Movement and exploration are vital for your child’s overall growth and development. But if your child has trouble with this, how can you tell if they’re a late bloomer or if they need extra help? My name is Courtney, and I’m a physical therapist here at Building Futures Pediatric Therapy. Today we’re going to discuss when to consider a physical therapy evaluation for your child.
What Is Pediatric Physical Therapy?
We focus on children from birth through adolescence, and we try to improve a child’s movement, their body function, and their motor development. If you’re concerned about your child, you may find yourself thinking:
- Why is my child not rolling over?
- Why is my baby not sitting up by themselves or pushing up on their elbows during tummy time?
- Maybe your child falls a lot, and that’s not like their peers.
- Why is my older child not coordinating their arms and legs together to be able to do a jumping jack in gym class, or to be able to skip or hopscotch with their friends?
If these are areas we’re concerned about and we don’t address them, they can cause further delays down the road.
How Movement Delays Can Impact a Child’s Development
If a child is not able to engage in their environment or explore play, then that can influence their cognitive and social skill development as well. By not addressing areas of concern that you have for your child, we are potentially limiting them from being able to care for their own needs and be functionally independent in their daily life.
What Does a Physical Therapy Evaluation Look Like?
If you think that your child might benefit from a physical therapy evaluation, you want to know what that looks like. When you bring your child in, we take a medical history from you, and then we watch how your child moves:
- How they interact with their environment in the gym
- How they get up from the floor
- How they roll over if they’re a baby
- How they’re sitting
- How they go up and down stairs
Then we also administer a developmental test, which gives us a baseline score for your child. In some cases, we’re able to see how your child is doing compared to children their same age. That helps us track their progress.
Building Futures Is Here to Help
If you are interested in a physical therapy evaluation for your child, or if you have any other questions about this topic, please give us a call at Building Futures and we will be happy to help you in any way we can.
