JCFS Occupational Therapist Ari Buslovich is celebrating the small victories of two of the young children she supports at Integrated Pediatric Therapies. 

The first is Talia*, who is challenged by different sensory regulation needs and tends to hold onto small, hard toys in both her hands, preventing the full use of her hands during play and other daily activities. 

“We’ve been working a lot on that, and also just using her hands functionally,” Ari said.  

At a recent session, Ari introduced sticker sheets to help with Talia’s fine motor skills. 

“She did a great job of putting the sticker right on the dot, and I was so impressed with her focus, attention and use of perceptual and fine motor skills,” Ari said. “She was able to coordinate both hands and use in-hand manipulation with the stickers because her sensory system was calm and she didn’t have to hold something in her hand.” 

Ari also celebrated positive steps with Emma*, a 7-month-old who had only been to a couple of therapy sessions. Ari said she had been working with Emma to help strengthen her core and her upper extremities. 

“I came in one day and she was sitting up on her own, which she was not even close to doing when I started with her,” Ari said. “So that was really exciting.” 

They began working on a main goal for Emma: to hold her own bottle.  

“She did hold her own bottle for a minute,” Ari said. “She still needs a lot of support, and her feeding takes a really long time which is tiring for her little muscles, but she did it for a little bit.” 

Ari noted that it is helpful that Emma’s mom practices everything they work on in their sessions at home. 

“To see this progress happen quickly was gratifying,” Ari said. 

We have immediate openings for both occupational and speech-language therapy in our Northbrook and Chicago/West Rogers Park locations. For more information, or to make an appointment, call 847.412.4379 or email the IPT Team.  

*names changed for confidentiality