Children Services

Handwriting should not be an activity that your child hates or continues to struggle at. “Write with Me Under the Sea” is our innovative handwriting program designed and created to counter the rising decline of fine motor, visual motor, and visual perception development in children. Our sequenced and guided program will ensure results in your child’s handwriting skills.

We truly believe you will see a difference not only in your child’s handwriting but their confidence at school will skyrocket!

Orofacial Myology is the study and treatment of oral and facial muscles as they relate to speech, dentition, chewing/bolus collection, swallowing, and overall mental and physical health. Our patient centered approach incorporates your multidisciplinary team that may include your orthodontist, dentist, primary care provider, ENT, lactation consultant, or other specialized medical professionals into our assessment and treatment plan. This ensures that you are provided customized care that not only maximizes your current orofacial functions, but also prevents future dysfunctions from occurring.

We provide rehabilitation for the following conditions:

• Lisp
• Tongue Thrust
• Reverse Swallow
• Incorrect Tongue Rest Posture
• Open-Mouth Resting Posture
• Incorrect Swallow Pattern
• Tongue-Tie
• Reduced Lip Competence

In addition, we provide treatment to eliminate noxious oral habits that impact appropriate speech productions, dentition forming, breathing patterns, and feeding/swallowing:

• Thumb Sucking
• Nail Biting
• Extended Pacifier Use

Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability in which individuals experience difficulties with various language skills, including reading, spelling, writing, and pronouncing words. It is believed that 15-20% of the population demonstrate some of the symptoms of dyslexia. Individuals with Dyslexia may also experience difficulties in the following areas:

• Learning to speak
• Acquiring and using written language, including learning letters and their sounds
• Memorizing number facts and completing math operations
• Comprehending and completing reading assignments

Let our team guide you through the assessment and treatment of these language and literacy deficits. Our Dyslexia Specialist provides one-on-one intervention and is trained in the Orton-Gillingham Approach which employs visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic teaching techniques to improve your child’s phonemic awareness and literacy development. With specialized therapy, all children with Dyslexia can be successful.

It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it, as well as understand and use it! Navigating social communication is an essential skill for building successful interpersonal relationships, gaining self-esteem, and eventually becoming gainfully employed. We provide social skill therapy that employs a Cognitive Behavior Approach so your child or teen begins to recognize and utilize appropriate communication behaviors that include social interactions, emotional competency and expression, pragmatics, recognizing and using body language/facial expressions, social situation problem solving, and perspective taking.

Does your child struggle engaging with others, keeping friends, knowing what and how to say things within a group setting? We want to do something new! With enough interest New Horizon Therapy will be offering a Social Language Skills group that will be held for an hour once a week. Social skills groups focus on enhancing social communication, understanding and confidence through games, discussion, roleplay, and research-based techniques.

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Have you ever described your child as a “picky eater”? Does the thought of mealtime bring feelings of stress or frustration? Your child may benefit from feeding therapy, which will target gradually widening the range of foods your child currently eats through a child-directed, sensory approach. We want to build confidence, readiness, and appetite in your child to turn mealtime back into an enjoyable experience for everyone.

We understand that life can get hectic and balancing multiple schedules can make attending appointments difficult. We offer telehealth options, that allow us to provide therapy services to you and your child in the comfort of your home. Our platform is HIPPA compliant, and runs on MACs and PCs, as well as mobile devices. If you can operate FaceTime or Skype, you can operate our platform! This provides that flexibility you need and ensures that your child can attend all their recommended treatment sessions. Telehealth is recommended in a case-by-case basis.

New Horizon Therapy is helping families become a partner in their child’s early language intervention using Hanen Parent Training It Takes Two to Talk. This program is taught by a Hanen certified practitioner and offered in a group setting to train parents and caregivers on how to teach skills and strategies to use daily with almost every interaction with the child.

We offer a wide variety of Pediatric Occupational Therapy services. We offer individualized treatment plans for our patients. Our Therapists focus on increasing each child’s ability to explore, learn and play by building foundational skills.

