside, the girls keep the bikes at their grandparents’ house where it’s flatter and where they would have more space to ride. They rode them heavily; growing out of helmets, raising seats, and patching tires. But for me and Troy, the bikes were a bit out of sight, out of mind.

We had the intention of taking the training wheels off over Spring Break when they were around 5 ½. That got pushed off until the summer, and then another Spring Break passed. Finally, Aeris grew out of the entire bike, knees hitting the handlebars. It was time to buy a new bike, thus no more training wheels.

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Go with the Flow: The Just-Right Challenge

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

Kids can seem allergic to focus when it’s something we need them to do: homework, chores, anything that feels like a requirement rather than a choice. And yet, that very same child who can’t stay with a worksheet for five minutes will suddenly spend an entire afternoon perfecting a dance routine, building an elaborate Lego world, painting with total intensity, or disappearing into a book.

In those moments, we unintentionally play the “bad guy,” interrupting the very focus we wish they had during everything else. That kind of deep, effortless engagement is the beginning of what psychologists call flow.

The term flow was coined by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (Me-high Cheek-sent-me-high-ee), who introduced it in 1975 through his research on artists, athletes, and other deeply absorbed performers. He wanted to understand why people feel their best when they’re fully immersed in something. Through thousands of interviews and years of experience sampling studies, he found a clear pattern: people felt their greatest focus, enjoyment, and meaning when the challenge of a task matched their skill. Ergo, flow.

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Our Wheel Throwing Playdate Review

| Patti Webb

It’s the last week of the school year and the last posts before our annual summer blog break. So we’re keeping it fun with a playdate review.

With the kids getting older, there isn’t much that they haven’t tried. So, play dates have been harder to brainstorm and plan. One of the first things I wanted to do when we came up with this blog series is wheel pottery. I had never done it before, and the girls have done kids clay sculpting classes many times. Now, all three kids are finally old enough to take it on.

Most pottery wheel studios have a minimum age for their beginner wheel classes, or they want you to buy several sessions or weekly course. In my cursory Google search, I found Mudfire, an open community pottery studio built around creativity, inclusivity, and shared space. They offer single Wheel 101 and 102 classes, capped at 12 people with a minimum age of 6 years old. They also have kids summer camps and special kids-only pottery wheel classes starting in June.

  • “It’s called wheel throwing, not wheel gently tossing.”
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Arousal Levels and Amusement Parks

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

Amusement and theme parks look like a sensory nightmare. This goes for small, pop-up carnivals all the way to big, immersive theme park resorts. There are blaring speakers, flashing colors, crowds, constant movement…Honestly, I feel overwhelmed just picturing it.

And yet, some kids who are usually sensory‑sensitive walk through those gates and suddenly become focused, regulated, and living their absolute best life. What kind of plot twist is that?

Some kids who are sensory-sensitive can look completely unbothered (joyful even) at amusement parks, and it feels like a total contradiction. It’s not. Their nervous system is responding to a different sensory pattern than the one that overwhelms them in everyday life. That difference has everything to do with sensory processing, arousal levels, and how they modulate input.

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OT Month: The Gen A Nervous System

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

A few months ago on Instagram, we ran into a ton of posts about how you can’t parent Gen A kids like they did in the 90’s because they have a different nervous system.

We thought it was an interesting claim; despite that when “influencers” copy the same material word-for-word, it’s usually a sign of clickbait. They even referred to kids having a “Digital Nervous System”, living in a high-speed brain environment.

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