10 myths about Psychomotor Therapy you need to stop believing

• The motor in psychoMOTOR is related to actual motors, cars..

Yes…tragic but true I’ve been asked this so many times. Motor in psychomotor is related to motor skills in bodily functions.

• We play with kids:

I’ve heard this probably each time I’ve told someone that I’m a psychomotor therapist. I’ve had to explain every single time that we target our objectives through “activities” that may be games.

• We only work with kids:

No…not really. Our age frame extends from the premature or born-on-time newborn, to babies, kids, teenagers, adults and elderly people. (What is psychomotor therapy?)

• We only work at private clinics:

Psychomotor therapists can work in hospitals, schools, institutions, NGOs, centers and clinics.

• We read people’s personality through their body language:

We are not mind readers nor psychics. We do not analyze nor comprehend someone through any of their action (and most importantly we have not been taught to do that). In fact, we are not psychologists and therefore are not able and are not entitled to analyze someone’s personality.

• We only target handwriting skills:

No, our main objective is not writing skills. In the context of schools, it might be an important area to work on, but mostly, we target all psychomotor domains (What happens during a session?)

• We analyze a person through their handwriting or their pencil grip:

We might work on our patient’s handwriting but that does not make us experts in understanding him/her, the way he/she thinks. Holding the pencil one way or writing in another may have some meaning but again it is not our job to do that.   

different types of pencil grip

• The fact that we face people and kids with difficulties or disorders causes us to become depressed:

No, when you’ve been taught ways to face those situations, to be empathetic and not sympathetic and to practice relaxation (actual methods of relaxation through breathing and mobilizations among other methods and techniques), facing difficult situations and cases will not cause you sadness or depression.

• We are called doctors:

Just cause we might work at hospitals or centers and we might wear scrubs, that doesn’t make us doctors. Through our curriculum, we do take medicine courses (physiology, psychiatry etc.) but that does not make us doctors (unfortunately!).

• We are miracle doers and our patients will all recover:

This is probably every therapist and doctor’s dream. We all want all of our patients to recover and “heal” but in so many cases (genetic or neurodevelopmental ones such as down syndrome and autism), people may learn and acquire strategies to live with their difficulties but will never stop having those syndromes. We really wish our job could do that!

A psychomotor follow-up: the whole process

1-    Everything begins with a phone call, from a mother, a father, a worried teacher… They explain their case and give a visit motive (their kid’s handwriting, an impulsive behavior, an extreme agitation…). The therapist invites them in to his/her clinic for the second step.

2-    In the clinic, with (ideally), the father and mother (or the person raising the kid), and sometimes the kid sit with the therapist for an anamnesis. The therapist asks many essential questions, that can be quite delicate sometimes, such as: are the parents divorced? Is there any consanguinity (family ties) between them? Was the pregnancy wanted and planned? Was there any stress during the pregnancy? How did the pregnancy and birth go? (Was there any difficulties, such as the baby swallowing amniotic liquid or being strangled by the umbilical cord?) Is there any family antecedent?

The therapist also takes exact dates concerning the psychomotor, speech and language and social development such as: date of first steps, first words… (this helps in comparing to the norm and understanding the delay). The medical record is thoroughly taken (operations? Medication?).

Questions about the child’s personality, his or her social skills, and relationship to peers are asked.

The therapist can also ask the parents’ opinion on the reason of these difficulties. It’s important to ask how, where and why those difficulties appear (In all situations? Just at school/home? … )

This step is crucial to understand the difficulties, to try and understand the causes. It’s extremely important in order to know the next steps to take.

3-    Here comes the assessment phase. The therapist will see the kid for 3 to 5 sessions (according to the age and need). Psychomotor tests and clinical observations are intrinsic to this task.

4-    A meeting is set with both parents in order to explain the psychomotor report (results of the tests and observations) and to guide them through the plan of action (objectives that will be targeted during the sessions).

5-    The psychomotor follow-up begins then. It usually starts with two sessions per week. What happens during a session?

