National Rehabilitation Awareness Week is a time to celebrate all of the wonderful ways rehabilitation can help individuals get back to doing the things they love.

But what exactly qualifies as “rehab” and what does a rehab professional do? There are several disciplines within rehab and many settings where rehab professionals work.

Beginning as early as infancy, pediatric physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy programs provide services to infants, children and adolescents. Services focus on improving the development of the whole child while treating a wide range of genetic disorders, neurological, congenital and developmental conditions as well as orthopedic and musculoskeletal impairments.

Pediatric physical therapists help your child develop gross motor skills, build mobility, strength and independence and also improve a child’s head and neck development. Therapists treat a variety of difficulties including: decreased mobility, strength, range of motion, balance, coordination and endurance. They are also skilled in aiding you child in improving independence, posture and walking while helping with increased or decreased muscle tone.

While occupational therapists can help your child to achieve fine motor, feeding, visual and perceptual, and self-help skills (like dressing and personal hygiene), they are also available to address deficits in upper extremity function, coordination, manipulation of objects, difficulty with bilateral hand or body use and intolerance to movement or touch.

In addition to physical and occupational therapy, speech and language pathologists are available to assist your child in the development of communication and language skills. They treat a variety of communication disorders/delays like articulation delays, expressive and receptive language delays, language delays secondary to autism or down syndrome, phonological processing delays, childhood apraxia of speech and stuttering. They are also trained in helping to treat pragmatic and social skills deficits related to developmental delays or autism.

Early intervention can be crucial in the development and success of your child throughout their life and a team of pediatric therapists can help!

To schedule an appointment, please call 504-842-4348.