Activities of daily living

Here at Maiden Choice School in Baltimore County, MD, we have initiated a program called Maximizing Independence in Life Skills: A Toileting Program for Students with Complex Disabilities. Over the last four years since we began it, this program has had a huge impact on the entire student body.

Active sitting promotes trunk and head control and can improve a child’s posture and functional use of the arms and head. Learn how to position and adjust an adaptive chair to encourage active sitting.

For many parents and teachers of children with special needs, toilet training can seem like an unattainable goal. Each child has unique health issues, physical disabilities, emotional/behavioral challenges, cognitive and learning disabilities as well as communication barriers. Nevertheless, an individualized, consistent toileting routine can have great positive impact on quality of life.

The Posture and Postural Ability Scale or P-PAS is a tool that can be used to assess posture, postural ability and the quality of posture in prone, supine, sitting and standing positions. Posture, in this context, refers to the anatomical alignment of body parts in relationship to each other and the environment.

At Desert Mountain SELPA in Apple Valley, California, we’ve discovered a creative solution for seated transfers with the TRAM. This method works really well, particularly for the more profoundly involved kids. Using the standard approach shown in the TRAM Quick Reference Guide (with a thigh strap placed separately under each leg) often results in the body support system riding up the student’s...

Twenty-four-hour posture care management is quite new in North America, but its roots go back to the 1980s with foundational work occurring even earlier. Children and adults with dysfunctions of muscle tone, reflexes, muscle weakness and joint contracture have impaired movement and develop adverse postures as a direct consequence of their positioning relative to gravity. These can result in complications...

When we’re talking about activities of daily living, it doesn’t get more basic—and more personal—than toileting. But the process of toileting is also a valuable opportunity to teach transfer, standing and hygiene skills—all essential to building independence in self-care. A successful and thoroughly dignified approach to incorporating these skills into the toileting routine is...