The Power of Play – Why It’s More Than Just Fun

Because play is the work of childhood

For children, play isn’t just something they do, it’s how they learn, connect, and grow. In the early years, play is one of the most powerful tools for building skills that last a lifetime. When a child is stacking blocks, pretending to feed a toy, or rolling a ball across the floor, they’re not “just playing”, they’re laying down the foundations for thinking, moving, communicating, and regulating their emotions.

How Play Builds Essential Skills

Motor skills: Play supports both fine and gross motor development. Activities like climbing, crawling, threading beads, drawing, or building towers strengthen muscles, improve coordination, and prepare children for school readiness tasks such as handwriting, dressing, and self care.

Communication: During play, children learn to share ideas, express needs, listen, and understand others. Pretend play and turn taking games naturally encourage language development, helping children communicate confidently with peers and adults.

Thinking and problem-solving: Play fuels curiosity. When children experiment, such as building a tower that topples over, fitting shapes into holes, or pretending to be a shopkeeper, they’re learning cause and effect, flexible thinking, and persistence.

Emotional regulation: Through play, children practice managing big feelings. They learn to tolerate frustration, cope with disappointment, and celebrate success. This helps build resilience and self-regulation — key skills for learning and relationships.

Social connection: Play creates opportunities for cooperation, empathy, and teamwork. When children take turns, share toys, or join in group games, they learn about boundaries, fairness, and how to build friendships.

Why Play Matters More Than Ever

In a world filled with screens and structured activities, children often have fewer chances to engage in open-ended, imaginative play. Yet this type of unstructured play is where so much of the learning magic happens. It helps children make sense of their world, explore new ideas, and gain confidence through success and safe failure alike.

But what if your child doesn’t seem to play? Maybe they wander around the room without joining in, line up toys without imaginative use, or repeat the same action again and again. These can be signs that play, and therefore development, is feeling hard for them.

OT Insight: How Occupational Therapy Can Help

When a child finds play difficult, they may also be struggling with underlying skills such as sensory processing, motor planning, attention, or social understanding. Paediatric occupational therapists use play as both the means and the goal of therapy. We meet children where they are, following their interests and gradually building the skills that make play, and learning, enjoyable and successful.

In therapy sessions, play might look like obstacle courses to build coordination, pretend play to develop social imagination, or sensory play to help with regulation. Every activity is carefully tailored to your child’s developmental stage and individual strengths.

Try This Today

Create a “low-demand” play moment at home. Sit beside your child with two or three simple toys — a car, a doll, or some blocks. Rather than instructing, model one short action like rolling the car or feeding the teddy. Pause. Let your child watch, copy, or simply share the moment with you. Even small bursts of shared play build communication, connection, and confidence.

When to Seek Support

If your child avoids play, struggles to join others, or finds everyday activities like dressing, drawing, or using utensils tricky, it may be helpful to speak with a paediatric occupational therapist. Early, play-based support can make a big difference, helping your child feel capable, connected, and ready for the next stage of their development.

Why Early Intervention Matters: Building Strong Foundations

Because every child deserves the best start possible

As parents, it’s natural to wonder whether your child’s pace of development is just a phase or something more. You might notice they’re struggling to keep up with peers, finding everyday tasks tricky, or becoming easily overwhelmed by sounds, textures, or transitions. These little red flags are not something to fear, they’re an opportunity.

When it comes to your child’s development, earlier is often better. In the first five years, your child’s brain is growing at a remarkable pace, over a million neural connections every second! This period of neuroplasticity means young children are especially ready to learn, adapt, and grow. That’s why early intervention is so powerful.

Early support doesn’t just address challenges—it builds confidence, independence, and joy in learning. It helps children reach their potential by strengthening the foundations for movement, emotional regulation, play, and social interaction.

What Does Early OT Support Look Like?

Early occupational therapy helps toddlers and preschoolers develop foundational skills through play-based, everyday activities. Therapy is fun, engaging, and always tailored to your child’s unique strengths and interests.

An occupational therapist may support your child to:

• Develop motor skills: building coordination, balance, and strength through play (think climbing, drawing, or using cutlery).

• Regulate their sensory system: helping them respond calmly to sights, sounds, touch, and movement.

• Strengthen emotional regulation: learning to manage transitions, big feelings, and social challenges.

