Meet Tanya
As an occupational therapist with 25 years of experience, I have had the opportunity to work with children and their families in a variety of settings. I have worked in the early intervention setting, outpatient clinical setting, private practice setting and the acute care setting. I have worked with many children and families to help them reach their goals and improve their daily lives. For over 17 years, I have focused on building my skills in working with children with feeding challenges including sensory, oral motor and behavior based food related issues. I have worked with individuals with a variety of diagnoses including autism, ADHD, ARFID, Failure to Thrive and many more. I strive to meet the child and family where they are and help provide supports to move forward in their feeding journey so that everyone feels safe and comfortable.
I have attended many in depth feeding trainings including the SOS Approach, Beckman Oral Motor Assessment and Intervention, Mealtime Miseries, Lactation counselor training, Fragile Infant Feeding Institute, NOMAS Symposium and many more. I have also attended specific trainings with developmental optometrists to develop vision therapy programs as well as many sensory processing trainings. I served as a part time faculty member of the University Nevada, Reno Community Health Sciences department for 5 years. I am a Nevada LEND graduate. This program focused on leadership education for neurodevelopmental disorders. I believe no one approach fits every individual and incorporating many strategies into treatment planning is critical.
What is OT?
Occupational therapy can be many things but our greatest title is problem solver. Our goal as OTs is to help our clients achieve their greatest potential AND our focus should be on using our clients strengths to help them get there. We focus on the problems families experience during day to day routines and try to create manageable and actionable solutions.
Pediatric occupational therapy is focused on helping children attain typical milestones and skills while managing any challenges they may be having such as suffering a significant injury, experiencing general developmental delays, or battling sensory differences which impact their ability to participate in all daily routines. These milestones can be related to fine motor skills, visual motor skills, daily living activities including feeding skills, and sensory processing skills impacting their ability to participate in family or community activities. Day to day activities can include something as simple as getting dressed or as complex as engaging in family mealtime routines. This can include managing utensils for self-feeding to having difficulty tolerating certain tastes, smells and textures to the point of having a very limited diet. Feeding challenges can occur because of a variety of issues including oral motor challenges, sensory challenges, neurodiversity and trauma related experiences.
Occupational therapy can address all of these areas and more!
Working as a team with the family is the greatest asset any OT has to helping a child reach their greatest potential. The journey can be long but even small steps are a great triumph!.