OT4me

Should you hide food in your child's dinner?

Blending vegetables into a meal a child already accepts is one of the most common strategies families try. It is also one of the most likely to backfire.

For children who experience sensory processing difficulties, a safe food is safe precisely because it is predictable. Same look, same smell, same texture, every time. Alter it and the predictability goes, and the trust goes with it. The food is often lost from the accepted list altogether.

Louise Newton, our Clinical Director, is candid that she did this herself.

What works better:

Keep safe foods completely unchanged.

Introduce new foods alongside, with no expectation that they are eaten.

Agree consistency with school catering, or move to a packed lunch.

Involve the child in packing it. Ownership does more for intake than persuasion.

For SENCOs and catering teams this is worth knowing. A well meant substitution in a school dinner can undo months of careful work at home, and the child is rarely able to explain why lunch is suddenly refused.

Because a safe food is worth more than a hidden vegetable.

"Rachel helped change our trajectory."

A parent wrote that. Not about a report, or a piece of equipment, or a strategy. About what happened to their family once somebody finally listened properly.

This week our Clinical Lead, Rachel Derry, marks three years at OT4me.

Thirteen years an occupational therapist. Qualified at York St John, sensory integration trained, further qualified at Ulster. Children and young people aged 3 to 18, across education and health settings.

The credentials are not why parents write sentences like that one.

Rachel starts with the family, not the file. She asks what your day actually looks like. The supermarket. The school gate. The twenty minutes before bed. Then she works out what would genuinely help, rather than what looks tidy on paper.

Her work sits across the whole picture rather than one end of it: the person, the environments they move through, and the things they actually need to do. Which means the conversation is rarely only about the child. It is about the classroom, the routine, the expectations, and the adults in the room.

She also carries much of our public education work. If you have joined one of our free webinars, you have most likely learned something from Rachel.

Three years of that adds up to a lot of families who arrived worried and left with a plan.

Thank you, Rachel.

When regulation improves, participation follows. Rachel has spent three years making sure it does.

Why is everyone suddenly neurodivergent?

Lizzie Huxford, Clinical Director at OT4me, hears this question a lot. After more than 20 years in the health sector, her answer is simple: they have always been here.

Think about the night sky. The sky has not changed, and the stars did not suddenly appear. They were always there. What changed was our telescopes: better lenses, better methods, better understanding.

Lizzie explains it in under a minute.

The therapist doesn't choose the session. Your child does.

Parents often tell us their child refuses things at home that they will happily do somewhere else. You are not imagining that, and it is rarely about the activity itself. It is about who decided.

So in our sessions, we hand the deciding over.

The children write on this wheel themselves. Lycra swing, crash mat, trapeze bar, scooter board, rice box. They spin it, and whatever it lands on is what we build the session around.

It looks like we have given up the plan. We have not. Every option on that wheel is already working towards the functional goals we set with each family, whether that is the core stability to sit and write, coping with a busy classroom, or getting dressed in the morning without a battle. The wheel chooses the order. It does not choose the plan.

What changes is buy-in. A child who picked the challenge will push further into it than a child who was handed one, and for children with sensory processing difficulties that difference is often the whole session.

Because choice comes before challenge.

Book a free 30-minute call with an OT: https://ot4me.co.uk/book

When the therapist loses the therapy 🙈

Lizzie set up the obstacle course, hid a load of objects for her client to find, and then immediately forgot where she put them.

"The problem is, I don't know where I've hidden them. I've forgotten already."

Here is the thing though: this is still a perfectly good session. Searching for hidden objects builds visual scanning, motor planning and problem solving, and a child who genuinely has to help the grown-up find something is a child who is properly engaged. Child-led therapy sometimes means the child leads because the adult has lost the plot.

They found them, by the way. Eventually.

Curious what a session actually looks like? Book a free 30 minute call with one of our OTs 👇

🔗 https://ot4me.co.uk/book

Ever wondered what a sensory therapy clinic actually looks like inside? 👀

Lizzie, one of our clinical directors, takes you round Derwent Clinic, one of our specialist purpose-built spaces for kids, teens and adults.

🧗 9 swing points, each taking 35 stone
💥 Crash-and-bang beanbags (yes, that's part of the therapy!)
🛢️ Barrels, bolster swings and a cupboard FULL of swings
🎡 And of course… the spinny wheel

We deliver Ayres Sensory Integration therapy, play therapy, parent coaching and adult coaching here, with 45-minute sessions based on current evidence-based practice.

Know someone who could benefit? Send this to them or get in touch 💬