Safe to a Fault: Risk Restriction and The Developing Brain: 

Friday October 9, 2026  , 1:15 – 3:45 pm

Assigned Continuing Education: 2.5 contact hours

Kaden Stimpson, COTA/L, and Shannon Orr, COTA/L
Financial Disclosure: Idaho State University
Non-Financial Disclosure: Kaden serves on the IOTA Executive
Board.

Course Length: 2.5 contact hours

PRIMARY Presentation Category: Pediatrics
Intended Audience: Introductory

Short Abstract:
Risk is not the opposite of safety — it is a prerequisite for
development. This session examines the growing body of
evidence linking risk deprivation to deficits in executive functioning
across the lifespan, and equips occupational therapy practitioners
with research-informed strategies to reintroduce managed risk in
clinical and educational settings. This session will contain Hands
on lab components.

Learning Objectives:
1. Participants will be able to analyze the relationship between risk
deprivation and executive function deficits across the lifespan with
focus on neurological and developmental mechanisms.
2. Participants will be able to apply evidence based intervention
strategies in clinical and educational populations.
3. Participants will be able to evaluate their own clinical practice for
patterns of over protection, scaffolding and risk restrictions, and be able to identify at least one occupationally meaningful opportunity to
introduce managed risks for current and future clients.

Educational Value:
This presentation addresses a gap rarely named directly in
continuing education: the harm that results not from what
practitioners do, but from what they, and the systems around them
prevent clients from doing. Risk restriction is deeply embedded in
many settings where OTs practice. Practitioners often absorb these
norms without examining them clinically, defaulting to safety and
scaffolding in ways that may inadvertently reinforce the executive
function deficits they are trying to treat. This session gives
participants the theoretical grounding, empirical evidence, and
embodied experience to reframe risk as a therapeutic tool rather
than a liability, and builds the advocacy vocabulary needed to push
back against institutional barriers to client autonomy. It also
supports AOTA’s commitments to occupational justice by
challenging the assumption that protection and promotion of wellbeing are always aligned, positioning occupational therapists as
uniquely qualified advocates for the developmental necessity of
risk.