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Our Services
Kid's Creek is a specialized pediatric rehabilitation clinic, offering speech, occupational and physical therapy services. We serve children from infants to adolescents. Kid's Creek is considered an early intervention specialist in autism treatment. In addition to our services offered in the clinic and home, we are also excited to offer educational support services to schools and daycare programs. This section will provide you with a brief overview of the services we provide. Please contact us at info@kidscreektherapy.com if you have any questions or would like to speak with our staff regarding your child's therapy needs.
To further meet the needs of our families and the medical community, Kid's Creek is expanding and adding a Sensory Processing Center, opening Spring 2012. We have also expanded our services in these areas: Interactive Metronome program for children and Adults, Infant Massage classes, and Educational Support programs to schools and day care facilities.
Kid's Creek Speech Therapy
Speech and Language Pathology/Therapy: Is your child lagging behind other children when it comes to talking? Combining age-appropriate play therapy and language-development education, our speech therapists work to ensure that each child's language skills reach his or her appropriate levels.
Speech and communication are the most important skills children need to develop. Early intervention for children with speech and language delays can play a key role in preparing your child for academic success. Speech and language skills are critical for following directions, communicating in the classroom, and developing peer relations. Speech and language competency is also an early predictor for reading readiness.
How can speech therapy help your child? Speech and Language therapy can help your child: Improve understanding and expression of language; Improve speech/sound production; Improve swallowing patterns to reduce tongue thrust; Improve reading skills; Improve communication through the provision of augmentative communication systems; Improve eating and swallowing skill development; Promote age appropriate play skills
Common Speech/Language Diagnoses include:
- Expressive language disorders or delay
- Receptive language disorders or delay
- Articulation and phonological disorders
- Voice
- Fluency (Stuttering)
- Social communication skills
- Swallowing disorders
- Auditory processing disorders
- Language-based learning disorders
- Oral-motor disorders
- Feeding Disorders
- Motor speech disorders (apraxia, dysarthria)
- Aural rehabilitation
Signs your child may need speech therapy include:
- Inability to put together simple, two-word phrases by age 2
- Not being easily understood by family members by age 3
- Inability to talk in fairly complete sentences or to be easily understood by strangers by age 4
- Difficulty interacting in and age-appropriate manner with other children
- Feeding aversions or difficulty handling food orally
PROMPT
(Prompts for Restructuring Oral Motor Phonetic Targets)
PROMPT is a multidimensional, multi-sensory therapeutic system that is holistic and dynamic. It is the use of a series of tactile cues on the jaw, face and under the chin that are designed to stimulate speech production in clients with speech production impairment. Prompt tactile cues guide clients through dynamic movements required for speech production that cannot be learned through observation or imitation alone. Tactile cues are paired with verbal and visual cues.
It is beneficial for children with apraxia of speech, autism, Down syndrome, articulation disorders and other speech disorders.
For more information visit www.promptinstitute.com
Speech Therapists at Kid's Creek have been trained by the PROMT Institue to successfully administer this technique in therapy sessions.
The Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing® (LiPS®) Program
A program that develops phonemic awareness for competence in reading, spelling, and speech
Kid’s Creek is excited to announce the LiPS program---an individual or group experience to develop phonemic awareness and its application in reading, spelling, and speech. The LiPS program teaches students to feel the actions of their lips, tongues and vocal chords, and to notice and label them. Using this new ability to "feel sounds," students learn to count, identify, and order sounds within words. They then use this "motor kinesthetic feedback" to read and spell. The LiPS program is led by a speech-language pathologist.
Its goals are to:
- Instruct and improve:
Phonemic awareness
Phonemic decoding
Orthographic processing
Sight word knowledge
Spelling
- Develop fluent readers and competent spellers
- Quickly move into reading in context and expository writing with support to make the transition to independent reading and writing tasks
Who would benefit from LiPS?
- Children labeled as:
Needing remedial help
Visual perception problems
Emotional block
ADD/ADHD
Learning disability
Dyslexia
Ages 7 and up.
Fast ForWord Family of Programs™
By Scientific Learnining
The Fast ForWord program is based on more than 30 years of foundational research into how the brain learns. This research established the fact that boosting the brain’s processing efficiency accelerates quality learning. It’s called brain plasticity and among neuroscientists, it refers to the brain’s ability to change at any age throughout life. Kid’s Creek provides this interactive technology to help your child develop processing, critical thinking, listening and reading skills that are necessary for success.
