FamilyConnect

Who Is the Orientation and Mobility Specialist?

The orientation and mobility (O&M) specialist is a professional who has extensive training in teaching children to travel at home, at school, and in the community. O&M specialists often provide instruction to children with multiple disabilities. Sometimes this instruction is direct when they work with children on a regular schedule to teach them skills. Sometimes the instruction is indirect or consultative when the specialist provides other team members with information and support to infuse O&M activities and practice for skills into a child’s day. A child does not need to be able to crawl or walk independently in order to benefit from O&M instruction. The first step in determining if your child will benefit from work with an O&M specialist is to have this professional conduct an orientation and mobility assessment.

As a member of your child’s educational team, an O&M specialist can provide guidance in how to support your child’s understanding of body concepts (“left” and “right”), spatial concepts (“up” and “down”), environmental concepts (“streets” and “traffic signals”), and mobility techniques. As the educational team plans together for your child, discussion of how O&M skills can be incorporated into all aspects of your child’s day needs to occur. The discussion might include how your child will move from room-to-room in your home, get into and out of cars or buses, and participate in family outings and activities at school and in the community. The development of O&M skills does not occur in isolation. Your child will be using their vision, communication and social skills during travel, so looking at ways to build routines around travel will allow practice not only O&M skills but other skills as well.

8 Questions to Ask Your Child’s O&M Specialist

O&M specialists teach a wide range of skills to children and adults of varying ages and ability levels. There are a number of questions you might want to use as a beginning point when talking with the O&M specialist who is working with your child. Together you can discuss what your child is learning and how you can reinforce this learning at home and in the community. Your child needs many opportunities to practice any one skill, so it is essential that there is carryover between what professionals are teaching and you are doing.

Not all of the following questions will be applicable to your child. The O&M specialist may not feel your child is ready to work on a particular skill set or may be putting emphasis into another area of O&M.

1. How are you helping my child learn body concepts, spatial concepts, and environmental concepts? What activities can I do to support his learning?
2. What sensory skills are important for my child to learn to increase the use of vision, hearing, and touch as my child travels? How can I increase use of other senses at home and in the community?
3. What mobility skills is my child learning, such as human (or sighted) guide, trailing, or protective techniques? Can you show me these techniques and give me suggestions on how I can incorporate these into our day at home and in the community?
4. Can you share what orientation skills you are working on with my child? How can I help understand where my child is, and how we can use information in the environment to orient?
5. What strategies are you using to teach my child to ask for assistance from others as my child travels? How can I support this learning at home and in the community?
6. What is my child learning about different forms of transportation in the community? What can I do to support this learning?
7. How are you helping my child learn to be safe during travel? What strategies should I be using to help my child learn about safety as we travel together?
8. What other skills are you teaching my child, such as money-handling skills, being responsible for personal belongings, or using assistive devices when travels? How can I do the same?

For more information, see Foundations of Education, Volume II, A. Koenig & C. Holbrook (Eds.)