Our Program

Your child might see an occupational therapist if they have difficulty doing everyday things because of physical disability, learning difficulties, psychological or emotional challenges, developmental delay or intellectual disability. Pediatric occupational therapy is very beneficial for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and developmental delays of varying degrees in all domains of development.
Here are just a few signs that your child might benefit from pediatric occupational therapy.

Occupational therapy can help children who show signs of developmental delays. For example, if your 1-year-old isn’t crawling yet or if your 2-year-old can’t walk steadily.

Some children struggle with tasks that require strength, control, and dexterity of the small hand muscles. Kids who have trouble with fine motor skills will have a difficult time with tasks like using scissors, drawing, stringing beads, and using utensils. If fine motor skill issues aren’t addressed, a child with delays in this area could have a hard time performing essential activities like writing and using computers at school.

Children with sensory processing disorders can benefit from pediatric occupational therapy. If your child seems to overreact to touch, taste, sounds, or smells, that’s a common sign that he or she could have sensory processing issues and might need occupational therapy. Kids with sensory processing problems might also display under-sensitivity and keep seeking out sensations by moving around and touching everything constantly, according to the Our Therapists.

• Works with the movements required to get food to the mouth
• Improves strength in hands and arms to successfully get food to mouth
• Improves/introduces use of utensils in feeding
• Works with sensory challenges that the child may have

There are several reasons that children struggle to produce sounds some of those are developmental where they have a muscle weakness and that can be caused by a number of different things one of the most common is a tongue tie or a lip tie piece of ligament is overgrown either in the lips or tongue.

• • Helps with dysphagia, or difficulty swallowing, anywhere from the mouth to the esophagus
  • Helps to decrease aspiration (choking)
  • Increases variety of foods the child will eat through various methods
  • Improves suck-swallow-breathe pattern in infants (think of how an infant drinks a bottle or breastfeeds)
  • Recommends a safe swallow program for an IEP or 504 plan

• Works on reducing negative behavioral responses
• Plays with food to improve interactions and promote positive interactions with food
• Increase willingness of child to have new foods near preferred foods