• Build play and social skills: encouraging imagination, sharing, turn-taking, and communication.

• Foster independence in daily routines: supporting dressing, feeding, and toileting with confidence and success.

Each of these areas forms part of the bigger picture, helping your child feel capable, calm, and connected as they grow.

Why Early Intervention Works

Children who receive early support often gain confidence, develop skills more easily, and adjust better to school and social settings. When we support a child early, we’re not just teaching a single skill—we’re wiring their brain for lifelong learning.

Research consistently shows that children who access early intervention services demonstrate improved outcomes in areas such as motor coordination, emotional regulation, language, and academic readiness. By working with the brain’s natural readiness to learn, early occupational therapy builds strong foundations for future success, at school, at home, and in relationships.

Quick Strategies You Can Use Today

You don’t need a therapy room to start supporting your child’s development. Here are two simple, powerful ways to help right now:

1. Start a “Helper Moment” routine.
Each day, invite your child to help with one simple task—packing a snack, choosing a shirt, or putting away toys. These moments build fine motor skills, problem-solving, independence, and emotional connection.

2. Give five minutes of “follow their lead” play.
Set a timer and join your child in five uninterrupted minutes of play, no distractions, no directions, just connection. This strengthens attachment, emotional regulation, and social communication, while giving your child the confidence to explore and learn.

Early intervention is not about labels, it’s about opportunity. It’s about giving your child the right support at the right time to thrive in their own unique way.

If you’ve noticed challenges with your child’s motor skills, emotional regulation, play, or sensory responses, it’s always worth reaching out. A paediatric occupational therapist can guide you with practical strategies and reassurance, helping your child feel capable and confident as they grow.

The Hidden Impact of Hypermobility on Pencil Grasp

When children begin learning to write, it’s easy to focus on pencil type, handwriting worksheets, and letter formation. But beneath those early writing skills lies something far more fundamental, how a child’s body supports their hand to hold and control a pencil.

For some children, particularly those with hypermobility, this foundation can be a little wobbly, quite literally!

What is Hypermobility?

Hypermobility means that a child’s joints move beyond the typical range of motion. It’s sometimes called being “double-jointed,” but it’s more than flexibility. Hypermobility occurs when the connective tissues, the ligaments that stabilise joints, are extra stretchy.

While this flexibility can be advantageous in some activities like dance or gymnastics, it can also make everyday tasks that require endurance, stability, and fine motor control, such as writing, cutting, or dressing, more difficult.

Research shows that children with hypermobility often experience reduced muscle strength, joint stability, and endurance (Knight et al., 2021; Clinch & Eccleston, 2009). These factors play a significant role in how a child develops a functional and efficient pencil grasp.

How Hypermobility Affects Pencil Grasp

To hold and control a pencil effectively, the small muscles of the hand and fingers need to work in harmony with the larger muscles of the shoulder and core. When a child has hypermobile joints in their hands, wrists, or fingers, several challenges can appear:

• Low joint stability: The fingers may “collapse” or bend backwards when pressing on the pencil, making it harder to control pressure or direction.

• Fatigue and pain: Hypermobility can cause hand muscles to tire quickly, leading children to lose interest or avoid drawing and writing tasks.

• Compensatory grips: To gain stability, children often develop awkward grasps — such as wrapping their thumb around the pencil or holding it tightly — which can limit dexterity and fluidity later on.

• Reduced fine motor precision: Without stable joints, the hand struggles to make the small, refined movements required for neat handwriting.

Over time, these patterns can become ingrained, making it much harder to correct once formal schooling begins.

Why It’s Important to Address Before School

School readiness isn’t just about knowing letters and numbers, it’s about having the strong foundations for learning. When hypermobility goes unrecognised, children may:

• Fatigue quickly during writing tasks, impacting concentration and confidence

• Experience discomfort or even pain in their hands

• Avoid fine motor activities like drawing, colouring, or using scissors

• Struggle to keep up with classroom demands, affecting self-esteem

Early intervention allows children to strengthen their fine motor foundation before the demands of daily writing begin. Occupational therapists can help identify if your child’s grasp difficulties are related to joint hypermobility and develop a plan to build stability, control, and confidence.

