My Mom Came to Visit Me!

January 26, 2012
by Chelsea

Living in LA School/Life Balance What are OS/OT?

Last Monday on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, my amazing mom drove two and a half hours from San Diego just to hang out with me for the day. We are both avid beach-goers and so, naturally, we decided to beeline for the Pacific Ocean. We hopped on the 110S, merged onto the 105W, and didn’t stop until we saw the bright sun shining over the sparkling water. One of our favorite restaurants in Manhattan Beach is called the North End Café, which had a debut on Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives and has been a hot spot ever since. We drove down Highland Avenue, but passed the North End Café since it looked so busy and we decided to try somewhere new with a good view. Well we got a great view, but the food was nothing to brag about and I can’t even remember the name of the restaurant.

After eating, my mom and I went to a small grassy park looking over the beach and sat down. There were four blond little girls ranging from 2 years old to 7 years old and they had three skateboards. The grassy park started on Highland Avenue and went almost all the way down the hill to the beach. It started with a plateau, then curved downward, then plateaued, and so on. The four little blond girls would sit on their skateboards and ride down the hill from the top to the bottom laughing and screaming for joy. My mom and I had so much fun watching them and I couldn’t help thinking about my Sensory Integration elective and how these little girls were organizing play and integrating their senses so flawlessly. In my head I’m thinking, “Wow, they are receiving proprioceptive, vestibular, and tactile input from this activity, all of which is aiding their childhood development and they don’t even know it!” The proprioceptive skill of knowing where their body was in space will help their motor coordination, the vestibular input of motion caused by gravity will help their postural control, and the tactile input of holding onto the skateboard will help their skilled movement as well as emotional development! After taking this sensory integration course I don’t know if I will ever be able to look at kids playing without thinking in occupational therapy terms!

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