Michelle Newby PhD

Michelle Newby PhD Occupational Therapist supporting parents in understanding their children's sensory differences. Or you can find out more about me here: www.michellenewby.com

I’m Michelle Newby PhD, occupational therapist, mentor, educator and researcher - and I help OTs build confidence, skill, and impact when supporting neurodivergent children and their families. With over 25 years of experience and a PhD exploring sensory processing and occupational performance in complex neurodevelopmental conditions, my mission is to bridge the gap between research and real-world

practice so you can feel confident that what you do every day truly makes a difference. Each week, I share The OT Learning Hub Newsletter - a free, research-packed email designed to keep you inspired and informed. You’ll receive:
✅ Bite-sized summaries of new research relevant to paediatric and neurodevelopmental OT practice
✅ Practical takeaways you can apply straight away in sessions or parent coaching
✅ Updates on upcoming webinars, eBooks, and mentoring opportunities

If you’re passionate about doing great work and want to stay connected with a community of thoughtful, neurodiversity-affirming OTs - this is for you.

👉 Join here: https://www.michellenewby.com/OTLearningHubLP

and get your first research newsletter this week.

Have we unintentionally reduced DCD to handwriting?When a child is referred to occupational therapy with Developmental C...
30/07/2026

Have we unintentionally reduced DCD to handwriting?

When a child is referred to occupational therapy with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), handwriting is often the first occupation we think about.

And for good reason.

It's one of the most common reasons children with DCD are referred to OT.
But what if our focus has become too narrow?

This week's OT Learning Hub newsletter explores a new Canadian study investigating how paediatric occupational therapists assess and intervene with children with DCD across four academic areas: handwriting, written expression, reading and mathematics.

The findings were thought-provoking.

Researchers found that handwriting overwhelmingly dominated both assessment and intervention, despite children with DCD often experiencing much broader participation challenges.

In this week's newsletter, I unpack what the study found and discuss what it might mean for paediatric occupational therapy practice.

If you'd like to read it, you're very welcome to join the OT Learning Hub.

Over 8,000 paediatric OTs receive the newsletter each week.

💌 https://www.michellenewby.com/OTLearningHubLP

One of the biggest misconceptions I see in paediatric occupational therapy is the idea that if we just keep doing more b...
29/07/2026

One of the biggest misconceptions I see in paediatric occupational therapy is the idea that if we just keep doing more body experiments, children will eventually start recognising and responding to their body cues.

Sometimes that's true.

But sometimes it isn't.

Over the past few years, I've spent a lot of time reading the interoception literature and thinking about why intervention doesn't always translate into meaningful changes in everyday life. It's one of the reasons I developed my Interoception Ladder Framework.

If you've ever found yourself wondering why body experiments alone aren't leading to the progress you expected, this course is for you.

We'll explore the latest evidence on interoception, unpack why some children continue to struggle despite intervention, and discuss a practical clinical framework to help guide your assessment, clinical reasoning and intervention planning.

📅 14 August 2026
💻 Live online

Can't join live? That's completely fine. The entire workshop will be available on demand afterwards, so you can work through it whenever it suits your schedule.

You can find all the details here:
www.michellenewby.com/interoception

I wonder if we've skipped a step with interoception.Over the past few years, interoception has become one of the fastest...
28/07/2026

I wonder if we've skipped a step with interoception.

Over the past few years, interoception has become one of the fastest-growing areas of paediatric occupational therapy.

We've embraced body check-ins, body experiments, mindfulness, emotion charts and a growing range of intervention activities. I think that's been an important step forward.

But I've found myself wondering whether we've skipped something.

We've become very good at talking about what to do. I'm not sure we've spent enough time talking about our clinical reasoning. things like:

-How do we decide whether interoception is actually contributing to a child's occupational challenges?
-How do we decide whether remediation is appropriate?
-When might compensation better support participation?
-How do we know when an intervention isn't working - and what to do next?

These are the questions that have occupied much of my thinking over the past few years.

They've also led me to develop my Interoception Ladder Clinical Reasoning Framework, which I'll be sharing in depth for the first time in depth during my upcoming workshop.

I'm curious... Do you think our profession spends enough time talking about clinical reasoning around interoception?

If you'd like to explore these ideas further, I'd love to have you join me for Interoception in Practice.

📅 Friday 14 August

💻 Live online + one month replay

Learn more:

🔗 www.michellenewby.com/interoception

25/07/2026

Paediatric Occupational Therapists: Have you ever spent weeks or even months doing interoception body experiments... but your clients still aren't recognising their body cues?

It may not be that the intervention isn't working.

It may be that remediation isn't the only answer.

Sometimes, as occupational therapists, we also need to use compensatory strategies to support participation while underlying skills continue to develop.

That's exactly why I developed the Interoception Ladder Framework - to help paediatric OTs make more informed clinical decisions about when to remediate, when to compensate, and when to combine both.

That's exactly what we'll explore in Interoception in Practice.

🔗 www.michellenewby/interoception

Is sensory seeking really caused by poor sensory registration? For decades, many occupational therapists have explained ...
23/07/2026

Is sensory seeking really caused by poor sensory registration?

For decades, many occupational therapists have explained sensory seeking using Dunn's Sensory Processing Framework.

The theory suggests that children who don't register sensory input effectively have higher neurological thresholds, so they actively seek out more intense sensory experiences.

It makes intuitive sense.

But what if sensory seeking is more complex than that?