How an Occupational Therapist Can Help

A paediatric occupational therapist can assess your child’s joint range, muscle strength, and grasp pattern to determine how hypermobility is impacting their fine motor skills. Support might include:

• Strengthening and stability activities – play-based exercises that target hand, shoulder, and core stability.

• Adaptive grips or tools – trialling pencil grips or weighted pencils to reduce fatigue and improve control.

• Skill-building through play – games and activities that build fine motor coordination in a fun, meaningful way.

• Parent education – strategies for everyday play that support your child’s development at home.

The goal isn’t to rush handwriting, rather it’s to prepare your child’s body to enjoy it.

What Parents Can Look Out For

If you notice your child:

• Holds their pencil awkwardly or changes their grip often

• Tires easily when colouring or drawing

• Avoids fine motor tasks or complains of sore hands

• Has fingers that bend backwards or appear “floppy”

… it may be worth having an occupational therapy assessment before they start school.

Hypermobility is common and often overlooked. But when it comes to early writing success, understanding how it affects your child’s body can make all the difference. Supporting joint stability and fine motor strength early can help your child enter school feeling confident, comfortable, and ready to write.

Why Hand Dominance Matters Before Starting School

As parents, we spend the year before school making sure our children are ready in so many ways, recognising their name, following routines, making friends. But one important piece of school readiness that often goes unnoticed is hand dominance.

If your child is starting school in 2026 or 2027, this is the perfect time to understand how hand dominance develops and why it matters for your child’s confidence and coordination once they walk into the classroom.

What is Hand Dominance?

Hand dominance, or hand preference, is when a child consistently uses one hand for skilled tasks such as drawing, cutting or writing, while the other hand supports or stabilises. It reflects how the brain organises fine motor control and develops efficiency.

Children experiment with both hands from toddlerhood, but by around four years of age, most begin to show a clear preference. This doesn’t mean that swapping hands occasionally is a concern, but as school approaches, consistency should start to appear.

Guidelines from the Royal Children’s Hospital and the HSE Paediatric Occupational Therapy team explain that this stage of development supports the coordination and strength needed for more complex fine motor tasks such as writing, scissoring and using classroom tools.

Why Hand Dominance is Important Before School

It is easy to assume that children will “just pick a hand” eventually, but the development of hand dominance has meaningful effects on school performance, coordination and self-confidence.

Fine Motor Skills and Writing Readiness

Research published in Frontiers in Psychology (Michel et al., 2014) shows that children with a stable hand preference develop smoother motor planning and use less effort for skilled movements. Without a clear preference, children may switch hands mid-task, experience fatigue or find writing and cutting more difficult.

Bilateral Coordination and Crossing the Midline

Dominance also helps both hands work together efficiently. One becomes the “doing” hand while the other is the “helping” hand that stabilises objects. This cooperation supports tasks such as holding paper still while writing, cutting shapes or managing lunch containers. Children who are unsure of which hand to use often avoid reaching across their body, which can make these everyday activities more effortful.

Confidence and Independence

A child who can confidently control their pencil, scissors or playdough tools feels capable and independent. This sense of mastery sets the tone for a positive start to school. When tasks take extra effort, frustration can quickly build.

What Happens if Hand Dominance Isn’t Established

If a child still switches hands frequently by the start of school, you might notice slower fine motor progress or difficulty completing tasks efficiently. Some children tire quickly, struggle to stabilise materials or avoid drawing and writing altogether.

A study in the Journal of Applied Sciences (2008) found that unclear hand preference was associated with slower development of classroom-based skills, likely due to increased cognitive effort and reduced motor efficiency. While this doesn’t mean every child who swaps hands will struggle, early support can prevent frustration and make learning smoother.

How to Support Hand Dominance at Home

Supporting hand dominance should feel natural, playful and pressure-free. The goal is to give your child plenty of opportunities to explore and strengthen their preferred hand. Here are three practical strategies to support hand dominance without adding additional tasks to an already busy household!

Observe Without Forcing
Notice which hand your child uses for everyday activities such as eating, brushing teeth or drawing. Allow them to explore freely. Forcing a hand choice can create confusion and delay progress.

Place Tools in the Middle
Position pencils, scissors and other tools directly in front of your child so they can naturally choose which hand feels comfortable.

Encourage “Doing” and “Helping” Language
Use language such as “Which hand is doing the work?” or “Let’s use your helping hand to hold the paper.” This helps your child understand the role of both hands.

