Helping your child reach their full potential

Pediatric Therapy

Your child deserves access to top therapies from compassionate specialists.

Every child develops differently. Sometimes they need assistance to reduce potential delays or disability, while others need skills for adapting to a lifelong condition. If your child has been diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental condition like cerebral palsy, spina bifida, or autism spectrum disorder or is slow to achieve movement or speech milestones, Novant Health pediatric therapy programs can provide you and your child with the support you need.

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What is pediatric therapy?

Pediatric physical therapy addresses movement impairments in children. Pediatric physical therapists specialize in diagnosing, treating, and managing various congenital, developmental, neuromuscular, orthopedic, or acquired conditions that children may experience from birth into adolescence.

A baby that is not meeting milestones, a child that walks only on their toes, a child that trips and falls frequently, or a child that cannot keep up with their peers would all benefit from pediatric physical therapy. Our treatments focus on improving strength, range of motion, endurance, balance, and coordination. We also assess how orthotics, methods/modalities, and equipment might help your child reach their treatment goals.

How does pediatric therapy help?

The highly trained therapists at Novant Health facilities use proven techniques aimed at helping your child with skills like walking, speaking, learning, playing, dressing, eating, working, and participating in hobbies.

Following formal testing and clinical evaluations, our pediatric specialists collaborate with parents, caregivers, teachers, and your child’s other medical providers to fully understand your child’s needs. Our physical, occupational, speech therapist or audiologist will then create a personalized plan of treatment.

Types of Pediatric Therapy

Physical Therapy

Pediatric physical therapy focuses on helping children from infancy through adolescence achieve milestones with their gross motor development, such as walking and eye-hand coordination. Children can progress through their developmental milestones at varying rates. Your child’s pediatrician or specialist may recommend physical therapy to help them achieve these milestones and avoid further developmental delays.

If your child was born prematurely or you notice delays in sitting, crawling, or walking you should speak with your pediatrician about how pediatric physical therapy can help.

Common conditions your pediatric physical therapist may treat include but are not limited to:

Torticollis
Developmental Delay
Hypotonia/Hypertonia
Cerebral Palsy
Autism Spectrum Disorder
Down Syndrome
Balance or Coordination impairments

In addition to providing formal testing and clinical evaluations, our physical therapists, physical therapist assistants, and other clinical specialists collaborate with parents, caregivers, teachers, and your child’s primary care provider to create an individual therapy plan.

We use play-based therapeutic activities and exercises to increase range of motion, strength, balance, and coordination. In addition to orthotic and equipment assessment/management, we also offer gait training, aquatic therapy, and methods such as neuromuscular electrical stimulation, manual therapy, and kinesiotaping.

Your child’s treatment plan may also include:

Parent/caregiver education with home program initiation/training
Skilled play to encourage participation in gross motor activities
Bracing/strapping to support and align the joints for areas of the body, including the spine, legs, knees, hips, and feet
Neurodevelopmental Treatment (NDT), a hands-on therapeutic approach to improve motor development and motor control
Biofeedback to help change body functions by understanding the mind-body connection
Episodic care

Occupational Therapy

Pediatric occupational therapy focuses on what kids from infancy to adolescence need and want to do every day, including fine motor skills, social-emotional interaction, and feeding themselves.

If your child has challenges with achieving developmental milestones related to manipulating/moving objects, regulating their emotions, or eating at mealtime, ask your pediatrician or specialist if occupational therapy is right for your child.

Common conditions our occupational therapists and occupational therapist assistants treat include:

ADD/ADHD
Autism
Failure to thrive
Feeding issues: textures, oral version, picky eater
Sensory processing/integration
Behavior concern
Hand/finger weakness
Writing difficulties

Common treatments/procedures offered through our pediatric occupational therapy programs include:

Parent education with home program initiation/training
Skilled play to encourage participation in fine motor activities
Skilled play to encourage social interaction and participation
Sensory integration/regulation
Neurodevelopmental Treatment (NDT)
Feeding treatment with exposure to various food textures

Speech Therapy

Pediatric speech-language therapy focuses on disorders of speech, language, and feeding/swallowing in children from infancy to adolescence. Some children experience difficulties with receptive language, expressive language, articulation, fluency, and feeding and swallowing. If you notice that your child has challenges with understanding language, expressing language, speaking, or feeding/swallowing that don’t match up with developmental milestones for their age group, you may want to ask your pediatrician for a speech therapy referral for your child.

The speech-language pathologists at Novant Health all have special training and certification for working with children. Our pediatric speech therapists are trained to diagnose and treat conditions that affect your child’s ability to communicate or swallow, such as:

Dysphagia (difficulty swallowing)
Pediatric feeding disorders
Receptive language disorders and/or expressive language disorders
Pragmatic language disorders
Articulation
Stuttering/cluttering disorders
Augmentative/alternative communication supports (Low and High-Tech Devices)
Craniofacial anomalies

Speech language therapists use many different interventions to treat your child, including:

Skilled Intervention for language development
Skilled Intervention for articulation and phonological development.
Pediatric feeding and swallowing treatment
Parent education with implementation of home programs and/or community resources

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Support for Pediatric Hearing Concerns

Early intervention is important during your child’s critical periods of auditory, speech, and language development. At Novant Health, you’ll find treatment for infants and children with a wide range of auditory disorders, including hearing screenings for newborns from expert audiologists. Our centers can help you navigate insurance coverage and identify other funding programs so you can focus on your child’s needs.