The TR Trick

Any time I tell someone I am studying Therapeutic Recreation, they immediately ask, "Do you get to take all of the fun classes?" A lot of my friends take offense to this because we truly do have hard classes and a serious career path, but I prefer to take it comically. This is the trick to TR - people think we are just playing, but in reality, we are assessing, processing, teaching principles, and generalizing these principles to the patients' lives. 

This is what we see when we plan an activity:

This is called the leisure ability model. At the beginning, the purpose is to improve functional behaviors. This area is called treatment. The CTRS prescribes the activities for the client. The activities are planned, prepared for, and executed by the CTRS. As the client begins to improve functional behaviors, he moves on to the next step. For example, as a CTRS, I could work with someone who has traumatic brain injury who will show a variety of characteristics such as hand eye coordination, communication, interaction, and left-neglect. I would plan an activity such as Tetris that we will play together. This will work on his hand-eye coordination as he tries to fit the pieces together. Also, we will be talking which will work on his communication and interaction. He will have to use both hands, which will increase his use of his left side to overcome left neglect. 

Are you starting to see how this is much more than playing?