Senior Pediatric Occupational Therapist
Shanice Tan
I have been a practising occupational therapist for almost 20 years and all of my clinical experience has been in the field of paediatrics. I am also the mother of 3 wonderful children who keep me very busy outside of my therapy role.
I have worked within a variety of settings including a hospital, special needs school, early intervention centre, and private clinics. My experience has allowed me to support clients who have a wide range of diagnoses and are of all ages and stages of development.
I am passionate about empowering children with skills that are relevant and meaningful to them in their daily lives. I especially enjoy supporting school-aged children who struggle to reach their full potential due to executive function differences. This includes skills such as organizing themselves and their belongings, initiating a task, being able to tolerate frustration, and being able to problem solve through a task that has multiple steps.
My training in sensory integration enables me to view children through a brain-body lens, and interpret how their sensory differences are impacting their ability to attend and learn in stimulating environments such as classrooms. I have also completed a Master Coach training program (Rush and Sheldon) as this provided me with the knowledge and tools to use an interactive, and collaborative, approach to promote learning within a child’s natural environment and everyday routines.
Although I like to spend most of my time working directly with children and their parents, I feel strongly about educating others, and see it as an important part of my role as a therapist. I have presented papers at the National Occupational Therapy Conference several times and enjoy hosting workshops when I can.