Rosemary Johnson & Associates clinic
Therapy services are individualized and may include any of the below treatment programs and modalities:
My daughter has improved tremendously since she started her therapies at Rosemary Johnson. The staff is friendly, passionate, and proficient. They deliver great results.
-- K's Mom
Sensory integration refers to a person’s ability to take in and organize sensory information in order to participate in daily occupations and activities. The foundational areas addressed in treatment are the tactile (touch), vestibular (movement), and proprioceptive (muscles and joints) systems. Other areas of focus include the auditory and visual systems. Treatment involves providing sensory experiences embedded in meaningful and playful activities in order to elicit adaptive responses which help the children become better able to understand and use the sensory information they receive.
Activities to promote a child’s overall development are utilized during treatment sessions. Theories, such as Piaget, provide a foundation to facilitate general development. Treatment modalities incorporate various tasks that are the “just right” challenge for the child. Occupational and physical therapists assist in the development of motor milestones, including rolling, sitting, crawling/creeping, standing and walking. Adaptive equipment is also recommended and monitored by therapists.
This is a treatment modality incorporated into physical and occupational therapy to improve motor functioning, strength, and endurance. It involves facilitating muscles to activate in order to encourage independence, functional movement patterns, and integration of reflexes. Difficulties with reflex integration affect controlled movement patterns, eye movements, and emotional maturity. Programs such as Brain Gym® are utilized to address reflex integration and encourage functional movement patterns.
Children need fine motor skills, including in-hand manipulation, finger individuation, prehension, and separation of hand function, in order to participate in many everyday activities. Treatment focuses on building skills that promote success in writing, dressing, utensil use, and more.
Children require gross motor skills to allow for successful interaction with environmental tasks that use total body strength and control. Skills that are part of the typical development of the child include head control when lying on their back/stomach, rolling, sitting, crawling, kneeling, standing, walking, and running. Transitioning between these movements with adequate control and safety are critical for overall development of gross motor skills. Other areas of focus include stair management, climbing, ball skills, and accessing age-appropriate play equipment.
Children with special needs often experience difficulty with adequate lip closure, oral dyspraxia, and difficulties tolerating various food textures. Oral-motor intervention focuses on reducing oral sensitivity and enabling participation in necessary activities, such as eating and tooth brushing.
Handwriting Without Tears® is a developmentally-based handwriting program created by an occupational therapist. It uses fun, multi-sensory, developmentally appropriate methods to enable children to master handwriting. OTs Susan Lorin & Elizabeth Saavedra are HWT certified handwriting specialists, and many other therapists have attended HWT courses.
“Therapeutic Listening® is an evidence-backed protocol that combines a sound-based intervention with sensory integrative activities to create a comprehensive program that is effective for diverse populations with sensory challenges. Therapeutic Listening can impact sensory modulation, attention, behavior, postural organization, and speech and language difficulties. Trained therapists learn to use modulated CD’s to set up programs for clients in homes, schools and clinics. Listening is a function of the entire brain; when we listen, we listen with the whole body.”
BrainBeat is a a therapeutic training system designed to improve a child’s focus, attention, grades, coordination, behavior and more. It is based on the research-backed medical technology called Interactive Metronome (IM). BrainBeat uses immersive video games to train the brain to coordinate actions against time, by getting your child to clap in tune with a beat at just the right speed – not too early or too late.
"The Zones is a systematic, cognitive behavior approach used to teach self-regulation by categorizing all the different ways we feel and states of alertness we experience into four concrete zones. The Zones curriculum provides strategies to teach students to become more aware of, and independent in controlling their emotions and impulses, managing their sensory needs, and improving their ability to problem solve conflict."
The Alert Program® (How Does Your Engine Run) is a self-regulation program that aims to help children identify their state of alertness as well as choose appropriate strategies to change or maintain those states. It uses the analogy of a car engine to describe how alert one feels to help children understand their own self-regulation in a way that makes sense to them.
Astronaut Training: A Sound Activated Vestibular-Visual Protocol provides input to the vestibular system along with auditory and visual input in order to integrate these three systems while also incorporating core activities. This protocol can be used with clients of all ages and diagnoses to address underlying sensory difficulties.
The Brain Gym® program consists of a series of movements that recall the movements from early life when first learning to coordinate the eyes, ears, hands, and whole body. It is based on the concept that movement, cognition, and applied learning are interdependent. It can help with a variety of areas including concentration and focus, memory, academics, physical coordination, relationships, self-responsibility, organization skills, and attitude.