Therapy Services

Speech and Language Therapy

The Achievement Center for Therapy is dedicated to helping children of all capacities reach their full developmental potential for communication, enabling them to increase their independence in everyday activities, increase interaction and participation with their families, and improve the overall quality of their lives.

We screen, evaluate, and diagnose speech or language delays or disorders, offering regularly scheduled therapy sessions, parent/family training, and collaboration with physicians, schools, and other paraprofessionals. We offer individual or small group sessions, providing treatment for any of the following:

  • Apraxia
  • Articulation/Phonological Disorders
  • Auditory Processing Disorders
  • Augmentative Communication (Assistive Technology)
  • Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
  • Deaf/Hearing Impaired
  • Developmental Disorders
  • Fluency (Stuttering)
  • Language Disorders
  • Language-Based Learning Disabilities
  • Oral Habit Elimination: Thumb Sucking, Nail Biting, Blanket Chewing
  • Oral-Motor Disorders
  • Orofacial Myofunctional Disorders (OMD)
  • Pediatric Feeding Disorders / Picky Eating
  • Social Language Disorders (Pragmatics)
  • Tongue Thrust

Once evaluated, we will determine a plan of action that is best for your child based on their age, capabilities, and challenges. Our engaging therapy sessions will set your child on a path of progress, utilizing both traditional and technology-based activities for a well-rounded approach.

Does my child need help?

Because children develop at different speeds, delays can often be hard to identify. It is never too early to receive an assessment or early intervention therapies. Your child can benefit from Speech and Language Therapy if he or she:

  • Has trouble being understood
  • Seems to use fewer words than others his/her age
  • Stutters or uses halting speech
  • Struggles with reading, writing, or spelling
  • Is often thought of as being younger because of the way he/she speaks
  • Is teased or shows frustration because of the way he/she talks
  • Has a diagnosis that could affect speech or language, such as autism spectrum disorder, auditory processing disorder, hearing loss, or developmental delay
  • Is an infant and is not babbling/playing with sounds or trying to imitate you

Pediatric Feeding Therapy

Does My Child Need Help?

Food consumption is a fundamental part of your child’s growth– both physically and mentally. For some children, this basic task is a challenge. To help your child reach their greatest potential, the Achievement Center for Therapy also offers therapy sessions that specifically address pediatric eating skills. Your child may benefit from these programs if:

  • Mealtimes are a constant battle.
  • They are very selective about foods they will eat and are not getting adequate nutrition.
  • They are failing to gain weight at the expected rate or are low on the WHO growth chart.
  • They have gastrointestinal difficulties
  • They have sensory disorders that make certain foods a challenge.
  • They have complex medical diagnoses.
  • They have oral-motor delays and deficits.

Our Feeding Therapy Treatments

We believe that children are not inherently defiant. Their behavior, or refusal to do something like eat, often stems from a larger underlying cause. It is never too early to receive an assessment or early intervention therapies. Please contact us if you suspect your child is having difficulty. We offer feeding therapy treatments for the following:

  • Food refusal
  • Poor growth
  • Limited food repertoire/intake
  • Picky eating
  • Gagging
  • Food jagging
  • Transitioning from tube feeding to oral eating when medically appropriate

Our feeding therapy programs average 8-12 weeks in duration, with sessions held once a week up to five days a week depending on severity. We also train parents and caregivers on how to respond in problematic feeding situations and encourage positive behaviors. We always involve the parent and/or caregiver in these sessions, so they can learn specific strategies for their child’s challenges, becoming a partner in their success. We invite you to contact us and see how we can collaborate to help your children grow and thrive.

Occupational Therapy

Pediatric occupational therapy helps children gain independence while also strengthening the development of fine motor skills, sensory skills, and visual motor skills that children need to function and socialize. Occupational therapy can benefit children who fall into several categories– from premature infants to kids with ADHD or other attention disorders, to children struggling to read or write. Achievement Center for Therapy occupational services always incorporates play into practice to make therapy fun! Such play can involve games, toys, puzzles, songs or physical exercises in our state of the art sensory-motor gym. In all cases, the goal of pediatric occupational therapy is not only to help children adequately progress but to challenge them appropriately, helping to build self-esteem and confidence when it comes to their capabilities and aptitude.

Does My Child Need Help?

Does your child have difficulties with day-to-day activities at home, school, or in the community? Do they experience challenges that do not affect most typically developing children? If so, our occupational therapy team may be able to help your child.

