If your child has been diagnosed with a developmental delay or disability, early intervention therapy can make a world of difference. Early intervention therapy helps children reach their full potential by providing them with the support they need to develop critical skills and overcome challenges. At our clinic, we offer comprehensive early intervention therapy services for children of all ages. Here's why you should choose our clinic for your child's early intervention therapy.

Experienced and Qualified Therapists

Our clinic employs a team of experienced and qualified therapists who specialize in early intervention therapy. Our therapists have the knowledge, skills, and expertise to provide your child with the best possible care. We understand that every child is unique, and we tailor our therapy services to meet the individual needs of each child.

Comprehensive Early Intervention Therapy Services

We offer a wide range of early intervention therapy services, including physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and behavioral therapy. Our therapists work collaboratively to develop a customized therapy plan for your child that addresses their specific needs and goals. Our goal is to help your child achieve their full potential and reach important developmental milestones.

Family-Centered Care

At our clinic, we believe in family-centered care. We understand that parents and caregivers play a critical role in their child's development, and we work closely with families to ensure that they are involved in the therapy process. We provide education, resources, and support to help parents and caregivers support their child's progress at home.

State-of-the-Art Facilities

Our clinic is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities that are designed to create a comfortable and welcoming environment for children and families. Our facilities are equipped with the latest therapy equipment and tools to ensure that your child receives the best possible care.

Commitment to Excellence

At our clinic, we are committed to excellence in everything we do. We strive to provide the highest quality care for every child who walks through our doors. We regularly evaluate our therapy services and outcomes to ensure that we are providing the best possible care for our patients.

In summary

if your child needs early intervention therapy, choosing the right clinic is essential. At our clinic, we offer experienced and qualified therapists, comprehensive early intervention therapy services, family-centered care, state-of-the-art facilities, and a commitment to excellence. We believe that every child has the potential to achieve great things, and we are here to help them reach their goals. Contact us today to schedule an appointment and learn more about our early intervention therapy services.

Fine motor skills start to develop when a child uses the smaller muscles in their hands, wrists, fingers, feet, and toes. Developing those muscles includes actions like grasping, holding, pressing, or using a pincer grip (holding something between the fore-finger and thumb).  

For young children of preschool, kindergarten, and early school age, fine motor skill development is extremely important. Try making one of these 7 things with them.

Why are fine motor skills important?

Fine motor skills are vital for doing everyday activities like buttoning up a shirt, using utensils to eat, tying shoelaces, cutting with scissors, and writing. As adults, we use fine motor skills so often in our daily lives that it’s easy to not realize that the task we are completing requires a certain skill set and the use of certain muscles.

If a young child is unable to do these everyday tasks, it can affect their self-confidence, ability to develop self-care and independence skills, and also their academic performance.

7 ways parents can help children develop and improve their fine motor skills

These 10 techniques are especially effective for teaching preschool or kindergarten-aged children fine motor skills, but they are also necessary and useful for younger and older children’s motor skill development.

Parents can encourage and help kids to improve their fine motor skills with simple, fun activities. If you’re stuck for ideas, try a few of the activities below.

1. Play-dough

Tactile play with good old favorite materials like play-dough is a great way for kids to experiment and build fine motor skills. To make this even more interesting you could make the play-dough with your child first before they play with it. Here’s a video that shows you how to make your own play dough.

2. Puzzles

Do puzzles together. Picking up and moving puzzle pieces into place helps develop a pincer grasp. 

Watching or helping your child learn how to complete a puzzle can sometimes be frustrating, they can be impatient and give up easily, lose pieces, or put them in their mouth. But if you stick with it the rewards are worth it. Engage with and encourage your child as much as you can compete for easy puzzles at first and then progressively harder ones, doing this will improve their hand-eye skills, coordination, and motor skills.

Watching the smile and sense of satisfaction that your child will get from completing a puzzle provides tremendous satisfaction for parents.  

See the top-rated puzzles for kids here.

3. Drawing, coloring in, and painting

Encourage your child to draw and paint. This helps not only they are fine motor skills, but also creativity and imagination too. Try different types of painting and different mediums, like crayons, chalk, finger paints, brush painting, or charcoal, to spark their interest and strengthen your child’s hand-eye coordination. Painting with a paintbrush helps kids learn to hold a brush and gain greater control using things in their hands including pencils and other items. Paint-by-number can be an excellent form of brush painting for young children, Faber-Castell does an excellent version here.

4. Cutting with scissors

Using scissors is a great way to strengthen fine motor skills as well as improve hand-eye coordination and concentration. You can draw shapes for your child to cut around. Make some paper snowflakes. Even cut play-dough. Make sure you use age-appropriate scissors.

Why not try making this fine motor skills man with your child? Here’s how.

