The ‘just right’ challenge

Occupational therapy intervention aims to support the best performance of the infant across all occupational performance domains.   The goal is for the child to be presented with the  'just right' challenge to engage, experience success and mastery and be motivated to persist and try again. It is through this repetition that the child will build on skills and make progress. The 'just right' challenge ideally is:

• Motivating and enticing for the infant to engage
• Supportive enough to encourage a desired action or behaviour
• Implemented when child in ideal quite-alert state for interaction
• Challenging enough to elicit trying…but not too hard the child will give up/lose interest
• Translatable across the day so the child can have repeated opportunity to experience delight and success both in sessions and at home.