6-    While the follow-up is still on-going, it’s important to mention that the psychomotor therapist will be coordinating with the school (educators, special educators) and other therapists (in case other follow-ups are on-going too such as speech and language therapy, physical therapy…)

7-    Following a certain period (that shouldn’t be less than 6 months), the therapist will evaluate the progress (if he/she sees a progress) and will then do a second report (a second assessment isn’t done if the therapist doesn’t see progress, but the follow-up will continue). In case of good scores and results, a mutual decision to progressively decrease the sessions is taken by the therapist, the parents and the kid. Gradually, the sessions become lesser in frequency (once per week ⇒ once per month ⇒ end of psychomotor follow-up)

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Autism Awareness: Different, but not less

People always ask me about Autism. They wonder why and how a person with autism may act or interact differently.

Since the month of April is dedicated for Autism Awareness, I thought it would be a great opportunity to explain in a simplified way some signs and to put aside some common (and wrong) beliefs about autism.

It is important to note that 1 in 68 kids is diagnosed with ASD!! (which is a big number). It’s also more frequent in boys than girls (1;4)

First of all:

• It is not Autism, but Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This nomination was changed as one person with autism is different from another. They have many differences, such as the levels (low or high functioning), verbal/non-verbal…
• People who have Autism Spectrum Disorder are called people with ASD and not autistic people, since those people are not equal to ASD.

Let’s talk about some early signs observed in kids who have ASD. It is very important to observe the communication of a baby, the way of playing and the interactions with the world around him.

The early signs for a baby is when he or she doesn’t: (illustrative examples in the photo gallery)

• Make eye-contact (with the mum while being fed for example)
• React to their names or to familiar voices
• Follow visually an object
• Look in the direction pointed by a familiar person
• Wave goodbye or gesticulate to get attention
• Play with others (kids or others)
• Imitate sounds and facial expressions
• Notice or understand others’ feelings

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ASD influences the social, speech and language and psychomotor development.

For a kid to be diagnosed with ASD, those 3 factors should be existent:

1. Restricted and repetitive behaviors (kids with ASD have very limited interest and have “stereotypes” which are repetitive movements such as flapping hands, rocking back and forth, spinning in circles, staring at lights & spinning wheels) and echolalia (which is the repetition of words). In addition, kids with ASD insist on routines and sameness and are bothered by changes.
2. Difficulties in verbal and non-verbal communication (difficulties in eye-contact, body language, use and understanding of gestures)
3. Hyper/hypo reactivity to sensory input (apparent indifference to pain, fascination by light…)

So no, on the contrary of popular beliefs, people with ASD do not “like being alone” or “like throwing tantrums” … They are people who have difficulties communicating and interacting with others and the world around them. However,they can go to school, get an education, major from universities and get married.

It is important to mention that not all people with ASD are capable of this or can achieve all of the things pointed above, (it’s a spectrum, remember?) but with the help of their parents and many professionals such as: psychologists, ABA therapists, psychomotor therapists, speech and language therapists, shadow teachers, special educators and typical educators, the people with ASD can grow up to be… a bit different… but not less.

Actual testimonials of people with ASD*:


"I do not like to feel the skin of others, which is either very dry or moist and I will wash my hands regularly as soon as I can."

 "When my mother rubbed my hair, my scalp ached ... I also liked wearing long pants, because I hated my legs touching each other. (Grandin, 1996)

"I was very sensitive to food texture and had to first touch them with my hands before putting them in my mouth. "

 "When I got home, I noticed that my face was squinted, bleeding through a thousand small cuts. Indeed, he had rubbed me with snow full of small gravel, but I had not felt because of my high pain threshold. "

*message me for anything related to this subject (quotes, movies, series, books about ASD…)

Inspiration

I have always wanted to write about something without ever finding an interesting enough subject that might attract people to read.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of talking about my job for a first while.

As some may know, I am a psychomotor therapist and for many (or even all of you), you have no idea what it is, or you may have heard of it.

I strongly believe our “job” is more than that and this is why I suppose that it might spark some interest among readers. Throughout a series of articles, I will explain in a simple and illustrative way what my job consists of and what we basically do during our day.