There are many myths and misconceptions when it comes to the best way to position your infant especially when it comes to babies with special needs. Let’s bust some of these myths and get the facts straight! Occupational and physical therapists are trained to provide education and information regarding infant positioning for families. You can […]
Early motor skills may affect language development Hayley Leonard, Goldsmiths, University of London and Elisabeth L Hill, Goldsmiths, University of London Learning to sit up, crawl and walk are all major milestones in a child’s early development – and parents often record these actions in baby diaries, photographs and videos. Developing motor skills allows the […]
Do you ever need to explain to parents the benefits of early intervention? Maybe convince some that early intervention services can make a huge difference in a child’s life? Check out these videos from Pathways Awareness. There are video stories of children with varying abilities who have shown great success with pediatric therapy services.
The August issue of Pediatrics reports on a retrospective study over 11 years of over 2100 NICU newborns. The researchers discovered that the infants who later received a diagnosis of autism had a higher incidence of persistant neurobehavioral abnormalities such as increased upper extremity muscle tone and asymmetrical visual tracking at one month of age. […]
If are a teacher, parent or therapist for children in an early childhood inclusive setting you may want to check out two new resources that can assist you in determining the quality of your inclusion program. The SpeciaLink Early Childhood Inclusion Quality Scale was developed in 2009 to assess inclusion quality in early childhood settings. […]
Recent research published in the Journal of Neuroscience, indicates that a mother’s touch not only provides security, comfort and love but also cognitive function and stress reduction. This study was performed using rats. The results indicated that “sensory stimuli from maternal care can modify the gene that controls a key messenger of stress called corticotropin-releasing […]
There is a survey being conducted by Pathways Awareness (www.pathwaysawareness.org), a national nonprofit focused on raising awareness of motor delays and the positive effects of therapy. The survey is amassing the observations of therapists to track trends — what kinds of conditions are we observing in children? What issues do we think physicians and families […]
An article in a recent issue of Pediatrics brings up an interesting point when dealing with mothers of young children and their child’s development. Three focus groups, consisting of mothers of children who received early intervention, mothers of typically developing children and specialists were studied. Most mothers indicated a “non alarmist style of communicating if […]
Pediatrics reports in the current issue that children who were born at 32-36 weeks gestational age are at greater risk for special education services than full term children at 8 years of age. Of the 377 children studied who were moderately preterm (with no NICU care or congenital malformations), the special education rate was 7.2% […]