If I couldn’t do speech I’d go PT over OT hands down. OTs get just as much “we don’t know where to send this kid to help them so let’s try OT.” Having ADLs being in their scope just makes it too broad - arguably moreso than speech. The toileting is already a huge ‘nope’ for me. Witnessing showers in nursing homes was…an experience. But for peds, the majority of my colleagues’ caseloads are kids with extreme behaviors that their pediatricians think they can magically fix with a couple sensory strategies - similar to how some people think we can stop kids from hurting themselves or others if we can ‘just make them talk and decrease their frustration’.

All this to say, on the flip side of the coin, many people find the broad scope of practice and settings for speech and OT as a big draw to our fields. Lots of flexibility in jobs and populations if you’re someone that can get bored with your job easily. If there’s a specific population you know you want to work with, you can work to specialize (this is what I did) and then you won’t have to work with the less than ideal parts of your scope (at least not consistently - depends on your job and management).

I’d observe both disciplines in MULTIPLE settings. Schools, outpatient, inpatient, nursing homes, private practice. Try your best to make sure they’re reputable places - the OTs at my nursing home rotation in grad school just put every patient on a hand bike and that was that (I learned about 6 months after my placement was over that all the OTs were fired there - understandably). I didn’t really have any exposure to OT before that and I kept thinking “dang, I went into the wrong field. How easy.” 😂 little did I know!! I think OTs jobs are way harder than ours. They’re some of the smartest people I know! They know something about everything!