When to Seek Support from an Occupational Therapist

It may be worth checking in with a paediatric occupational therapist if your child is four or five and still swaps hands frequently, tires quickly using one hand, avoids crossing the midline, or struggles with fine motor tasks such as cutting, drawing or managing clothing fasteners.

An OT can assess your child’s development and provide play based strategies that strengthen coordination and make fine motor tasks feel easier and more natural. Early support can build confidence, prevent fatigue and make the transition to school smoother.

The Takeaway for Parents

Establishing hand dominance is not about deciding whether your child will be right or left handed. It’s about giving their brain the foundation it needs for confident and coordinated movement.

By supporting hand preference and fine motor strength during the preschool years, you are helping your child begin school feeling capable and ready to learn. By addressing hand dominance sooner rather than later, your child can walk into their first classroom ready to write, create and participate with confidence.

Supporting Fussy Eaters: Practical Tips for Families

As parents and occupational therapists, we understand the frustration and concern that comes with navigating fussy feeding in children. Mealtime battles can be emotionally draining for both parents and little ones. In this blog, we explore common signs of fussy feeding, why it might be happening, and practical ways to help your child feel more confident and curious around food.

How Can You Tell if Your Child is a Fussy Feeder?

Fussy eating looks different for every child, but some common signs include:

• Food refusal
  Your child may consistently reject certain foods or even entire meals, turning away, pushing food off the plate, or gagging at particular smells or textures.

• Picky eating habits
  Some children stick to a narrow group of ‘safe’ foods and reject anything unfamiliar, which can limit their nutritional intake and confidence around food.

• Mealtime stress or tantrums
  If your child becomes upset or overwhelmed at mealtimes, it may be their way of expressing discomfort, especially if they feel pressured to eat.

• Long or difficult mealtimes
  Meals that stretch on or require constant encouragement might signal underlying discomfort, sensory sensitivities, or oral motor difficulties.

Why Does Fussy Feeding Happen?

Feeding challenges are rarely just about being picky. There are often deeper reasons behind the behaviour.

• Sensory sensitivities
  Some children experience strong reactions to textures, smells, temperatures, or the look of certain foods. This can lead to discomfort or distress at mealtimes.

• Developmental factors
  As children grow, they naturally test boundaries, assert independence, and experience changes in appetite. Teething, learning to self-feed, and motor development can all affect how they eat.

• Medical or physical causes
  Reflux, food allergies, oral motor delays, or digestive discomfort can all contribute to feeding difficulties. These should be ruled out or supported by a health professional.

• Environmental and emotional factors
  Stress, distractions like screens, or pressure to try it can make mealtimes feel overwhelming. Children quickly pick up on tension, and negative experiences can create long-lasting associations with food.

How Can You Support Your Child with Fussy Feeding?

Create a Calm Mealtime Environment

Keep mealtimes relaxed and enjoyable. Turn off TVs and devices, sit together when possible, and avoid using pressure or rewards. Connection and predictability go a long way.

Introduce Foods Gradually with Food Chaining

Start with foods your child already accepts and introduce new ones that are similar in taste, texture, or appearance.
For example: if your child enjoys applesauce, try offering pureed pear or peach next.

Keep Consistent Meal and Snack Routines

Children thrive on routine. Aim for regular meals and snacks throughout the day. Predictability helps reduce anxiety and supports appetite regulation.

Encourage Sensory Food Play

Before expecting children to eat a new food, let them explore it. Touching, smelling, and playing builds comfort and curiosity.
Try a sensory bin with cooked pasta, rice, or soft fruits with no pressure to eat, just explore.

Model Positive Eating Habits

Children learn by watching. Sit down and eat together when you can. Let them see you enjoying a range of foods, even if they are not ready to join in just yet.

Seek Support When Needed

If feeding challenges are ongoing, stressful, or impacting growth and development, it is okay to ask for help. Occupational therapists, speech pathologists, dietitians, and paediatricians can work with you to uncover any underlying issues and support your child’s feeding journey.

Fussy feeding is common and manageable. Every child is different, and small, consistent changes can lead to big shifts over time. With patience, support, and the right tools, mealtimes can become a more positive experience for everyone at the table. If you are concerned about your child’s feeding, reach out to our team here.