If your child has problems that limit his or her ability to move, learn age-appropriate motor skills, or perform daily activities, then physical therapy can help. Our pediatric physical therapists are specially trained to:

• Work with your child to improve mobility and motor skills. 
• Evaluate and treat developmental conditions, muscle, joint, and neurological conditions. 
• Work to improve your child’s strength, coordination, and balance to learn new skills or return to previous skills. 
• Work to relieve pain and restore motion for post-surgical patients or those children with orthopedic or rheumatologic conditions.

Speech therapy helps children communicate in everyday life. If your child is having difficulty communicating with others–whether the problem results from speech, language, cognition or voice–we can help. Our speech-language therapists build compassionate relationships with our patients and their families to design a customized therapy plan that fits your child’s needs. We can also help your child with feeding issues caused by medical conditions. 
 
Areas of focus may include:

• Alternative communication methods, such as electronic devices and sign language
• Tests to measure how well your child hears and understands words/sounds
• Aural (hearing) rehabilitation to help children with hearing loss (including children with cochlear implants) learn to understand sounds and develop spoken language
• Behavior management and social communication
• Speaking clearly (articulation)
• Disfluency/stuttering
• Executive function, including memory, new learning, problem-solving, attention to task
• Feeding issues
• Reading comprehension
• Language delays
• Voice quality and use
• Written expression

In addition to therapy offered at our outpatient clinic, our speech-language team may develop a customized speech therapy plan for you to use at home with your child.

Does your child need help learning or returning to the activities of daily life due to developmental delay, medical condition, injury, illness or surgery? Our pediatric occupational therapists at Grand Itasca work with children and their families to promote participation in functional activities that are meaningful to them.

 

We work with children to develop skills to become more independent:

 

• Motor skills — increase strength and stability, coordination, safety, range of motion

  • Fine motor (stacking blocks, coloring, handwriting)

  • Gross motor (body coordination and awareness, ball skills, safety)

• Play skills

  • Developmental play (cause and effect toys, pretend play, independent play)

  • Social skills (turn taking, cooperative play, developing friendships)

• Self-care skills

  • Dressing and hygiene cares (toileting, tooth brushing, bathing, clothing fasteners)

  • Adaptive behavior (handling change and transitions, emotional regulation, problem-solving)

  • Feeding challenges, including aversion to certain flavors or textures, or distraction and lack of focus

 

While working on these skills, we look closely at each activity to determine if motor, cognitive, sensory processing, social-emotional, or other areas are contributing to the functional difficulty. Occupational therapy can also help when issues of self-regulation/adaptive behavior or sensory processing interfere with daily life and with school.