But why didn't the teacher tell me about occupational therapy (OT)?

Recently I had the pleasure of working with a little seven year old boy and his mother who lived interstate from me. Together we discussed their concerns which basically boiled down to confusion about why he seemed to be failing at school but able to do his work successfully at home. His mother said "They tell me he is great at reading but he cant seem to remember anything new from one day to the next. They complain he fidgets all the time and won't pay attention. They just cant seem to keep him on track."
Further conversation revealed that right from pre-school, teachers had commented on such things about this little boy. Once at school he found himself frequently part of school behaviour management plans, learning support programmes and by the end of his first year it was suggested that the parents take him for a psychometric assessment (at their own cost). This ended up showing that the little boy was, in fact, intellectually in the high average range in all areas. There  the investigations stopped. Unfortunately, the second year of school was just as challenging as the first and by this time the little boy seemed to have been labelled by others and also by himself as "difficult".

Don't make me go back to school!

Finally,  occupational therapy (OT) was suggested by chance to the mother by a concerned relative during a family barbeque. The relative happened to be someone I knew and the result of this conversation was that the little boy and the mother came to see me.
Occupational therapy ended up being really helpful for this little boy. Even though my involvement was on a consultative level due to the distances involved, we were able to analyse where the breakdowns were occurring for this child in the daily tasks of being a school student, identify his strengths and come up with some practical suggestions for helping him to participate more successfully. We were also able to come up with activities and therapeutic strategies that would help develop some of the areas that he was having trouble with (such as core muscle strength). Perhaps just as importantly we were able to identify further evaluation that needed to occur with other professionals.
After reading my report and talking with me on the phone, the boy's teacher made the comment that she had never seen a report laid out in such a way and which took into consideration such a range of factors. The mother rang me a few weeks later to update me and let me know that things had improved significantly for her son at school and that she felt she now had a definite plan of action. But one thing she said really stuck in my mind...

 "But why didn't the teacher tell me about OT in the first place? I feel like we have wasted so much time and have had such negative experiences that could have been avoided in the first place!".

I have thought about this a lot since then and have come up with a couple of conclusions;
*  The fact that the teacher had never seen such a report made me reflect that in some states in Australia, occupational therapy is still not widely known or understood. Most state education systems do not employ OTs, and there is little in the way of funding for occupational therapy services, unless you happen to have one of a select group of diagnoses.
* If you are someone familiar with how OT can be helpful and you are willing to pay, there is still difficulty actually finding a local therapist, unless you live in a large city. You can't blame the teachers for not mentioning OT when there are hardly any OT services out there in the first place.
* The role of occupational therapy is a confusing thing to explain and OTs themselves often do a terrible job of it. To the un-initiated it can seem that there is a lot of overlap between an OT and other professions such as psychology, education, speech pathology and physiotherapy. People often wonder what the "point of difference" is with OT and what makes us unique.

These issues are not new or revolutionary within our profession but they are still relevant and I plan on reflecting on them further with the hope of bringing to light some solutions.