Since 2019 SOS Africa has employed the services of Occupational Therapist Lisa Muir from Thrive to provide Occupational Therapy and Neurodevelopment Movement for the children sponsored by the charity in South Africa. The application of these patterned, repetitive and rhythmic movements can improve cognitive, physical, sensory, motor skills and remove barriers to educational learning. Lisa explains more…
What is Occupational Therapy?
At Thrive we believe that it takes a “village to raise every child”, especially children from hard places. It is with this in mind that I focus predominantly on equipping and empowering the extended team of children I see.
I follow holistic models of intervention, seeking to bring development from the inside out, or bottom up. I believe that, by helping children and their carers to utilise everyday opportunities to promote daily intervention, we can promote maximum progress in the children we serve. During my years of practice, I have been incredibly fortunate to be trained in neurodevelopmental movement.
Neurodevelopmental movement is based on a sequential model of development. It seeks to tap into the original design of infant reflexes as the foundation for all further functional movement. The goal through the neurodevelopmental movement model is to integrate a child’s infant reflexes, as a foundation to reaching cortical maturity with motor, cognition, emotional and behavioural regulation.
The brain develops and is organised from the bottom up. The functions which our brain controls start with our basic body functions low in the brainstem and move up to the highest functions in the cortex. All four areas of the brain work in concert with connections from bottom to top and top to bottom.
How can Occupational Therapy help children in Africa?
Research suggests that countless children are struggling to access the higher cortical regions of their brains effectively because their infantile reflexes have not yet effectively integrated. This can occur for several reasons, but has been recognised as a common difficulty, specifically in the case of adverse childhood experiences, ACEs.
Children who have suffered from early childhood trauma or ACEs are likely compromised in the lower regions of the brain. Until we pay attention to these lower areas and work to bring about healing and new organisation, we will struggle with the futility of trying to teach new skills and create healthy relationships.
ACEs are a commonality for most South African children, but specifically for children from impoverished communities, such as those who are served by SOS AFRICA. It has been my experience that teachers do not always understand why some children struggle as they do, they usually blame the child, the child’s parents and then often themselves.
What they need to know is this: struggling kids are often the victims of childhood trauma. They have a weak foundation when it comes to brain organisation, and until steps are taken to improve lower brain function, the ability to learn will not improve.
Lower areas are improved by good diet, steady doses of exercise, regular sleep habits, many positive relational interactions and a steady dosing of patterned, repetitive, rhythmic movements that serve to bring calm and order to a clattering brain.
It is these patterned, repetitive and rhythmic movements that I have endeavoured to teach the SOS AFRICA facilitators in the hope that they will be able to utilise them on a daily basis to help mature the brains of the little people who are in their care.
It has been a great privilege in the past to assist SOS AFRICA in their endeavour to support and empower the disadvantaged children of South Africa. As an Occupational Therapist I have always had a special interest in children from hard places and have spent many years investigating different modalities that will help these little people thrive. It is our hope that together we can provide Occupational Therapy Services to disadvantaged children across South Africa.
Lisa Muir
Occupational Therapist, Thrive
If you are interested in sponsoring an Occupational Therapy “Assessment” or “Treatment Programme” for an SOS Africa child, please Contact SOS Africa today.
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