5. Bath time play

Use cups to fill and pour out sponges, or squeaky rubber toys to squeeze. Try not to stress about water going on the floor, you can always wipe it up afterward

6. Build with blocks and Lego

Stack, connect, and build things together with blocks and Lego. These activities encourage fine pushing and pulling movements. Lego is also great for fostering creativity. Building with LEGO is an effective way to work and develop your child’s fine motor skills. As children build and even pick up LEGO pieces they will, build stronger muscles in their hands and improve coordination, this will help them to improve other skills, such as learning to hold a pencil and learning to write.

Other skills children can learn from playing with Legos include persistence, a sense of accomplishment, and an improved ability to solve puzzles.

7. Threading and lacing

Thread different size pasta or beads onto strings, laces, and pipe cleaners. Tie knots and bows in the string. Finger knitting is easy and fun too!

Learning to brush your teeth is good for your child’s motor development

It can be difficult to teach young children to brush their own teeth, especially to get them to brush properly, but doing so will help their fine motor skills development.  Click here to learn 10 ways to improve your child’s teeth hygiene and improve their teeth brushing competency.

What to do if you’re concerned

Issues with coordination and balance may not be noticeable until kids reach school age. But if you’re concerned about your child’s gross motor skills, we have Southern Pediatric Therapy Clinic which can help. Our specialists support preschool kids and their families to develop basic sensory awareness and motor skills to help them with self-care skills and get ready for school. Call (769) 242-2139 to make an appointment.

Is Your Child Getting Enough Outdoor Play Time?

Playing outside with your child offers them some developmental challenges that many kids are lacking today. It’s not simply a cliché to think that children benefit from playing outdoors.

There’s a growing body of scientific research that has found some incredible advantages for a child’s development if you engage them in outdoor activities.

As your child’s physical or occupational therapist will tell you, your child will learn more about the world around them and their body when you get them off the couch and outside for some play.

As stated by Dr. Claire McCarthy from Harvard Health,

“Here’s something really simple you can do to improve your child’s chance of future health and success: make sure he spends plenty of time playing outside.

There are many ways in which this generation’s childhood is different from that of the last generation, but one of the most abrupt contrasts is the degree to which it is being spent indoors. There are lots of reasons, including the marked increase in time spent interacting with electronic devices, the emphasis on scheduled activities and achievements, concerns about sun exposure — and, for many families, the lack of safe outdoor places to play. It’s not just children; adults are spending less time outdoors as well.”

If you need recommendations on some great outdoor activities you can do with your child, don’t hesitate to ask us!

In the meantime, here are three reasons why it’s important to play outside with your child – supported by research published in the Porto Biomedical Journal in 2017:

1. Outdoor play helps your children enjoy nature!

Playing outside in nature – whether it’s at a local park or in your own backyard – creates some unique possibilities for children to flex their imagination.

Just think of all the options available in nature that your child will never have available with a commercial toy (or worse, on a smartphone, tablet or TV screen).

Sticks, rocks, plants, leaves, soil and water can all be converted into something else when a child engages their imagination. Your child’s natural sense of discovery is engaged when they play outside, and that contributes to creativity, problem-solving and divergent thinking skills.

Believe it or not, researchers have also found that “getting dirty” by coming into contact with harmless microbes outside makes children more resistant to diseases and can alleviate the symptoms of conditions like asthma and eczema.

2. Understanding what is a “healthy risk”

We all want to keep our children safe, but researchers think modern society has evolved to the point where we are keeping our children “too safe.”

By sheltering children through exclusive indoor play, we keep them from becoming exposed to important growth and development opportunities that come with “risky play.”

That doesn’t mean dangerous play; it simply means playing outside in a safe location where they have the opportunity to experience a skinned knee or to fall down. Here’s a really simple way to look at it.

If your child attempts to climb a tree and gets a splinter, but fails to climb the tree, she will learn far more than if she never attempted to climb the tree at all.

Scientists believe the trial-and-error that kids experience through “risky play” outdoors contributes to skills like entrepreneurship, self-awareness, problem-solving, independence and persistence.

3. More opportunities to socialize

Researchers have also found that playing outside lets children show off aspects of their personality that they will never encounter in an indoor setting.

Maybe your child loves to sprint and feel the wind in his hair; how would you ever know if you don’t take him out to a wide-open, grassy space at the park?

Researchers also discovered that kids play together and socialize better outdoors than indoors. Young children especially tend to pair off as teachers and learners to interact with each other. Levels of stress and anxiety for children were also diminished by playing outdoors.

Plus, guess what? Parents experienced a drop in their stress levels as well when playing outdoors with their children – meaning there are benefits to getting outdoors for the whole family!

Looking for more tips and tricks? Contact us!

There is a lot of research that also indicates that outdoor play is extremely good for kids with special needs.

If you want to amplify the physical therapy and other assistance that your special child is being provided, start taking them outdoors for these added benefits. And if you’re thinking about starting a regimen of therapy for your child, call us today and schedule an appointment!