We offer a variety of services for your child. We take pride in what we do and our focus is on your child throughout the whole session. We work with the parents just as much as the child because we believe that therapy and rehabilitation does not stop when our session is over for the day. We like to provide the parents with things they can also work on with the child to overcome any obstacles they are facing.

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OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY

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Occupational Therapists (OT’s) are a vital part in children with physical and functional disabilities. Various assessments may be necessary by the OT to clearly assert where a child needs help. Some people believe that occupational therapy is just for adults, after all kids do not have occupations right?….well of course they do, their occupation is to play, learn, and grow up to take care of themselves. It is sometimes very hard for some children to do and learn every day things, like eating, dressing, and writing but, occupational therapists can come up with resourceful ways to help that child.

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Occupational therapy helps achieve independence in all areas. It helps kids improve their physical, cognitive, and motor skills. It also helps with their sense of accomplishment and enhances their self-esteem.

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Children who might benefit from occupational therapy include:

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• Sensory Processing Disorders (SPD)

• Developmental Delays

• Mental Health/ Mental Retardation (MH/MR)

• Autism Spectrum

• Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD)

• Traumatic Brain or Spinal Cord Injuries

• Specific Learning Disabilities

• Cerebral Palsy

 

Some things that the therapists may work on your child with:

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• Fine motor skills- helping kids grasp and release objects and develop good handwriting skills

• Gross Motor Skills- help in the movement of the larger muscles in the arms and legs.

• Visual Motor Skills- Help improves a child’s eye movement based on visual perception information. Address and improve hand-eye coordination

• Oral Motor Skills- this involves the muscles in the mouth, lips, and tongue and jaw areas. Work in this area includes chewing, biting, sucking, and licking.

• Self-Care Skills- eating, dressing, brushing teeth, daily tasks.

• Motor Planning Skills- ability to implement, plan and sequence motor tasks

• Sensory Integration Skills- the ability to respond to input received to take in and sort out tasks, learning sensory and attention management tasks, using positive ways to deal with anger and help improve focus and social skills

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This is just a partial list, our therapists will determine what is best for your child based on evaluations and assessments given and tailor the therapy to meet the child’s needs.

 

 

PHYSICAL THERAPY

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Physical Therapy is used for kids who have either injuries or musculoskeletal disorders. Therapists will help alleviate pain and help them resume daily activities. Physical therapy is designed to help the child regain strength and range of motion. It focuses on gross motor skills such as walking hiking, jumping and climbing stairs. For a child it involves milestones that have been missed or delayed for a number of reasons. 

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Physical Therapy is used for various different disorders and issues, some of them may include but not limited to:

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• Orthopedic Disabilities

• Cerebral Palsy

• Developmental Delays

• Muscles Disorders or Diseases

• Acute Traumas

• Birth Defects (spina bifida)

• Some things a therapist might do with your child while in the physical therapy sessions include:

• Developmental activities- crawling, walking, running, jumping

• Weight bearing exercises to build strength around an injury

• Flexibility exercises to increase range of motion in certain muscles

• Adaptive play

• Water (aquatic) therapy

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The therapist may measure the child for flexibility and strength, analyze the child’s gait (the way they walk or run). Identify existing and potential problems, provide instructions for home exercise.

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Our therapists will customize the need for special equipment and treatment plans based on your child’s assessments and evaluations.

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SPEECH THERAPY

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What is a speech disorder?

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A speech disorder is a difficulty with the actual production of sounds.

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Speech disorders can include the following problems:

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• Articulation – difficulty producing sounds in syllables or saying words incorrectly to the point that others cannot understand what is being said.

• Fluency – this is includes problems such stuttering, a condition in which the flow of speech in interrupted by abnormal stoppages, repetitions, prolonging sounds and syllables.

• Resonance- this is associated with problems with the pitch, volume, or quality or the voice that distracts listeners from what is being said. This type of disorder can also cause pain for the child when speaking.

• Dysphagia- known as oral feeding disorders includes difficulties with eating and swallowing.

• The speech therapists evaluate the child with a serious of different tests, they can identify the types of communication problems and the best way to treat them.

• Speech Therapists treat problems in oral-motor, speech, voice, articulation and dysfluency.

• A therapist will work with a child one on one or in small group settings to overcome the speech disorder, using a variety of different strategies.

•  Articulation therapy- this involves having the therapist model correct sounds and syllables to the child. The therapist will show the child how to make certain sounds such as “r” or “s” sounds and will demonstrate the proper movement of the tongue to produce different sounds.

• Oral Motor- also known as feeding therapy, with this particular therapy the therapist will use a variety of oral exercises, which may include facial massage, various tongue, and lip or jaw exercises, to strengthen muscles of the mouth. They might also work with different food textures and temperatures to increase the child’s oral awareness during eating a swallowing.

•  Language intervention activities- in these types of exercises the therapist will react with the child by playing and talking. Some tools used in this therapy will include pictures, books, objects or ongoing events to stimulate conversation and language development. Again with this therapy they might also model correct pronunciation and use repetition exercises to build speech and language skills.

 

Kids might need speech or language therapy for a variety of different reasons:

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• Weak oral muscles

• Birth defects such as cleft lip or cleft palate

• Respiratory issues (breathing issues)

• Traumatic brain injury

• Swallowing disorders

• Autism

• Motor planning problems

• Hearing impairments

• Cognitive (thinking or intellectual) or other developmental delays

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Therapy should begin as soon as possible, prolonging or avoiding can make the issue worse. Children that begin therapy early on when a problem is first noticed have a higher success rate and better outcome than those that begin later in life, although this does not indicate or mean that just because a child is older therapy should not be introduced and progress can’t be made, they may have a slower progress rate because learned patterns need altered.

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We feel that parental involvement in speech therapy is crucial to the child’s progress and success. The therapist will give you some recommendations on things you can continuously work on with the child. The process of overcoming a speech disorder can be very stressing and long for the child so it is vitally important that everyone in the family approach the issue with patience and understanding with the child.

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