The Fast ForWord family of reading intervention products develops brain processing efficiency through intensive, adaptive software exercises. Fast ForWord computer-delivered software offers tested, real-world results for educators and specialists around the globe.
Fast ForWord products use patented technologies that leverage the science and opportunity of brain plasticity. By exercising processing skills through intensive, adaptive activity, actual physical changes occur in the brain. The Fast ForWord program can trigger change in the brain and provide an optimal foundation for learning and reading success.
The Fast ForWord program is based on the science of how the brain learns and retains information. It utilizes the principles of neuroscience to exercise and develop the brain's processing efficiency, essential for academic learning and reading success.
Brain plasticity research demonstrates that completing learning tasks in a frequent, intense timeframe accelerates learning. The Fast ForWord program is based on these neuroscience principles. There are four key cognitive skill sets that, when developed together, improve learning and reading. These skill sets are: memory, attention, processing rate, and sequencing.
Developed by four internationally renowned research scientists, Drs. Mike Merzenich, Paula Tallal, Bill Jenkins, and Steve Miller, the Fast ForWord program works to improve the language to literacy continuum. Starting with basic language skills and moving through increasingly challenging and sophisticated reading skills, the Fast ForWord products strictly adhere to the principles of neuroscience upon which they were developed, and all are designed to increase the brain’s processing efficiency.
The technologies behind the program were specifically designed to match the ability and progress of each learner. This ability to adapt to the student means they are always challenged, but not frustrated. This optimal learning experience means that students who use Fast ForWord products often make an average 1 - 2 years gain in reading skills in as little as 8 to 12 weeks. With the Fast ForWord program, great results are the norm, rather than the exception.
For more information see www.scilearn.com
Contact us at 770-888-5221 and request a free demonstration.
Interactive Metronome
In the brain timing is everything
"Most all human behavior involves a brain clock system to coordinate micro-second based signals in the brain. Interventions that "fine tune" the brain clock can improve human performance from student school learning to adults recovering from a stroke."
- Kevin McGrew, Ph.D
Director of Science and Research, Interactive Metronome Director of the Institute for Applied Psychometrics (IAP)
Interactive Metronome (IM) is an advanced brain-based assessment and treatment program designed to promote and enhance brain performance and recovery. IM provides an objective method for measuring deficits and for tracking improvement. IM is evidence-based and is an engaging therapeutic modality that improves cognitive and motor skills. The design of the program ensures that patients recognize progress as it is occurring, increasing their motivation toward therapy and their ultimate recovery.
IM is beneficial for most neurological conditions. Here are some of the common ones:
- ADHD
- Apraxia/Dyspraxia
- Autism Spectrum Disorders (including Asperger’s, PDD)
- Brain Injury
- Brain Tumor (following surgery or chemotherapy)
- Auditory Processing Disorder
- Cerebral Palsy
- Dyslexia and Other Reading Disorders
- Language-Learning Disabled
- Limb Amputation
- Non-verbal Learning Disorder
- Sensory Processing Disorder
- Stuttering
- Stroke
IM for Kids
IM has undergone scientific trials and has been shown to improve:
- Attention and Concentration
- Coordination and Motor Control
- Language processing
- Cognitive processing
- Reading and math fluency
- Control of impulsivity/aggression
IM’s individualized treatment approaches are engaging and motivating to kids. IM’s entertaining, game-like interface and easy-to-understand feedback will have your child checking their scores after each exercise and reaching for new levels and rewards.
Adults
Adults diagnosed with a wide variety of conditions benefit from using IM. Here are some:
- ADHD
- Brain Injury
- Brain Tumor (following surgery or chemotherapy)
- Limb Amputation
- MS
- Parkinson’s
- Stroke
- Spinal Cord Injury
The program can also be used for enhancement of cognitive and athletic performance
- General brain fitness
- Academic improvement
- Sports performance
- Career advancement
- Have a question? Contact us!
Kid's Creek Physical Therapy
Do you have a child that wiggles, slumps, or just can't sit properly in his/her chair at school or home? Does your child frequently fall, seem clumsy or uncoordinated? Does your child tire easily while playing physical or recreational activities, or have difficulty keeping up with peers his/her age? Your child may have gross motor delays or delays with sensory processing which may be inhibiting him/her from performing many age appropriate gross motor activities. Physical therapy addresses strength, balance/coordination, endurance, and sensory integration for children with special needs. Diagnoses commonly treated include: Developmental delay, Cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, Autism, neurological disorders, hypotonia and genetic disorders.
