Occupational Therapy
Pediatric Occupational Therapy helps children gain independence by improving their ability to complete everyday activities at home, school, and during play. Our Occupational Therapy team provides compassionate, individualized care for each child.
Occupational Therapists look closely at each child's behavior and activity to determine if motor, cognitive, sensory processing, social-emotional, or other areas are contributing to functional difficulty. Areas commonly addressed by Occupational Therapy include:
Fine Motor Skills
Focusing on smaller muscles allows your child to control detailed movements. These movements require the use of smaller muscles of the body such as the eyes, face, tongue, hands, and fingers. Important fine motor skills include smiling, following moving objects with their eyes, and picking up small items such as food. These are all necessary skills for early exploration, body awareness, and play. Later, these skills will lead to everyday skills such as handwriting, stacking blocks, playing ball, staying safe on playground equipment.
To find out if Occupational Therapy is right for your child, contact your child's Primary Care Physician or Pediatrician.
Feeding Therapy
Feeding therapy assists in helping children develop normal, effective feeding patterns and behaviors. It is more than simply "teaching a child to eat." We help individuals conquer their feeding issues, including being a "picky eater," oral defensiveness, flavor or texture aversions, and lack of focus. Our therapists work closely with each child and their families to determine the source of the child's difficulties and develop a plan of care specific to that child's needs.
Self-Care Activities
Focus on teaching the individual the skills necessary for bathing, dressing, or self feeding.
Sensory-Based Therapy
This is an approach to helping children who have difficulty navigating their environments due to overstimulation or under stimulation of the sensory system. Sensory based therapy utilizes the bodies 5 senses: vision, hearing, taste, touch, and smell; along with 2 additional "internal" senses of proprioception (body awareness) and vestibular (movement) to create optimal level of arousal and regulation to allow the child to successfully engage with their environment.