Hi and welcome to our OSAH Blog!
My name is Katrina Davies and I am the Occupational Therapy Manager at both “One Stop Allied Health & Medical Centre” as well as “Allied Health Partnerships” (our sister company). I have been working for this company for 10 years and have a background in working with children with a range of diagnosis’ as well as ‘typically developing’ children who are having some difficulty with part of their development or function.
I am also a very proud mother of 3 young children – Jesinta (aged 3) and twin boys – Benjamin and Jackson (aged 2). Some of you might be reading this and thinking I typed the ages wrong – No! – my husband and I had 3 children under 2! As hard as the first year was with 3 children under 3, I wouldn’t change it for the world – it has taught me so much as a person, a mother and an OT! My twins were born premie and one of the twins was born at a low birth weight so we have had lots of Drs appointments, specialist appointments etc. over the past few years – which again has helped me as an OT and health professional!
Having twins has been a real eye opener for me in terms of child development –
I have 1 twin who is left handed and 1 that is right.
I have 1 twin that loved messy play and 1 that avoided it.
I have 1 twin that is better at gross motor skills and the other is better at talking.
I have 1 twin that is passive and and 1 that is slightly aggressive.
I have 1 twin who has had health difficulties and 1 that hasn’t.
I have 1 twin that has lots of hair and 1 that has not much!
Both my twins love rough and tumble play, cuddles and playing with their big sister – but for 2 little boys born on the same day, who have grown up in exactly the same environment they couldn’t be more different! It has taught me so much about the different development speeds of children and the individual struggles they go through when placed in a family environment competing against each other.
I am also from a Dance background (danced for 23 years and taught dancing for 10 years) I also run a school based dance program for K-2 students based on gross motor and neurological development for the past 10 years. I was so fortunate to be able to combine my love for dance and OT to create this program.
I hope you like the blogs that are yet to come – if you have a topic that you want me to write about please send me an email with the subject line “blog topic”