Occupational Therapy (OT) is the use of functional and purposeful activities to maximize a child’s independence in daily life. Functional activities such as swinging, climbing, jumping, dressing, painting, drawing, eating, and overall “play” is how children experience the world, learn, and grow. Occupational therapists use their unique training and skills to help children meet their developmental milestones and improve functional performance by focusing on social skill development, motor development, visual perceptual skills, sensory integration, and the development of self-care and daily life skills.

Sensory processing (environmental input)

• Overly sensitive or very reactive to sound, touch, or movement
• Under-responsive or unreactive to sensations (e.g., high pain tolerance, doesn't notice cuts/bruises)
• Constantly moving, jumping, crashing, bumping
• Easily distracted by visual or auditory stimuli
• Emotionally reactive (cries easily, quick to tantrum, etc.)
• Difficulty coping with change, even minor changes
• Inability to calm self when upset

Social skills

• Avoids playing with other children/peers
• Difficulty interacting socially and engaging with family and peers
• Difficulty adapting to new environments
• Delayed language skills
• Overly focused on one subject/object (ex. character, dinosaurs, trains)
• Difficulty coping/adapting to school environment

Learning difficulties 

• Unable to concentrate and focus at school
• Easily distracted or can’t attend appropriately
• Difficulty following instructions and completing tasks
• Tires easily or rapidly with school work
• Poor impulse control
• “Hyper” or low energy
• Difficulty keeping up with workload at school
• Difficulty learning new material
• Reverses letters/numbers (especially at 7+yo)

Play skills

• Needs adult guidance to initiate play
• Difficulty with imitative play
• Wanders without purposeful play
• Moves quickly from one activity to the next
• Does not explore toys appropriately
• Participates in repetitive play for hours (ex. lining up toys)
• Does not join in with peers/siblings when playing
• Difficulty concepts of sharing and turn taking

Milestone Development

• Not sitting, crawling, and walking at appropriate times
• Not developing age-appropriate play and social skills
• Difficulty with attention and not learning at an age appropriate level

Fine motor skills

• Avoiding tasks that require precise fine motor skills
• Difficulty manipulating small toys and puzzles
• Difficulty using utensils or straws at an age-appropriate time
• Difficulty using zippers, buttons, shoelaces
• Difficulty coloring, drawing, tracing, prewriting shapes
• Difficulty holding/using scissors or pencil
• Difficulty with shape/letter/number formation
• Not developing hand dominance at an age-appropriate time

Gross motor skills (movement, strength, and balance)

• Avoids tasks and games that require gross motor skills (strength-based)
• Difficulty with balance / fearful of feet leaving the ground
• Difficulty coordinating both sides of the body
• Difficulty understanding the concept of right and left
• Difficulty throwing, bouncing catching a ball
• Difficulty going up and down stairs at an age appropriate time
• Difficulty crossing midline (center) of body

Visual skills (processing)

• Difficulty with the spacing and sizes of shapes/letters/numbers
• Difficulty with recognizing objects (shapes/letters/numbers)
• Difficulty with copying objects (drawing)
• Difficulty with visual tracking objects/images and crossing body midline
• Difficulty finding objects among other objects

• Excessive drooling / poor lip closure (especially during feeding)
• Lengthy bottle or breast feedings
• Tiredness after eating and/or difficulty gaining weight
• Çhews food in the front of the mouth, rather than on the molars
• Difficulty using a cup at an age-appropriate time
• Difficulty drinking from a straw at an age-appropriate time
• Excessively picky when eating, only eating certain types or textures of food
• Excessively mouths toys or objects beyond an age-appropriate level
• Gages/vomits with eating
• Choking, coughing, excess spillage, or clearing throat with feeding

Our Pediatric speech-language pathologists (SLPs) help children communicate more effectively with verbal and non-verbal language skills. They also facilitate increased independence with feeding and swallowing abilities. Speech therapy (ST) works with children to improve their articulation, decrease stuttering (disfluency), or treat voice disorders. Targets include improvement with their receptive language (helping children process and understand the information they’re receiving from others), receptive language (how to produce words and combine words into phrases and sentences to outwardly communicate their wants and needs and share information). Our highly skilled SLPs strive to make every single therapy session feel like play, which is the goal. Children learn best through play, and that is how we help them grow. To the child it’s play, but to us it’s effective intervention. We provide our parents and children the tools they need to improve their language in/-clinic so that the parents can continue this intervention in the natural environment, which creates lasting change and the most significant improvements.

• A child who does not respond to noise
• A child who has not said his first word by 15 months
• A child who is not social and avoids making eye contact
• A vocabulary of less than 50 words by two years of age
• Inability of follow simple instructions by two years of age
• Other people are unable to understand your child at three years of age
• Has known speech difficulties, such as stuttering or lisping
• Has any speech sound error after five years of age
• A quiet baby who does not make sounds or babbles
• Poor social skills
• Difficulty with pragmatics/problem solving

Physical therapy (PT) helps make everyday tasks such as walking, throwing, and climbing stairs easier for children by engaging in fun, developmentally or age-appropriate games and activities to keep them motivated while targeting appropriate skills. PT is hard work, but we strive to make it fun on every visit with the goal of helping children move their bodies when they want and how they want to the best of their ability. Our experienced and skillful PTs see children for a variety of different reasons, including bone/muscle issues, sports-related injuries, genetic abnormalities, and brain, spine, or nerve disorders. Our PTs and that help children improve their gross motor skills and includes:  range of motion, strength, coordination, and movement patterns.

• Difficulty with crawling and walking balance and coordination activities
• Difficulty with adaptive play (adapting to challenges)
• Avoids tasks and games that require gross motor skills (strength-based)
• Demonstrates less musculature/strength than peers 
• Difficulty with balance / fearful of feet leaving the ground
• Difficulty coordinating both sides of the body
• Difficulty understanding the concept of right and left
• Difficulty throwing, bouncing catching a ball
• Difficulty going up and down stairs at an age appropriate time
• Difficulty crossing midline (center) of body

Amerigroup, Anthem, CareSource, Cigna (speech only), Medicaid.