Does your child lag behind his peers in achieving expected developmental milestones? Are you worried that something might be wrong with your child’s cognitive progression? We focus on early interventions as it can help diagnose, treat, and ultimately improve your child’s developmental abilities and help prevent developmental problems that can be more difficult to correct when detected in the later years.
Ability, LLC is a small but growing pediatric therapy group that was founded in 2008 with a single provider working one small service area of developmentally delayed infants and toddlers, to contracting today for over half the state of Mississippi with over 20 service providers touching lives and serving families and their children in many settings of all ages. We have dedicated our time to helping children and love what we do! Our motto is: “Sharing Our Skills To Empower Others”. We feel that what we do is a ministry and we are committed to giving of ourselves because we really do care. We hope you find it true in every sense of the word!
Below is some information we feel you need to know about children and development based on what we have learned, teach and provide support in for our children and their families…
Development can proceed at different paces for different children depending on many factors that influence its natural advancement such as age, external influence, and genetics, intensity and/or consistency of stimulation, etc… This makes detecting early developmental problems in children difficult because they may naturally compensate in some areas and seem very advanced even, but have growing delays in others that are not recognized until later when they have become very noticeable. Often children’s delays are not observed or noticeable until they are older and/or are in the presence of their peers. Parents or caregivers become concerned because their child is not talking, acting, responding, feeding or socializing like other children their age. Also, these things are not often apparent until a child is 2-3 years old because no one is aware of the precursors or milestones being missed when the child is an infant. It is also possible they did not occur until the child was older or because of some event that brought change. By that time the child may be showing significant delays and those delays affecting more areas of development. The longer it is before they are addressed the more difficult and lengthy they may be to overcome or compensate for.
Through spontaneous child research over the years, we have learned to set our expectations when they reach a certain age group, making it more viable to detect developmental issues that can be easily subjected to scrutiny. For example, children at two years old are expected to talk or at least bring phrases together to convey their ideas to their surroundings. Not being able to attain this expected skill at the current level of development can be attributed to developmental delays which may affect the child’s future learning endeavors.
Our goal at Ability, LLC, is to provide specially individualized intervention so that this developmental delay or difficulty can be addressed properly to the best interest of the child and the family, without using coercion or rigidly structured sessions. We use, and believe in, family-centered, play-based approaches that incorporate the child’s (and family’s) strengths as much as possible to address the weakness that are identified.
We offer professional, certified, speech/language support and services in the evaluation, diagnostics, and treatment of:
Speech Disorders
• Articulation-the way we say our speech sounds
• Phonology-the speech patterns we use
• Apraxia-difficulty planning and coordinating the movements needed to make speech sounds
• Fluency-stuttering
• Voice-problems with the way the voice sounds, such as hoarseness
Language Disorders
• Receptive Language-difficulty understanding langauge
• Expressive Language-difficulty using language
• Pragmatic Language-social communication; the way we speak to each other
Other Disorders
• Deafness/Hearing Loss-loss of hearing; therapy includes developing lip-reading, speech and/or alternative communication systems
• Oral-Motor Disorders-weak tongue and/or lip muscles
• Oral Phase Swallowing/Feeding Disorders-difficulty managing, manipulating, coordinating, chewing and/or swallowing age-appropriate oral intake or spillage of saliva/foods/liquids including appropriate posturing and breathing during feeding.
We are a child-friendly center. We provide a home-like atmosphere so children can feel comfortable and non-hesitant during therapy. We also strongly encourage parents to participate in the sessions or at least allow children to take comfort in your presence. Our goal is to empower the family on what they can do to help by taking part in therapy, if they are willing, for maximum carryover and support. We respect each child and provide them with unbiased treatment. We do not discriminate children on the basis of race, ethnicity or skin color, age, gender, religious affiliation, creed, or their parents’ socio-economic status.
Contact us for more information or give us a call at 601-736-3111 Monday-Thursday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., to be immediately assisted. You may leave a message after hours and we will call back as soon as possible.
