Pediatric Therapy

Pediatric Occupational Therapy

Occupational Therapy (OT) helps children reach their potential in everyday activities. The goal is to promote functional performance through the integration of physical skills, social-emotional development, sensory processing and cognitive abilities.

The therapists help children and teens to achieve maximum functional outcomes in the following specialty areas:

• Sensory processing (how your child interacts and reacts with their environment)
• Self regulation (ability to calm)
• Fine motor skills and refinement (use of hands for skilled tasks)
• Activities of daily living (self dressing and self feeding)
• Cognitive development (problem solving)
• Visual integration (ability to focus, track and differentiate objects)
• Splint fabrication

Occupational therapists are familiar with the developmental milestones that are normally attained at each stage in a child’s life and are skilled at encouraging and motivating patients to reach their goals.

Pediatric Physical Therapy

Evaluation and interventions focus on factors affecting a child’s movement patterns and mobility in the home, school and play environments. Intervention techniques utilized are based on clinical reasoning, theories of physical therapy practice, and research based evidence.

Interventions include but are not limited to:

• Neurodevelopmental Treatment Approach (muscle facilitation)
• Manual therapy techniques (massage, trigger point release, stretching)
• Therapeutic exercises, stretches and functional activities
• Modalities (heat, ice, ultrasound)
• Practice with adaptive and positioning equipment (orthoses, walkers, etc.)
• Prescription of home exercise program
• Therapeutic taping (support and stabilize joints and muscles)

Pediatric Speech Therapy

Our licensed and bilingual speech-language pathologists (also known as speech therapists) work to help improve speech, language and voice, as well as improve eating and swallowing skills of children of all ages. Our skilled speech-language pathologists work closely with each child and family to address individualized goals which may include improving language use and comprehension, vocal quality, intelligibility of speech, social skills, and safe feeding and swallowing. Our speech-language pathologists involve parents and/or family members in helping their child to achieve their goals by providing education and instruction in a home carryover plan.

Some of the areas covered by speech-language pathology are:

• Articulation/phonology (pronunciation of sounds)
• Receptive language (understanding what is being said)
• Expressive language (communicating thoughts and ideas)
• Voice (improving vocal quality)
• Fluency (stuttering)
• Apraxia (oral motor speech disorder)
• Social thinking and pragmatics (understanding body language and tone)
• Reading, writing and spelling difficulties (learning disabilities)
• Developmental delays (Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Down Syndrome, hearing loss)
• Auditory processing (understanding and following directions)
• Dysphagia (feeding and swallowing)