Ideas at Play: An Occupational Therapy (OT) Podcast

Ep. 82 Teaching Daily Living Skills to Autistic Teens

Send us a Text or Voicemail Daily living skill performance can be hard to learn for autistic teens, even when their cognition is average or above average. This episode c

Ep. 81 OT Research for Down Syndrome

Send us a Text or Voicemail Down syndrome is one of the most common diagnoses OTs work with, yet the research base behind it is surprisingly small. This week, Lacy and M

Ep. 80 OT in Aotearoa New Zealand

Send us a Text or Voicemail Picture a beach in Aotearoa New Zealand — a gnarled pōhutukawa tree perfect for climbing, a rope swing hanging over the sand, and a stick siz

Ep. 79 Executive Function (Working Memory) Strategies for Autism and ID

Send us a Text or Voicemail A 6 year-old can't hold onto multi-step directions long enough to follow them — not because he isn't listening, but because his wor

Ep. 78 Handwriting, ADHD, and Telehealth

Send us a Text or Voicemail Can a therapist facilitate meaningful handwriting improvement through telehealth? A recent randomized controlled trial out of Ankara, Turkey

Ep. 77 Outcome Measures for Autistic Preschoolers

Send us a Text or Voicemail Michele found 74 outcome measures to consider for her autistic preschoolers! She and Lacy discuss the top measures from the recent scoping re

Summer of Discovery: Building a Money Management Program from Scratch

Send us a Text or Voicemail Too cartoonish. Too advanced. Too many worksheets — nothing fit, so Lacy built her own money management program from scratch. This week she&a

Summer of Discovery: Building & Trialing a Sensory Activity Schedule

Send us a Text or Voicemail  “Sensory” is everywhere in pediatric OT, but how do you actually know if and when to try a sensory activity schedule? How do you set one up?

Summer of Discovery: Building a Fieldwork Program

Send us a Text or Voicemail Ep. 74  Michele and Lacy continue their Summer of Discovery series. This time, Lacy shares what she's learned from supervising more than

Summer of Discovery: Little Spot of Feelings

Send us a Text or Voicemail Ep. 73. This summer, Michele and Lacy are switching things up with a six-episode series sharing programs or topics they genuinely love. The r

Ep. 72 What New OTs Really Want in a Job (Encore)

Send us a Text or Voicemail What do early career occupational therapists really prioritize when choosing their first OT job? Spoiler alert: salary ranks 9th out of 16 fa

Ep. 71 Aquatic Therapy: Using the Pool for More Than Swim Lessons (Encore)

Send us a Text or Voicemail When you think of therapy in the swimming pool, swim lessons probably come to mind. However, occupational therapy practitioners use water for

Ep. 70 Listener Questions: Pediatric OT in the Real World (Round 2)

Send us a Text or Voicemail Episode 70 calls for something special!  We tackle your real-world pediatric OT questions, from the buzzwords worth knowing to the advice tha

Ep. 69 Comparing Motor Interventions for Autism

Send us a Text or Voicemail Motor skill difficulties show up in nearly 9 out of 10 autistic kids, which means this question comes up in almost every caseload: what motor

Ep 68 CIMT Summer Camp

Send us a Text or Voicemail Ever wondered how to actually do constraint-induced movement therapy? This week, we discuss a 2025 randomized trial out of Texas Women's

Ep. 67 Polyvagal Theory and Listening Programs

Send us a Text or Voicemail We're covering two topics that kept coming up in your emails and are linked in the literature — polyvagal theory and listening programs.

Ep. 66 Ayres SI vs. ABA

Send us a Text or Voicemail The study we've been waiting for is finally here. An NIH-funded, head-to-head RCT pits Ayres Sensory Integration against ABA for autisti

Ep. 65 Early Intervention: The GAME Approach

Send us a Text or Voicemail Can a home program alone replace clinic-based therapy? This week, we put it to the test with a randomized controlled study on the GAME interv

Ep. 64 Handwriting Research Tour (yes, skip the pencil grips)

Send us a Text or Voicemail If you've ever debated pencil grips or the perfect grasp pattern in an IEP meeting, this episode is for you. We take a tour of the handw

Ep. 63 Preparing Autistic Teens for Adulthood

Send us a Text or Voicemail If you work with older kids, you know the feeling — suddenly your caseload has a teenager and the stakes feel higher, the clock feels shorter