Approaches to sexuality in childhood from occupational therapy

Abstract

This article consists of a bibliographical review that aims to describe the different factors that influence the development of child sexuality to understand it from Occupational Therapy (OT). The problem raised addresses the invisibility of the natural and normative components of sexuality in early and second childhood and how OT approaches these factors in its intervention. To carry out this bibliographic search, various databases and journals of Occupational Therapy were used, in order to find texts that were related to the objective and proposed problem, which were filtered according to exclusion and inclusion criteria. From the results it is obtained that there is limited academic information regarding how the components of child sexuality are directly related to the areas of work of the OT. From the foregoing, it is concluded that the discipline is recently incorporating the approach to this issue and the urgent need to reconstruct the conceptualization of child sexuality is raised, from a base of children's rights, moving away from the hegemony of a heteronormative culture, and adult centric. The different factors that influence the development of child sexuality are considered, understanding it not only as an occupation but also as a fundamental part of occupational identity, whose components are bodily autonomy, socio-affective development, pleasure and enjoyment, gender and occupational choices, which would guide the occupational therapy approach.