Skill Developmental Therapy for children with special needs

Developmental milestones are behaviors or physical skills seen in infants and children as they grow and develop. Rolling over, crawling, walking, and talking are all considered milestones. The milestones are different for each age range.

Developmental screening involves the routine application of a brief standardized tool when there is no obvious concern. Developmental screening tests for use by health care providers have been available for several decades, but they are rarely administered by pediatricians, and generally lack sufficient sensitivity to identify subtle disorders while falsely identifying a significant number of nonaffected children.

Gross motor skills are abilities that allow people to do things that involve using the large muscles in the torso, arms and legs to complete whole-body movements. That includes activities like climbing and jumping jacks. Kids rely on these skills to have successful experiences at school, on the playground, and in the community.

Fine motor skills involve the use of the smaller muscle of the hands, such as when doing up buttons, opening lunch boxes or using pencils or scissors. Fine motor skill efficiency significantly influences the quality of the task outcome as well as the speed of task performance.

Receptive language refers to our ability to understand spoken language. Spoken language is our main form of communication and it can contain a number of structures such as questions and instructions.

Expressive language allows a person to communicate wants, needs, thoughts and opinions. Expressive language is the ability to request objects, make choices, ask questions, answer, and describe events.

Cognitive skills are the core skills your brain uses to think, read, learn, remember, reason, and pay attention. Working together, they take incoming information and move it into the bank of knowledge you use every day at school, at work, and in life.

Social skills are vital in enabling an individual to have and maintain positive interactions with others.A person has strong social skills if they have the knowledge of how to behave in social situations and understand both written and implied rules when communicating with others.

Self care skills are the everyday tasks undertaken so children are ready to participate in life activities (including dressing, eating, cleaning teeth). They are often referred to as the activities of daily living (ADL’s).

From birth through to early childhood, children use their senses to explore and try to make sense of the world around them. They do this by touching, tasting, smelling, seeing, moving and hearing.

Children and even adults learn best and retain the most information when they engage their senses. These are called sensory skills.