Our Pediatric Therapy Services
Our pediatric physical therapists offer comprehensive examinations, evaluations, diagnosis and intervention to babies and children (up to 12 years old). We also provide physical, occupational and speech therapy services in our pediatric clinic in San Antonio so your child can receive any or all of these services in just one facility.
Pediatric Physical Therapy
Pediatric physical therapy aims to help children perform day-to-day tasks successfully and live a more active life. Our physical therapists use their expertise in movement, body function and motor development and apply clinical reasoning to provide a program that will help develop your child’s functional independence. The program also aims to motivate your child to actively participate in home, school and social environments.
Some of the therapy sessions and strategies that your physical therapist may incorporate include balance and coordination activities, flexibility exercises, massage, games, strength training and more.
Pediatric physical therapy can also help your child improve their mobility to participate in recreational sports. It is also ideal when/for:
- Dealing with developmental delays and helping your child achieve milestones such as crawling, standing and walking, etc.
- Decrease pain
- Improve range of motion
- Improving balance and coordination
- Improving mobility, strength and/or endurance (for those with orthopedic or muscular conditions)
- Managing congenital abnormalities
- Postsurgical rehabilitation
- Recovering from certain injuries (i.e., sports injury, brain injury, etc.)
Pediatric Occupational Therapy
Your child’s primary occupation includes playing, participating in school and getting involved in your family activities. Pediatric occupational therapy aims to help children who have sensory, physical and cognitive deficiencies perform in school and succeed in daily activities.
Our pediatric occupational therapists conduct personalized therapy sessions and exercises, whether at the clinic or in your home, to help your child develop and improve their fine motor, emotional, physical and social skills. This kind of treatment can also help improve your child’s self-esteem and sense of accomplishment.
Pediatric occupational therapy is also ideal when/for:
- Developing a child’s manual dexterity and motor coordination, including handwriting and computer skills
- Developing age-appropriate behavior
- Developing hand-eye coordination and perception
- Developing strategies in playing
- Recovering from postsurgical conditions
- Sensory-motor integration, processing and modulation
- Teaching self-care and basic life activities such as using the toilet, bathing, dressing, self-feeding, brushing teeth, etc.
Pediatric Speech Therapy
Some disorders or impairments, whether congenital or acquired, can affect a child’s communication, cognition, fluency, voice and eating, drinking or swallowing capacity. If your child has this kind of disorder or if they are experiencing developmental delays, speech-language therapy is recommended as soon as possible. Children who do therapy before five years old tend to have better results than those who start later.
Our pediatric speech-language pathologists at Healthlink conduct comprehensive evaluations to determine the extent of impairment or developmental delay and create a personalized treatment plan to achieve the best possible results for your child. We incorporate various treatment strategies, including language intervention activities, articulation therapy, oral-motor or feeding and swallowing therapy as well as age-appropriate fun activities to encourage maximum participation.
Pediatric speech therapy is also ideal for/when:
- Addressing articulation and phonological deficits to improve speech intelligibility
- Encouraging expression of emotions
- Improving cognitive function
- Improving communication skills (listening, speaking and articulation)
- Improving feeding and swallowing skills
- Improving receptive and expressive communication
- Learning to communicate if the child has cleft lip or cleft palate
- Recovering from traumatic brain injury
- Strengthening oral muscles for eating, swallowing and speech
- Targeting developmental language delays to promote communication skills
- Training to low and high tech communication aides to promote nonverbal communication
