Developmental Therapy
A developmental therapist provides a comprehensive analysis of your infant’s growth and abilities. One of our priorities is to design services that encourage your infant’s skills while working closely with you. To that extent we can help answer questions such as:
- When should my child be sleeping through the night?
- When should he/she be eating solid foods?
- Should he/she be saying his first words yet?
- When should he/she begin walking?
- What about toilet training?
Children learn through play and that's why the developmental therapist combines education and fun in therapeutic activities. The developmental therapist can show you simple activities to do with your infant to be sure he or she is reaching the fullest potential.
Occupational Therapy
Working with the parents and the rest of the developmental team, the occupational therapist encourages infants and toddlers to become as independent as possible. This may be accomplished by:
- Developing movement skills.
- Experiencing the world through his/her senses.
- Playing and interacting with caregivers and other children.
- Encouraging self-help skills like eating and dressing.
An occupational therapist can give family members ideas on how to make developmental play a part of the child's regular day. For children with special needs, the occupational therapist is able to adapt toys for play, provide appropriate exercises and recommend equipment that may help to achieve the goal of independence.
Physical Therapy
A child's first steps are exciting! But sometimes children need help getting through the stages that lead up to that milestone.
A physical therapist can coach you through those stages. Neck and head control, sitting alone, crawling...are all part of the journey that takes some babies longer and requires more encouragement. The therapist can provide you with suggestions for activities and play that will strengthen the muscles needed to develop those movement skills. Your therapist can introduce you to equipment needs your child may have, and he or she will have a wealth of information about the development of your child's gross motor skills.
Speech Therapy
From the time your baby first cries when it’s hungry, it’s communicating with you. The job of the speech therapist is to help parents answer such questions as: “When should my baby begin ‘cooing?’” or “How do we encourage them to use two words together?”
Sometimes, the therapist teaches additional forms of communication like sign language or pictures and symbols for children who have unique needs. Learning these and other communication skills is an important foundation for communicating with future classmates and teachers in a pre-school setting.