We are proud to offer evaluation and specialized treatment in the following areas:

• Sensory processing – holistic self-regulation that improves coping skills for childhood anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactive disorders and daily life function
• Handwriting – incorporating evidence based programs such as Handwriting Without Tears and Size Matters
• Fine motor skills – coordination of small motor movements such as grasping skills
• Visual-Motor skills – eye coordination that impact writing, cutting and drawing
• Visual Perception – how visual information is perceived and remembered, such as spatial awareness and visual discrimination
• Self-help dressing, feeding and hygiene
• Muscle strength, range of motion and functional activities of daily living
• Sensory oral feeding
• Infant massage
• Saturday morning yoga classes

Let’s talk primitive reflexes! These reflexes help babies learn to move and process information in their environment. They also help with basic skills such as grasping objects and drinking from a bottle. Many children may still have retained reflexes that they continue to use, rather than using more purposeful and active movements.

• Why do they recruit these primitive reflexes? If a child is born premature, with any birth trauma or via Caesarean, these are a few reasons as to why their primitive reflexes are not fully integrated.
• If the Moro reflex is still active and not integrated in a young child, the “fight or flight” response is frequently active. For example, if there is a sudden or loud noise, your child may cover their ears and scream. A child with a retained Moro Reflex may become overwhelmed easily, have frequent emotional outbursts, or have hypersensitivities to light, noises or touch.
• How does your child hold a pencil? If it is an awkward grasp or fisted grasp, they might be recruiting their grasping reflex to hold.
• Does your child frequently squirm in their chair? Do they frequently slouch and lean against the desk? They might have a retained Active Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (ATNR) that is not integrated.

• Does your child dislike having their hands messy to play with sand or playdoh?
• Does your child avoid or become very upset with tasks such as hair brushing, nail cutting or toothbrushing?
• Is dressing a difficult activity for your child? Do they only wear short sleeve shirts and leggings? Your child may have tactile defensiveness.
• Does your child frequently become overwhelmed with mealtimes and avoids touching foods? Do they prefer to only have pouches or crunchy foods?
• If a child is tactile defensive, the receptors in their skin are much more sensitive to touch than other children.
• Your child may have difficulty processing other sensations and be more sensitive to items such as loud noises, bright lights, lots of movement such as car rides or moving backwards in space.

Functional visual red flags include:

• Squinting when watching TV or reading
• Sitting very close to the TV or phone
• Rubbing their eyes frequently or frequent dry eyes
• Frequently bumping into objects such as chairs or walls
• Difficulty with reading and writing
• Reports their head hurts or the words “jump” on the page when reading
• Difficulty copying notes from the board at school

How does this impact function?

• A child with an underlying visual deficit may have difficulty with focusing at school or at home. If they look at books or their writing homework, they may look away frequently due to eye strain.
• They might fatigue quickly with handwriting or reading tasks and fall behind in these areas.

Individualized visual scanning, vergence and saccade activities will be provided, adapted for each age range, to help improve hand eye coordination and visual motor skills.

Referral to a pediatric Developmental Optometrist will be assessed during analysis of a pediatric visual screen during a holistic occupational therapy evaluation.

• Does your child frequently become overwhelmed and stressed during the day?
• Does your child have frequent tantrums?
• Mindfulness for children with all emotional needs is a focus

The Zones of Regulation: This program uses creative visuals to identify what feelings relate to different colors. By matching feelings to color, your child will better understand their own and other’s feelings. Individual calming tools are provided to help alert or calm their body throughout the day.

1. Blue Zone: Tired, Sad, Sick, Bored
2. Green Zone: Happy, Focused, Ready to Learn, Calm
3. Yellow Zone: Excited, Frustrated, Silly, Nervous
4. Red Zone: Out of Control, Aggressive, Mad, Screaming

Superflex Curriculum: This emotional regulation program is great for children age 5+. This program dives deeper into social emotional regulation with superhero’s that explain traits and emotions more in depth.

1. This program goes through important concepts such as flexible thinking, rigid thinking, thinking about the size of the problem and unexpected versus expected behaviors.

The Alert Program: The alert program is a great tool for younger children to rate their emotions with a train engine.

1. Too Slow: low arousal (tired or bored)
2. Just Right: good regulation level (calm, focused)
3. Too Fast: high arousal (excited or angry)