I'm back with another book review! "Ten Fingers Ten Toes - 20 Things Everyone Needs to Know" by Karen Pryor (affiliate link). This book was recommended to me by one of our pediatric occupational therapists. I have attended continuing education events held by Karen Pryor and have always learned so much, so I jumped right in!
The book starts out with a thorough review of the brain and the principles of neuroplasticity. Then it jumps right in to strategies. It's definitely geared towards occupational therapy and physical therapy - more so than speech therapy. However, I totally expected that! But there are some really great take aways for SLPs, too. If you are working in Early Intervention, you DEFINITELY need to read this book! I learned so many things that I need to be looking for to determine if a referral to OT or PT is warranted.
I also learned several things that can improve my own therapy. For example, I am definitely not using music enough in therapy. I also added several strategies for engaging multiple brain systems at once to improve learning for my patients.
The book also gives some excellent information about WHY certain things happen in our brains and with our babies. It left me feeling like I could explain these things to parents more easily and thoroughly. However, I would NOT recommend this book to parents. I feel as though you need some background knowledge in neurology to understand the book. However, I don't believe that the author intended this book to be a reference manual for parents.
OTs, PTs, and Early Interventionists should definitely add this to their library!
No comments:
Post a Comment