Your child may benefit from occupational therapy if:

    • They aren’t reaching developmental milestones such as sitting, crawling, and walking, etc.
    • They struggle with fine motor skills such as manipulating toys, holding a pencil, using silverware, etc.
    • They have difficulties with movement, strength, and/or balance and appear clumsy or uncoordinated.
    • They avoid tasks and games that require gross motor skills.
    • They show delays or difficulties with visual processing. For example, they show difficulty with the spacing and sizes of letters, difficulty with visual tracking and crossing midline, and/or difficulty with the concept of right and left
    • They struggle with oral motor/oral sensory skills, presenting as difficulty chewing, difficulty drinking out of a cup, and/or tiredness after eating.
  • They showing difficulty with sensory processing — presenting as either over- or under-stimulated.

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)-
Autism Achievement

The Achievement Center for Therapy offers Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) for treating children with autism spectrum disorder. Our therapy sessions are personalized depending on each patient’s needs, consisting of targeted social skills training, and a variety of specialized techniques to help children with many different diagnoses.

HISTORY OF ABA: Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is the science of behavior change. It began in the early 1900’s by a scientist names B.F. Skinner. Skinner’s work focused on manipulating the environment to elicit different responses. It was not until the groundbreaking study done by Lovaas in 1987 that focused on studying the responses of people with Autism.
 
ABA TODAY: ABA has become one of THE most widely effective treatments for behavior change in children. Although the focus of ABA is with children with Autism, it is much broader than that and can in fact provide positive change for a wide variety of populations. ABA therapy utilizes behavioral techniques such as reinforcement, priming, antecedent strategies, consequence strategies, and extinction. Skill building is also a main component to ABA. Behavior reduction and skill acquisition are closely connected in ABA and are often targeted simultaneously. Aba focuses on identifying the function of a behavior and then modifying the behavior based on that function.

 

Our team begins to work with children with autism as early as infancy. Our interventions address difficulties including:

  • Significantly limited speech or non-verbal
  • Assistive technology  (low tech to high tech)
  • Delayed expressive language skills
  • Poor vocabulary development
  • Difficulty following simple directions
  • Echolalic speech or repeating speech inappropriately
  • Difficulty answering questions
  • Mono-tone or robotic sounding speech
  • Poor conversation skills
  • Not taking turns in conversation
  • Poor understanding of body language & non-verbal cues
  • Feeding or picky eating (89% of children impacted by
    autism will experience a pediatric feeding disorder)

Assistive Technology

The Achievement Center for Therapy specializes in Augmentive-Alternative Communication for both children and adults, with the goal of helping every voice be heard.
We offer consultations, evaluations, therapies, and trainings aimed at patients, parents, and professionals. Using technology, we help enable people with disabilities, giving them independence, privacy, and a means to make choices in all aspects of their lives.

ACT provides a successful and exciting approach to this type of technology-based speech and language therapy, creating our own apps for use during and after therapy sessions. These Speech Wizard apps are designed to assist children and adults with communication delays and disorders, using fun and engaging activities to build their skills and confidence with articulation and sounds. The Speech Wizard has two apps available for use now and is developing companion apps that will be released in the coming months.

 

At Achievement Center for Therapy, we strive to provide the most up to date – clinical and medical treatments available. With this in mind, we have seen promising results from Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) as it relates to managing the symptoms of Autism. We now have a full hyperbaric facility right in our center. Our therapists provide Mild (low pressure) HBOT treatment protocols per the current recommended standards as outlined in several major studies on Autism and HBOT therapy.

In addition to managing Autism, our center can provide hyperbaric oxygen therapy for a variety of conditions. Please visit the HBOT link from our page to learn more.

Concussion Management

Speech-Language Pathologists are an essential part of the team in many concussion cases. Speech-Language Pathologists, or SLP’s, are not only specialists in speech, language, swallowing, and voice, but we are also cognitive specialists. Concussions are often called mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). The term “mild” refers to the severity of the original physical trauma and does not indicate the severity of symptoms following the injury. Some of the many impairments following a concussion can include deficits in some or several of the following: speech, language, cognitive processing speed/efficiency, information processing, executive functioning, attention, memory, planning, concentration, mental flexibility, and swallowing. These deficits affect every aspect of an individual’s life — from getting ready in the morning to performing in school or the workplace. For concussion management, we offer formal evaluations of speech, language, and cognitive/communicative skills, and offer specialized treatment plans to combat concussion short-term and long-term effects.