When to Seek Therapy

If your child demonstrates difficulty in any of the areas listed below, we can help. In younger clients, great progress can be achieved through early intervention.

Infants:

• Lack of eye contact or gaze
• Difficulty feeding or swallowing
• Asymmetry or head tilt
• Reduced use or movement of a limb
• Difficulty with head control or other motor movements
• Extremely fussy or very quiet baby
• Difficulty regulating sleep patterns
• Medical issues such as reflux, prematurity, asthma, and ear infections

Toddlers and Preschoolers:

Receptive Language

• Child seems not to hear you
• Will only respond to things phrased in a certain way (e.g. “juice” but not “drink”)
• Little affect or understanding of feelings
• Responds better to visual cues or gestures rather than speech
• Echoes what they hear but does not use spontaneous language
• Trouble with following directions
• Trouble making friends, entering a new situation
• May have behaviour problems

Expressive Language

• Slow development of vocabulary
• Lots of pointing, grunting or crying when attempting to communicate what they want
• Child echoes but does not use spontaneous language
• Difficult to understand
• Cannot maintain topic at hand for any period of time
• Is unable to transition from one activity to another without having a tantrum
• Difficulty coming up with names of items or people (word retrieval)
• Difficulty with rate, pitch or volume of speech
• Inability to use different communication styles for different situations

Voice

• Speech that is too high, too low, or monotonous in pitch
• Speech that is interrupted by breaks
• A voice which is too loud or too soft
• Harsh, hoarse, breathy, or nasal voice

Fluency-Stuttering

With respect to sounds, syllables, words, or sentences:

• Interruptions in flow or rhythm
• Hesitations, repetitions, or prolongations

Articulation

• Excessive drooling
• Highly unintelligible
• Starts to talk, but then suddenly stops
• Omits the end sounds of words
• Lacks a variety of sounds
• Saying one sound for another (for example, always saying “wa” instead of “ra”)
• Omitting a sound in a word (for example, “i-cream” for “ice cream”)
• Distorting a sound (for example, “thee” for “see”)

Swallowing-Feeding

• Difficulty in sucking, chewing, triggering a swallow, or moving food into the stomach
• Difficulty eating, drinking from a straw, imitating mouth movement
• Stuffing food in pockets of cheeks
• Sensitivity to foods, textures
• Picky eaters

Sensory Processing Disorders

• Oversensitivity to touch, movements, sights or sounds
• Underactivity to sensory stimulation
• Impulsivity, distractibility, difficulty with planning associated with school tasks due to poor organization of behavior
• Poor success in daily living activities, such as dressing, using scissors or feeding despite normal or above normal intelligence
• Difficulty with balance, motor coordination, stiffness or awkwardness
• Fidgety
• Tends to hurt others unintentionally
• Often looks like attentional or behaviour issues

Adaptive Skills

• Difficulties with dressing himself 
• Difficulties with feeding himself
• Difficulty with toileting and grooming (brushing teeth, brushing hair, washing face)
• Difficulty with right/left or front/back when dressing

Fine Motor

• Difficulty with pencil grasp and coloring
• Difficulty with scissors
• Manipulating toys
• Holding a spoon or fork and eating in a regular, timely fashion

Gross Motor

• Ball skills (e.g. tossing and catching)
• Crawling, walking (not walking at 15-18 months), jumping, tricycle, running
• Difficulty keeping up with peers in play activities (e.g. daycare, park, indoor gym)
• Managing themselves on stairs
• Eye/hand coordination in sports or daily living activities
• Frequent falls
• Complaints of muscle pain or fatigue

School-Aged Children:

• Not reading at age level
• Able to read but cannot seem to remember what he/she has read
• Difficulty following school related directions
• Difficulty with handwriting skills
• Difficulty in letter recognition and reproduction
• Difficulty with reading comprehension
• Difficulty in gym class or during recess with regard to gross motor activities
• Difficulty maintaining upright posture in class
• Reduced attention and/or ability to focus during set activities or learning objectives
• Difficulty tying shoelaces, buttons, and zippers
• Distractibility when doing a written or reading task due to difficulty with visual sequential memory or visual figure ground (finding or tracking words within a busy background)
• Reversals of letters (switching “b” with “d”) caused by difficulty with visual spatial relationships and visual form consistency
• Difficulty copying from a blackboard caused by visual memory and visual figure ground