 Physical therapy can help strengthen trunk muscles for sitting extended periods of time. Stronger trunk muscles will assist your child with fine motor activities such as handwriting, drawing, or coloring as well as possibly increase their attention to task in school or at home. A strong trunk can also enable your child to breathe, communicate, and use their extremities more effectively. Physical therapy can help strengthen upper and lower extremities to assist with age appropriate gross motor functional and recreational activities such as running, jumping, and ascending and descending stairs safely.
Do you have concerns regarding your child's gross motor development? The following list of gross motor developmental milestones is based on an average, typically developing child. Please note that these milestones may not apply to every child.
Gross-Motor developmental milestones:
- Rolls from tummy to back: 4-5 months
- Rolls back to tummy: 5-6 months
- Sitting independently: 7 months
- Creeps (Crawling): 8 months
- Cruises on furniture: 11 months
- Walks independently: 12-13 months
- Runs and jumps: 24 months
Infant Massage
Kid’s Creek is excited to offer Infant Massage Classes as both Private Sessions and Groups. Our Physical Therapists who teach the classes are certified by the International Loving Touch Foundation, Inc.
Early psychological and sensory input is essential in facilitating the development of all infants. Infant Massage is a preventative program that provides loving touch right from the start. Understanding and beginning touch early in life can improve the quality of parenting and family life and promote the well-being of the infant.
Benefits for Baby
- Emotionally nourishes the baby
- Begins a loving, intimate communication between a parent or caregiver and the baby
- Helps to strengthen and regulate the baby’s primary systems (i.e., respiratory, circulatory, nervous, musculature and gastrointestinal)
- Reduces gas and colic and allows the baby to sleep better
- Helps the baby relax and release the tensions of daily stimuli
Benefits for Parents
- Better understanding about their infant’s cues of responsiveness
- Enhances communication and emotional ties
- Increases confidence and handling skills
- Greatly improves the bond of affectional attachment
- Provides a means to develop quality interaction time
- Helps the parents relax and listen to their baby
- Massage becomes a perfect avenue for conversation as the child gets older
Kid's Creek Occupational Therapy
Occupational therapy is the use of purposeful activity to maximize the independence of a child who is limited by a physical injury or illness, neurological or cognitive impairment, a developmental or learning disability, or sensory integration processing. For a child, purposeful activities such as swinging, climbing, jumping, buttoning, drawing and writing are their "occupation." Under the guidance of a therapist, the child actively takes in movement and touch information in playful, meaningful and natural ways that may facilitate the brain to modulate these fundamental neural messages. The child responds favorably to SI treatment, because his/her nervous system is pliable and changeable. Occupational therapy helps the child build confidence and learn to succeed- and children love it!
Not only do our Occupational Therapists help children to succeed in fine motor skills (handwriting, drawing, buttoning, tying shoes, swinging, etc.). All of our OTs at Kid's Creek are trained and experienced in successfully addressing Sensory Processing Disorders in children. To learn more about Sensory Processing Disorders, please click here.
Social Skills Groups
Kids' Creek social skills groups include a Pre-school Playgroup, a Friend's Club for younger children, the Creek Club for older elementary children, a Middle School Dinner Club, and a High School Life Skills Group. We are able to provide quality social skills experiences for children ages 2-18 years. Each of our groups are led by two therapists gifted in fostering social skills in children.
Our social skills groups have been developed to address the unique developmental needs of each age group. It is our desire to present programs that are fun, interactive, and offer each child the opportunity for growth. We believe that functional and practical social experiences will provide the most benefit for children. That is why we include opportunities to practice and apply skills learned in our groups out in the community for ages 8 & up. We also encourage and invite typical peers to participate in all groups. During the school year, all groups run in six-week cycles and meet weekly. Summer group programs meet for a week.
The Creek Adventure: This is a new playgroup for children ages 2 ½ to 3 ½ years of age. The group will include fun, structured activities including music, crafts, and games. This will be a great socialization experience for children with special needs and typical developing children.
The Kid’s Creek Friend’s Club: This group is offered for two age groups, 4-5 year olds and 5 ½ to 7 ½- year olds. Skills addressed include: eye contact, appropriate greetings, initiating conversation, conversation skills, phone etiquette, party etiquette, reading facial expressions, feelings and emotions, bullying, teasing, personal space, restaurant etiquette, tone of voice, turn taking, and appropriate play interactions. These groups may offer occasional outings to allow children to practice skills in community environments.
