ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog

OK so I haven't let my inner R. Buckminster Fuller out for a walk lately so I think it is time to address a problem that I perceive with some aspects of clinical problem solving in occupational therapy. Here is some background first: In this month's AJOT there is an article on Proprioceptive processing difficulties among children with autism spectrum disorders and developmental disabilities (Blanche, Reinoso, Chang, & Bodison, 2012).  It is an interesting article that demonstrates differences in test performance on an observational measure of proprioception between children who have disabilities and their typically developing peers. The authors correctly point out that we only have limited means to actually measure proprioception.  The Standing and Walking Balance subtest of the SIPT is a good measure, but like other measures of balance it is confounded by proprioceptive processing, labyrinthine righting, and optical righting.  It is difficult to really know how...

Well I am sleeping better tonight knowing that the Chicago teacher strike is over!!!  All of the really important things like making sure raises stayed in place and health care contributions stayed low got the immediate attention they required.  Muscling out charter schools got a lot of good attention also and of course that is good because we don't want to have competition against a failed school system.  The less important issues like teacher evaluation systems got pushed off into the future. I don't even live near Chicago and I have no skin in that game directly but I just wanted to express how happy I was that those Union efforts will continue to work in favor of students - just like I saw them working in my own community recently. You see there was a four year old child who has a physical disability - doesn't even matter what the disability is exactly so I will leave that detail out - and he was happy and excited to start his school year.  All summer long hi...