What Tara’s Pediatric Occupational Therapy can do for your Special Needs Child – LIVE ONLINE & In-person Introductory Workshop with Tara-Renee Whalen

What Can Tara’s Pediatric Occupational Therapy do for your Special Needs Child – whether young or adult?

Occupational Therapy guides clients of all ages, including children and adults, with special needs – as well as their families – who are challenged with conditions impacting daily life. Those challenges include: fine motor delays, self-help delays, social-skills delays, and sensory processing delays. Tara’s therapy makes use of a wide variety of evidence-based interventions to help clients become more independent in essential home, school, and work activities. With Tara, client achieve a higher quality of life.

For older children and adults with special needs, Tara’s Pediatric & Adult Occupational Therapy is a unique, whole body, movement-based approach. Motor coordination, sensory processing skills, executive functioning, self care skills, and much more are improved! 

Tara includes Aerial apparatus in her sessions at Still & Moving Center. *

*Aerial Movement, using an aerial hammock can be used in a session if appropriate for the client.  Clients must be able to follow directions (with or without assistance from a caregiver as needed).  A client with severe behavioral issues may not be appropriate for this setting.   

Tara’s OT can help with…

• Difficulty grasping objects appropriately (feeding/writing utensils, tools, etc.)
• Delays in hand skills including pointing, building, decreased hand strength, and poor hand coordination
• Difficulty with visual processing impacting motor skills, including difficulty constructing items, using tools, handwriting, organizational skills, and completing multi-step projects
• Difficulty coordinating food/liquids in the mouth & picky feeding 
• Difficulty in dressing oneself, bathing, toileting, caring for items and environment, completing daily routines
• Challenges with social-skills including making appropriate eye contact, joint-attention, using appropriate social contexts, turn taking, and confidence in social settings
• Challenges with sensory processing skills including hypo/hyper-arousal, poor frustration tolerance, difficulty focusing on required tasks, sensitivity to touch/smell/sounds/light/tastes, low or high pain tolerance, and more!

Tara helps our wonderful clients with…

• Developmental Delay
• Sensory Processing Disorder
• Executive Functioning Challenges
• Neurological conditions impacting Attention & Concentration, Motor Learning, and Biological Rhythms
• Feeding Mismanagement, including breastfeeding/chestfeeding
• Handwriting Challenges
• Autism & Pervasive Developmental Disorder
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
• Spina Bifida
• Fragile X
• Down Syndrome
• Cerebral Palsy/Cerebral Vascular Accident (pediatric)
• Rett’s Syndrome
• Prader-Willi Syndrome
• Prematurity/Failure to Thrive
• And More!

Tara’s specialty offerings at Still & Moving Center:

• Fine & Gross Motor Skills training to become more independent in home and school tasks, with use of aerial equipment as needed to enhance these abilities
• Improve clients’ sensory processing skills to more effectively navigate their world
• Improve clients’ executive functioning skills for more effective and healthy decision making abilities

Ages of Tara’s Clients

• • Early intervention (Birth to 3)
  • School-aged clients (Ages 3-18)
  • Adults with special needs can be accepted on a limited basis. (The client must have had a diagnosed disability as a child and continues to require care into adulthood – additional caregiver must be able to assist with transfers if needed)

    Ages of Tara’s Clients

 Dr. Tara-Renee Whalen, OTD, OTR/L, NLP

Doctor of Occupational Therapy
Occupational Therapist Registered & Licensed
NOMAS® Licensed Professional

Throughout her entire career, Tara has worked for children of all ages, while helping families navigate through a wide variety of medical and developmental challenges, providing caring support and evidence-based techniques to achieve family goals in feeding skills, body awareness, oral motor coordination, fine motor strength, dexterity and coordination, postural strength, problem solving skills, executive function, and more.  Most importantly, Tara works hard to make sure that everyone she works with has fun and builds confidence while learning new skills!

 Tara specializes her Pediatric Occupational Therapy by working with aerial apparatus.

Tara earned her Doctor of Occupational Therapy (OTD) degree in 2008 from the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences, as valedictorian of her graduating class.  She is nationally board certified by NBCOT with a specialty in Pediatrics, and licensed to practice occupational therapy in Hawaii, Alaska, and California.  She is also a lifetime member of the San Diego NAACP.  Tara has over 12 years of experience in various school, hospital, home, community, and outpatient settings throughout the west coast and southeast US, for children and adults. 

Currently, Tara is developing her experience as a mother, a Pathway 3 intern working to obtain her Lactation Consultant (IBCLC) credential, and is available for in person services and teletherapy for clients in Hawai’i.

Tara’s post-professional certifications & education include:

• 120 hours of Pathway 1 Lactation Consultant Education with the University of California, San Diego Extension
• Licensed NOMAS® Professional #202119
• Beckman Oral Motor® Certified
• Total Motion Release (TMR TOTS) Level 1 & 2 Trained
• Aerial Yoga and Aerial Movement Certified Instructor (Aerial Silks, Aerial Hammock, Aerial Lyra, and Aerial Trapeze)
• Vital Links Courses/Certification:
• Therapeutic Listening® Certified
• Building Blocks for Sensory Integration (Reflex Integration)
• Auditory Defensiveness
• Trauma Informed approach to Sensory Processing
• Bilateral Integration
• Astronaut Training
• AEIOU Approach to Feeding
• Learning/Handwriting Without Tears®
• Early Intervention for developmental delays (newborn through preschool)
• Functional Vision
• Strategies for Modulating Muscle Tone
• Pediatric Kinesiotaping
• Sensory Processing and Integration
• Executive Functioning
• Special Education