The Creek Club is for children ages 8-11 ½. It provides children the opportunity to practice their social skills in community settings. Each week a new community location is visited to practice skills. Sessions are 2 hours in length. The first hour is held in the clinic learning appropriate social skills interactions through role-playing, video examples, and coaching from the therapists. The second hour of the group will be off-site at a designated location in the immediate community to practice the skills that have just been learned. Participation in this group requires a commitment from the parent to arrange for transportation between locations. Examples of topics covered include bullying, stranger danger, telephone skills, appropriate interactions while shopping, conversational skills, eating at a restaurant, and attending a birthday party.
The Kid’s Creek Dinner Club is for Middle School aged kids. It is designed to address the hesitations and concerns that students face during these trying years. Individual student concerns are addressed in addition to phone skills, peer pressure, bullying, and increasing independence. Each week the Dinner Club meets at a new restaurant to provide a relaxed atmosphere to discuss and learn how to handle to pressures of the pre-teen years.
Kid’s Creek Life Skills Group is for High School students. The group meets at a variety of community locations to learn vocational skills needed for a wide range of employment possibilities. This group will accomplish pre-vocational activities such as applying and interviewing for jobs, phone skills and customer service skills. Examples of locations include: grocery and retail stores, restaurants, and office settings.
Registration Information: All groups require a non-refundable $50 deposit which is applied toward your total cost for the groups. Balances are due the first day the group meets. Group fees include all supplies, activities and meals on outings. All groups are limited to six participants. A minimum of four participants are required for all groups to be held. To register, please call our office at 770-888-5221.
Feeding Therapy
A Multi-Disciplinary Sensory Approach for Picky & Problem Eaters
Are you up a creek about what to feed your picky eater? Find help at the Food Explorers group!
Food Explorers is a multi-disciplinary and sensory approach to overcome disordered eating in children. The Sequential Oral Sensory (SOS) Approach to Feeding is the foundation of Food Explorers’ Program at Kids Creek Therapy. The SOS Approach is an evidence-based program proven to be effective in expanding the food repertoires of picky eaters and problem feeders. The basis of our program is the Steps to Eating Hierarchy. Food Explorers is a step by step approach that incorporates movement, sound, sight, smell, touch, and taste. Our team of Speech and Occupational Therapists, and Registered Dietitian uniquely understand children with eating disorders.
Our Food Explorers program integrates sensory, motor, oral, behavioral/learning, medical and nutritional factors and approaches in order to comprehensively evaluate and manage children with feeding/growth problems. It is based on, and grounded philosophically in, the “normal” developmental steps, stages and skills of feeding found in typically developing children. The treatment component of the program utilizes these typical developmental steps towards feeding to create a systematic desensitization hierarchy of skills/behaviors necessary for children to progress with eating various textures, and with growing at an appropriate rate for them. The assessment component of the program makes sure that all physical reasons for atypical feeding development are examined and appropriately treated medically. In addition, the SOS Approach works to identify any nutritional deficits and to develop recommendations as appropriate to each individual child’s growth parameters and needs. Skills across all developmental areas are also assessed with regards to feeding, as well as an examination of learning capabilities with regards to using the SOS program.
Food Explorers is for children aged 18 months to 10 years; children are grouped by age, ability, and food aversions and preferences. The program includes parent training, education, support.
Orofacial Myology
Therapy Resolves Thumb Sucking and Tongue Thrust Issues
Kid's Creek Therapy now offers services for:
- Tongue Thrust Swallowing
- Thumb Sucking
- Short Upper Lip
- Open-Mouth Rest Posture
Orofacial myology is a form of treatment that deals with the tongue and facial muscles. When your teeth are not aligned properly it is called "malocclusion". Swallowing with the tongue forward and improper resting posture of the tongue can interfere with the relationship of the teeth, causing malocclusion. These conditions can be corrected with a team approach combining orthodontics and orofacial myology.
Together we cultivate an awareness of the muscles used for swallowing and develop a regular exercise and therapy program. Our goal is to strengthen and rehabilitate the tongue and facial muscles while making the new neuromuscular patterns habitual. This team approach enhances overall appearance, produces more positive physical and mental health and often improves speech.
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