Summary of OT’s Role in Preventing Bullying

Bullying

Bullying occurs when an individual or a group is consistently aggressive to another person, an action that is always referred to as violence. Bullying can take many forms, including verbal, physical, and emotional manipulation, as well as cyberbullying. Bullying victims exhibit a wide range of symptoms, including excessive anxiety, eating problems, missing classes, poor school performance, drug and alcohol misuse, and reckless sexual behavior. Several organizations have recently combined efforts to combat bullying in schools. Groups have established to involve the victim, their family, and the school. Family to family engagement is a strategy used to pass necessary skills on how to identify and handle bully issues among the victims, as well as passing on the skills to other families to facilitate and manage to bully. There are various risk factors for bullying that have been observed over the years, and they include being socially and physically different for instance wearing braces, signs of depression, and exhibiting social dysfunction.

Bullying Signs

In most of the times, children may not open up directly and admit to being bullied to avoid worsening the situation. However, there are bullying signs that parents, school personnel and occupational therapists should look out for in a kid and they include physical injuries, drug, and alcohols abuse and also school performance. Teachers can also subject kids to bullying when they fail to understand the limitations of their powers, and resultant verbal attacks on the kid create easy access for other students to bully the particular student. Resources necessary to help curb bullying include collaboration between occupational therapist and school personnel, use of public health model to foster friendship between warring kids, instructional programs for teachers and students as well as injury prevention website which address and intervene in similar bullying situations.

Summary of Teen Driving and Autism

The readiness to take up the driving challenges varies across from one individual to the other. Driving is a delicate practice as it not only involves a single person but the society at large due to the shared resources like the roads. Therefore, driving requires unique skills to ensure the safety and comfort of everyone who is involved directly or indirectly. Every person should consider driving as a continual process that requires proper planning and simultaneous coordination of various events. Teens, like any other adult, need to have ability and adaptability in thinking to be termed as safe drivers. Teens who experience autism have some challenges that compromise their ability to be safe drivers. They usually suffer from anxiety, how they will perform among their peers, and fear of being involved in a crash. Due to the state of their health condition, autistic teens and those that have ADHD take longer to comprehend the necessary driving skills, and this impairs their motor coordination and hazard recognition like a passing passenger or putting on a safety belt.

Challenges Faced by Autistic Teens

Autistics have a hard time recognizing and interpreting nonverbal cues involved in driving, and this increases their chances of getting involved in an accident. The autistic disability results in less community mobility which in turn lessens their social capital hence skills setback. Despite the many challenges, various resources and mechanisms have been put in place to help autistic teens gain necessary driving skills although they may take longer. They include the use of an app interpret nonverbal cues that aid when driving, the intervention of occupation therapy which involves the family to help their kid develop driving skills and professional education that help practitioners connect driving skills in treatments for the teen. The challenges do not mean the teen cannot drive, but necessary interventions need to be put in action first.

References

AOTA PODCAST. (2017). Otconnections.aota.org. Retrieved 13 October 2017, from https://otconnections.aota.org/galleries/aota_podcasts/m/pediatric_virtual_chats/default.aspx?pi481=1