Services

Speech Therapy

Occupational Therapy

Feeding Therapy

Speech Therapy

Speech therapy is provided to children who have difficulty with communication and related disorders, from auditory and memory to voice and oral-motor. Disorders may range from simple sound repetitions and misarticulations to the complete inability to communicate through the use of speech and language.

Receptive Language Therapy

Expressive Language Therapy

An expressive language disorder is characterized by a child having difficulty expressing himself using speech. He may have problems putting sentences together coherently, using proper grammar, recalling the appropriate word to use, etc. A child with expressive language disorder is not able to communicate thoughts, needs, or wants at the same level or with the same complexity his or her peers. The child often has a smaller vocabulary than his or her peers.

Pragmatic Language Therapy

Articulation/Phonological Processing Therapy

Oral Motor Therapy

Oral motor therapy works on the oral skills necessary for proper speech development. These skills include: awareness, strength, coordination, movement, and endurance of the lips, cheeks, tongue, and jaw. We look at normal and abnormal patterns of the lips, tongue, jaw, cheeks, hard palate and soft palate for eating, drinking, facial expression and speech to determine which functional skills a client has to build on, and which abnormal patterns need to be inhibited or for which compensation is needed.

Fluency/Stuttering Therapy

Fluency is the aspect of speech production that refers to continuity, smoothness, rate, and effort. Stuttering, the most common fluency disorder, is an interruption in the flow of speaking characterized by repetitions, sound prolongations, blocks, interjections, and revisions, which may affect the rate and rhythm of speech. These disfluencies may be accompanied by physical tension, negative reactions, secondary behaviors, and avoidance of sounds, words, or speaking situations.

Voice Therapy

Occupational Therapy

Occupational Therapy focuses on helping children develop the skills they need to grow into functional, independent adults. This can involve games, puzzles, toys, songs and physical exercises. Through working with Pediatric Occupational Therapists, children are not only enabled to develop critical skills, but they often also build upon their levels of confidence and self-esteem.

Handwriting

The development of a child's handwriting can provide clues to developmental problems that could hinder a child's learning because teachers depend on written work to measure how well a child is learning. Occupational therapists can evaluate the underlying components that support a student's handwriting, such as muscle strength, endurance, coordination, and motor control, and parents can encourage activities at home to support good handwriting skills.

Self-Regulation

Sensory Integration Therapy

Fine Motor Coordination

Gross Motor Coordination

Visual Perceptual/Visual Motor Integration

Activities of Daily Living

Feeding Therapy

Feeding Therapy is provided to increase oral intake and expand the child’s repertoire of foods by introducing new tastes, temperatures, and textures. Feeding Therapy may include oral motor exercises to teach a correct suck, chew, or swallow pattern to ensure safety when eating.

Oral Motor Therapy

Oral motor refers to how we use the muscles inside of our mouth. This includes the tongue, lips, cheeks, and jaw. They are all parts of our mouth and are tied to tons of muscles, and just like any muscle, it can be strong or weak, coordinated or uncoordinated. We need our oral motor skills to be able to talk, eat, or drink from. They aren’t something most of us give much thought to, but they are very important.

Swallowing Therapy

Some children also have swallowing problems, or dysphagia. Swallowing happens in three phases. A child can have a problem in one or more of these phases. They include: Oral Phase - sucking, chewing, and moving food or liquid into the throat. Feeding is a part of the oral phase. Pharyngeal phase – starting the swallow and squeezing food down the throat. The child needs to close off his airway to keep food or liquid out. Food going into the airway can cause coughing and choking. Esophageal phase – opening and closing the esophagus, or the tube that goes from the mouth to the stomach. The esophagus squeezes food down to the stomach. Food can get stuck in the esophagus. Or, a child may throw up a lot if there is a problem with the esophagus.

Oral Aversion

A child can develop an oral aversion from traumatic but necessary medical care (being intubated, suctioned, tape on their face, tubes in their mouth, etc.), pain associated with eating (severe reflux, vomiting, aspiration into the lungs, constipation, diarrhea, nausea, etc.), or even negative experiences (force feeding, eating while struggling to breathe, etc.). An aversion to eating or food might look like gagging to taste, gagging from smells, refusing to eat, a medical diagnosis of failure-to-thrive, preference to certain textures (usually children prefer grain-based “snack” foods like crackers, cookies, breads, etc.) and more.