Therapy Services
Physical Therapy
Pediatric physical therapists specialize in the diagnosis, treatment, and management of infants, children, and adolescents with a variety of congenital, developmental, neuromuscular, skeletal, or acquired disorders/diseases. Treatments focus on improving gross and fine motor skills, balance, coordination, strength, and endurance.
How do I know if my child needs physical therapy? Signs of possible difficulties include:
- Balance difficulties
- Weakness in the trunk or extremities
- An abnormal walking pattern
- Coordination difficulties (I.e, falls frequently or doesn’t play on playground equipment)
- Delayed achievement of motor milestones
Occupational Therapy
Pediatric occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants help children participate in the things they want and need to do each day (their "occupations"). Treatments may target a variety of living skills including daily self care, school functioning, play skills, and social participation through the use of cognitive, sensory, motor, and neurodevelopemental principles.
How do I know if my child needs occupational therapy? Signs of possible difficulties include:
- Difficulty managing clothing or completing daily self care tasks (brushing teeth, toileting, tying shoes).
- Inability to tolerate wearing certain textures
- Poor/illegible handwriting
- Difficulty transitioning to solid foods
- Aversion to foods of different textures, temperatures, size, etc.
- Limited social skills
- Delayed play skills (with others or with toys)
Speech Therapy
A speech therapist has training in the diagnosis and treatment of a variety of speech, voice, and language disorders. Pediatric speech therapists work with children to help them communicate effectively with family and friends. Additionally, speech therapists can help improve oral-motor functioning and eating/swallowing skills.
How do I know if my child needs speech therapy? Signs of possible difficulties include:
- Lack of language production--typically children begin to babble by 9 months of age and have a vocabulary of approximately 50 words by 18 months of age
- Limited interaction, eye contact, or play with others and/or toys
- Incorrectly produced sounds and speech that is difficult to understand– all speech sounds should be present by 6 years of age
- Difficulty carrying on a conversation with peers, attending to and responding appropriately to several conversational exchanges, understanding sarcasm, etc
- Difficulty organizing thoughts to re-tell stories or events
- Difficulties with vocabulary use and/or grammar use
- Difficulty transitioning from breast/bottle to cups
- Difficulty eating/swallowing