Date Presented 3/31/2017
Occupational therapy continues to provide community-based education and intervention. Parents who received an occupation-based education module increased their perceived comfort and ease infusing Young Athletes™ skills into their home routines.
Primary Author and Speaker: Mary Falzarano
Additional Authors and Speakers: Stephanie Alicea, Amanda Harris, Danna Lyons, Lindsay Moran
PURPOSE: The purpose was to discover if the at-home implementation of Young Athletes™ (YA) play and sports activities, combined with an educational module, increased parents’ perceived comfort in infusing these activities into daily routines with their children with intellectual disabilities (ID) compared with control group parents. Occupational therapists (OTs) are skilled in the provision of education on how to incorporate functional activities into daily routines. Research reveals that children with ID typically have difficulty comprehending and following social rules and have a lack of or slow development of motor, language, and self-help skills. Research also indicates that stress levels among parents of children with ID are higher than those of parents of typically developing children (Gallagher & Hannigan, 2014).
The YA program is a family-based program designed to focus on building and increasing motor skills of children ages 2½ to 7 yr with ID developed by the Special Olympics of New Jersey. The idea of YA is that the motor skills that the families learn in the program are designed to be carried over and practiced at home in order to be of most benefit (Favazza et al., 2013).
METHOD: This study, a pre–post quasi-experimental control group design, recruited parents of young children with ID from local YA community programs (experimental, n = 3; control, n = 6). Researchers created a pre–post demographics survey and 10-point Likert scale rating of parents’ perceived comfort when providing activities at home. Descriptive analysis using the Mann–Whitney U test was used to discover parental perceptions of comfort in providing various activities.
RESULTS: The experimental group parents who received the occupational therapy educational presentation reported feeling both more at ease (M pre score = 4, M post score = 8) and more comfortable infusing the eight YA motor skills into their home routines (M pre score = 5, M post score = 7). Control group parents reported a slight decrease in comfort infusing the activities into home routines (M pre score = 7.67, M post score = 6.33). All experimental group parents reported feeling that the Young Athletes tool kit became more helpful compared with their initial perceptions of this tool kit without the education. All the experimental group parents had a perceived increase in their children’s skill level in the activities. Parents reported, “We are always progressing, and he is improving since we have the tools at home” and “We can practice at home, and we appreciate the contribution that YA is doing. Having the tools in the home and schools has proven to be beneficial in helping the children’s skills. Kids need practice, and these tools help them practice.”
CONCLUSION: Parental stress from caregiver burden as well as lack of time and energy could potentially make it harder for families to implement home programs that work on developmental skills for their child (Roper, Allred, Mandleco, Freeborn, & Dyches, 2014). In the first study of its kind, results from three experimental group participants revealed an increase in comfort level in incorporating YA skills into their family’s everyday routine. OTs are skilled specialists in educating families on how to infuse and adapt activities into their daily routines and enabling clients to use interventions within their natural contexts and environments (Dunn, Cox, Foster, Mische-Lawson, & Tanquary, 2012).
IMPACT STATEMENT: Findings reveal an increase in comfort and ease infusing the Young Athletes skills into home routines for those who received the module and can be used to inform parents of children with ID, special education teachers, recreation staff, and occupational therapists. As occupational therapy continues to provide community-based education and intervention, these results suggest that providing an educational module may be helpful for families of children with ID to more easily integrate skills at home.
References
Dunn, W., Cox, J., Foster, L., Mische-Lawson, L., & Tanquary, J. (2012). Impact of a contextual intervention on child participation and parent competence among children with autism spectrum disorders: A pretest–posttest repeated-measures design. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 66, 520–528. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2012.004119
Favazza, P. C., Siperstein, G. N., Zeisel, S. A., Odom, S. L., Sideris, J. H., & Moskowitz, A. L. (2013). Young Athletes program: Impact on motor development. Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly, 30, 235–253.
Gallagher, S., & Hannigan, A. (2014). Depression and chronic health conditions in parents of children with and without developmental disabilities: The Growing Up in Ireland cohort study. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 35, 448–454. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2013.11.029
Roper, S., Allred, D., Mandleco, B., Freeborn, D., & Dyches, T. (2014). Caregiver burden and sibling relationships in families raising children with disabilities and typically developing children. Families, Systems, and Health, 32, 241–246. https://doi.org/10.1037/fsh0000047
