Diagnostic - Evaluation - Treatment Center
Offering diagnostic testing, evaluations, assessments, and treatment for all children.
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Occupational Assessments & Therapy
Occupational Therapy /Sensory Integration
Occupational Therapy encompasses the use of fine motor skills (needed
for eating, dressing, pinching, writing, and playing), balance & coordination (needed for walking, running, and jumping), swallowing (needed for eating),visual motor skills (needed for coordinating activities),
and sensory regulation and modulation (how the body interprets, processes, adapts,
and gives feedback to various situations).
General Indicators for an OT evaluation or treatment:
- Difficulty starting new tasks, poor organization or coordination
- Weak, stiff, or uncoordinated movement
- Awkward grasp when using utensils or writing implements
- Limited food preference or feeding difficulty
- Difficulty with activities such as dressing, brushing teeth or hair, toileting, feeding, riding a bike, catching or throwing or not having a hand preference by 1st grade
- Unaware of cuts or bruises
- Difficulty with sensory seeking behavior such as frequently bumping into things,leaning on others, excessively touching things or others, attention regulation, or regulating activity level (kids in constant motion).
- Sensory avoiding behaviors such as covering ears, not eating certain foods, trouble with brushing hair, teeth, or dressing, excessive blinking, avoids being outside, and/or difficulty in new situations
- Emotional outbursts or behavioral problems
If you answered yes to one or more of these questions in either category, your child may benefit from a Motor evaluation or treatment. You may want to discuss this with your pediatrician’s office or one of our clinical treatment staff.
Types of Occupational Therapy We Provide:
- Sensory Integration: Sensory integration therapy helps children who have difficulty registering or interpreting specific senses or regulating and modulating their senses. Children who struggle with sensory integration may react too strongly or not strongly enough to specific sensations (i.e., covering ears or not wanting to wear certain clothing , mouthing non-food items or run into walls/jump constantly to seek input). Sensory integration therapy helps children learn specific coping skills to compensate for sensory processing difficulties by decreasing or increasing the child’s tolerance for a particular sensatory or overall learning to become regulated.
- Motor Planning Therapy: Motor planning “praxis” involves creating a goal and executing on the goal (for example, if a child visits a new playground and wants to go down a slide, she needs to first thinking about the goal of going down the slide, actually climbing the ladder and maneuvering her feet up each rung and shifting her weight so she doesn’t fall, and then going down the slide). For children with issues of motor planning or Dyspraxia have difficulty executing on motor tasks (this can involve all types of motor tasks such as dressing, using utensils, riding a bike, maneuvering a playground, writing assignments, etc.) Motor Planning Therapy helps to train the brain to approach novel motor situations.
- Motor Skills Therapy: Children who struggle with fine motor skill development (i.e., finger and hand strength and visual-spatial skills) can benefit from training.
- Low Muscle Tone Group: Children who have low (or weak) muscle tone, called hypotonia, can fatigue easily causing slouching and can lead to behavioral issues. Additionally, low muscle tone and lead to a slower reaction time which is important in things like catching a ball or playing sports. Our Low Muscle Tone Group called “Tone Up” helps children strengthen their muscles tone through fun activities!
Diagnostic Evaluations & Testing
We provide Developmental, Psychological, Speech & Motor Development, Behavioral, and Educational diagnostic evaluations and testing.
Diagnostic evaluations can assist when families notice a symptom or cluster of symptoms and are interested in determining if these symptoms are a variant of normal development or need diagnostic clarification. Our team of expert Psychologists can evaluate children and assist with intervention, if necessary.
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