Your Pen Pal Al

    Have you ever noticed yourself biting your nails or the end of a pencil when you feel nervous? Or have you ever noticed yourself tapping your foot and wonder how long you've been doing so? Truth be told, we all participate in compensatory stimulations. These actions may help us focus, mask large emotions, or they may be simple habits we perform automatically. Nevertheless, these actions are completely normal. They become diagnosable once they interfere with our ability to perform necessary functions.      For many people diagnosed with a hyperactivity disorder, fidgeting may be caused by an underlying sensory disorder. Individuals with these diagnoses are faced with large emotions and a wide-variety of stimulations on a daily basis. As a spectator, one may view these behaviors as "acting out." In a podcast titled "Can Occupational Therapy Help With ADHD," Stephanie Lancaster compared dealing with stressors to an active car engine. If the engine receives too ...

      As Occupational Therapists, our goal is to help people participate in the activities that are meaningful to them. The beauty of this is the activities that are meaningful to me, may not be important to someone else. There are many factors that determine which activities are important to someone, and culture is one of the most influential.      Culture includes the values, beliefs, attitudes, and norms of a group of people (Hammell, 2013). We often associate culture with groups regarding race and religion, but they expand far beyond these assumptions. For example, people within the same sports team share a culture. Schools, businesses, and other social groups are all examples of different cultures, and people typically belong to more than one.       In order to determine one's culture, you must first determine their roles. According to the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework, roles "define who a person, group, or population beli...