This week's OT Learning Hub newsletter explores a fascinating new study that examined whether sensory seeking is actually related to poor sensory registration.

The findings were surprising.

Researchers found virtually no relationship between the two. Instead, the paper suggests that sensory seeking may arise from multiple underlying mechanisms, including:

🧠 Differences in sensory perception.
🏃 Praxis and motor planning difficulties.
⚡ Arousal regulation.
🌱 Temperament and individual traits.

For me, this reinforces an important clinical message: the same behaviour doesn't necessarily reflect the same underlying mechanism.

In this week's newsletter, I unpack what the study found, discuss its importance for paediatric occupational therapy.

If you'd like to read it, you're very welcome to join the OT Learning Hub.

Over 8,000 paediatric OTs receive the newsletter each week.

💌 https://www.michellenewby.com/OTLearningHubLP

18/07/2026

Every week I read the latest paediatric occupational therapy research.

But the papers themselves aren't the most interesting part.

What I find myself thinking about is what the findings actually mean for the children we work with, the decisions we make in clinic, and whether the evidence should change our practice.

Those reflections become the newsletter I send each week to more than 8,000 paediatric occupational therapists.

If you'd like practical, evidence-informed insights delivered to your inbox each week, I'd love to have you join us.

Find out more: 💌 www.michellenewby.com

One conversation has been on my mind lately.I was talking with an occupational therapist colleague about keeping up with...
17/07/2026

One conversation has been on my mind lately.

I was talking with an occupational therapist colleague about keeping up with the research literature. They told me they usually read the abstract and then skip straight to the conclusion.

Since then, I've had the same conversation with several occupational therapists that I mentor.

It made me stop and think.

I completely understand why this happens. Once we leave uni, finding time to read research papers is hard. Clinical work is busy, and reading a 10-page journal article at the end of the day isn't always high on the priority list.

But I do wonder whether we've started to confuse reading about research with critically engaging with research.

The abstract and conclusion are a bit like someone's European holiday on social media. You see the highlights - but not the delayed flights, sunburn, missed trains or food poisoning. The real story sits underneath.

Research papers are much the same.

The abstract tells us what the authors found. The conclusion tells us what they think it means. But the parts that tell us whether we should actually change our clinical practice are buried in the methodology, results and limitations.

Evidence-based practice isn't simply knowing what a study concluded. It's understanding whether those conclusions are justified.

I'm curious... how do you keep up with the evidence? Do you still read full papers, or have you found another way to stay current?

What do we actually mean by self-regulation?As occupational therapists, we talk about self-regulation almost every day.W...
16/07/2026

What do we actually mean by self-regulation?

As occupational therapists, we talk about self-regulation almost every day.

We write goals about it, assess it, recommend interventions to support it, and discuss it with parents and teachers.

But are we all talking about the same thing?

This week's OT Learning Hub newsletter explores a new Australian scoping review examining how occupational therapists conceptualise self-regulation in primary schools.

The findings raised some important questions.

🧠 There was surprisingly little agreement on how self-regulation was defined.

📚 Most studies linked self-regulation with concepts such as executive functioning, sensory processing and social-emotional learning.

📊 None of the included studies actually measured self-regulation directly. Instead, they measured related constructs such as behaviour, executive functioning, occupational performance and goal attainment.

What I found most interesting is that the paper argues occupational therapy still lacks a clearly defined, occupation-focused understanding of self-regulation.

If participation is our ultimate goal, shouldn't our understanding of self-regulation also be grounded in occupation?

In this week's newsletter, I unpack what the review found, discuss why this matters for clinical reasoning, and explore what it might mean for paediatric occupational therapy practice.

If you'd like to read it, you're very welcome to join the OT Learning Hub.

Over 8,000 paediatric OTs receive the newsletter each week.

💌 https://www.michellenewby.com/OTLearningHubLP

14/07/2026

Calling all paediatric occupational therapists!

Are you supporting children with interoception… but they're still not recognising their body cues?

If you've been using body experiments and other interoception strategies but your clients still struggle to identify what's happening in their bodies, you're not alone.

Join me for a full-day, evidence-informed course where we'll explore the latest interoception research and a practical clinical framework to help you better understand and support interoception in clinical practice.

📅 14 August 2026
💻 Live online

Can't join live? The entire workshop will be available on demand after the event, so you can watch whenever it suits your time zone or schedule.

Find out more here: www.michellenewby.com/interoception

Should nature be part of our intervention planning? 🌿As occupational therapists, we spend a lot of time adapting environ...
11/07/2026

Should nature be part of our intervention planning? 🌿

As occupational therapists, we spend a lot of time adapting environments to support participation.

But how often do we think about nature itself as a therapeutic environment?

This week's OT Learning Hub newsletter explores a fascinating new paper that reviewed 108 neuroimaging studies investigating how exposure to nature influences the brain.

The findings were remarkably consistent. Across EEG, fMRI, fNIRS and MRI studies, spending time in natural environments was associated with:

🌿 Reduced activity in brain regions involved in stress and rumination.

🧠 Brain activity linked to improved attention and restoration.

💚 Better mood and lower physiological markers of stress.

In this week's newsletter, I unpack what the review found, discuss the limitations of the evidence, and explore what it might mean for paediatric occupational therapy practice.

If you'd like to read it, you're very welcome to join the OT Learning Hub.

Over 8,000 paediatric OTs receive the newsletter each week.

💌 https://www.michellenewby.com/OTLearningHubLP

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Newcastle, NSW
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