Children often face difficulties regulating their emotions, especially during a time of crisis or unexpected circumstances.
If you are a parent of a child with behavioral disorders, developmental delays, sensory processing disorders, or learning disabilities, therapy might be a great way of not only regulating their emotions but also helping them adjust to the outside world.
Most children diagnosed with developmental disorders or cognitive impairment face challenges performing basic tasks involving gross motor skills and fine motor skills or are unable to socialize with their peers leading to emotional outbursts.
During times of emotional outbursts, parents, educators, and immediate caregivers must find methods to regulate the child’s emotions.
Along with ample patience and dedication, therapeutic toys often fall under the list of ways one can help calm down children while providing them with unique opportunities to learn and develop.
While most common toys integrate elements that often overwhelm the child, Therapeutic Toys often integrate elements that only provide age-appropriate stimuli but also isolate each skill to promote holistic development in children.
If you are looking for effective therapeutic toys for your child but do not know where to begin, do not sweat.
Here is all you need to know about therapeutic toys that not only calm your child down but also help facilitate holistic development.
What is Occupational Therapy, Exactly?
Occupational Therapy is a form of rehabilitation or therapy that helps individuals suffering from injuries, mental illnesses, sensory processes disorders, developmental delays, and learning disabilities to develop skills that allow them to lead productive and independent lives.
Occupational therapy often integrates elements such as therapeutic toys, calming activities, and sensory play among others to help develop the child’s cognitive, social, emotional, fine motor, and gross motor skills.
What is Play Therapy?
Play therapy is a form of counseling that is aimed at younger children. This form of therapy often involves open-ended play activities, therapists, and trained teachers that help resolve psychological issues.
These activities often involve opportunities to promote children to develop emotional skills and facilitate the development of trauma resolution.
Play therapy works by allowing the child to indulge in ‘unstructured play’ or ‘free play’ activities that allow children to face and overcome their vulnerabilities.
During play sessions, a therapist often observes the child’s recurring behaviors and patterns of emotional outbursts to provide the child with appropriate guidance and help.
Play Therapy allows children to regulate their emotions, improve their self-control, manage their anxiety or fears, and enhances their problem-solving skills.
A List of the Best Therapeutic Toys for Children:
Therapeutic Toys are an integral element of Play therapy and even Occupational Therapy for children that not only provides children with a fun open-ended play experience but also provides them with tools required to adjust to the common learning environment.
Each Therapeutic Toy isolates different skills and provides children with appropriate stimuli to facilitate holistic development.
To help you find the right toy that accommodates your child’s developmental needs and requirements, below is a list of some of the best Therapeutic:
Melissa and Doug Wooden Alphabet Lacing Cards:
Melissa and Doug are among the Montessori-aligned toy brands that strive to provide your child with a multisensory experience and tools to facilitate optimum holistic development.
Melissa and Doug Wooden Alphabet Lacing Cards is one such toy that not only aims to develop your child’s language skills but passes as a therapeutic toy.
This is among the best therapeutic toys that develop multiple skills simultaneously while keeping your tiny tot busy for hours on end.
The Melissa and Doug Wooden Alphabet Lacing Cards are great for promoting your child to learn new vocabulary and develop letter recognition skills.
This fun and interactive therapeutic toy develops your child’s fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, critical thinking, and language skills.
Yoovi Learn to Dress Boards:
Children with special needs, learning disabilities, or developmental delays often face hardships when partaking in self-care activities.
The Yoovi Learn to Dress boards are among the best therapeutic toys to develop your child’s practical life skills and fine motor skills.
This fun therapeutic toy comes with zippers, buttons, snappers, shoe laces, and ties.
This toy allows children to practice self-care activities as well as develop their fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills.
Kitchen Play Set:
Kitchen play sets are a great way of keeping your child engaged and focused while developing their imaginative skills and creative skills.
Furthermore, Kitchen Playsets are a great way of promoting your child to indulge in open-ended pretend play activities and even collaborative activities to develop their social skills.
Kitchen play set toys is also a fun way of simultaneously developing your child’s fine motor skills and gross motor skills.
Playdough:
Playdough is among the quintessential toys for not only therapeutic purposes but also for promoting sensory development in children.
Playdough comes in different vibrant colors and provides your child with a unique tactile and visual sensorial experience along with developing their fine motor skills.
You can also allow your child to use child-safe scissors to cut through chunks of play dough and develop their cutting skills as well as learn how to properly and safely use scissors.
Fisher-Price Chatter Telephone:
If you are looking for an interactive therapeutic toy to efficiently facilitate the development of language skills, then the Fisher-Price Chatter Telephone is a must-have.
Pretend play telephones are more than just a prop and often act as a great transitional toy for children with special needs who are apprehensive to play with other therapeutic toys.
This wonderful Therapeutic toy is a great way of developing your child’s creative imagination, fine motor skills, and language skills.
Learning Resources Conversation Cubes:
The Learning Resources Conversation Cubes is another fun therapeutic toy for language skill development that provides your child with interactive play opportunities.
This fun toy is perfect for developing your child’s communication skills as these cubes acquaint them with 36 different daily phrases and words to effectively communicate.
Learning Resources Crocodile Hop Floor Game:
Gross motor skills are abilities that involve the movement of larger muscles in the body that are present in the arms, legs, back, and torso.
These abilities allow individuals to perform tasks such as walking, running, jumping, and bending, among more.
The Learning Resources Crocodile Hop Floor Game is a great therapeutic toy to help facilitate the development of gross motor skills.
This fun therapeutic toy does not limit your child’s development process to just gross motor skills, it also helps children identify different colors and shapes, and numbers as well as develop their problem-solving skills.
Alex Toys Active Play Monkey Balance Board:
If you have a child that faces difficulties in coordinating their large muscle movements or does not have refined vestibular strength, balance boards might come to their aid.
Alex Toys Active Play Monkey Balance Board is another great therapeutic toy to facilitate the development of gross motor skills.
This fun toy will allow your child to practice their large motor movements even in the comfort of their home.
Aquabeads:
Aquabeads are a great therapeutic toy for providing your child with a tranquil and calming multisensory experience along with developing their fine motor skills.
Since the beads are significantly small this therapeutic toy is meant for older children to develop their fine motor skills, to avoid any choking hazard for younger children.
Blurt:
Blurt is a fun and engaging therapeutic toy for older children that promotes them to partake in collaborative activities.
This game is a great way of developing the child’s self-control, allows them to regulate their emotions, and provides them with ample opportunities to develop their cognitive skills as well as language skills.
This game is also great for developing the child’s critical thinking as it promotes children to guess the words through their definitions.
Osmo Genius Kit:
The Osmo Genius Kit is a great therapeutic toy for children and it provides children with the best of both worlds.
This fun game incorporates both electronic gadgets and traditional toy components to provide your child with an interactive play experience.
This fun therapeutic toy simplifies complex concepts such as numbers, alphabets, and words in a fun and entertaining way.