Therapies

Floortime Therapy:  Floortime is a systematic way of working with a child through play to foster interpersonal, emotional, and intellectual growth. Floortime creates opportunities for a child to master critical developmental levels. Through intensive, one-on-one work the child is taken back to any milestones he may have missed or not mastered and assisted as he moves up to higher levels.

In addition to providing the foundation for reciprocal communication and interaction, Floortime Therapy assists the children in learning how to manage difficult emotions through symbolic play. The entire staff is trained in how to recognize the reasons behind emotional disregulation, and how to build the skills and provide the problem solving necessary to change negative patterns of behavior.

Occupational Therapy:  Development of the DIR levels is heavily influenced by the individual differences of each child. These differences relate to the ability to self-regulate, motor plan, and process sensory information. When a child is struggling with moving up the developmental levels, we try to understand why they are struggling. To help us do this, our OT model is based on the Sensory Integration Theory. This provides a framework to help us explore each child’s individual profile and helps us understand how each child takes in and interprets the sensory information of sights, sounds, touch, tastes, smells, body awareness, and movement.

Through extensive testing and observation, the differences are examined and explained by the occupational therapist through an individual sensory profile. This profile provides an understanding of how each child navigates through his or her world throughout the entire day–how they modulate, register and respond to sensory input and how they motor plan their actions. It helps us identify how each child is able to sequence interactions with their ideas and bodies, as well as the ability to bridge ideas with abstract thought.

The occupational therapist then shares the sensory profile with families and staff to help explain how each child’s unique processing can influence behavior, attention, motor control, and the capacity to relate, communicate, and learn. A sensory diet, which is a carefully designed, personalized activity plan, is then adapted into the child’s schedule. This diet provides the sensory input each child needs to stay focused and organized throughout the day. Examples of sensory diet activities include swinging on a zip line, climbing a rock wall, crashing in a beanbag, big hugs, and blowing up balloons.

The sensory profile also guides treatment and goal setting. During OT sessions, the therapist and her assistant encourage each child through fun activities that are subtly structured so the child is constantly challenged but always successful. The basic goals of therapy are to provide the child with sensory information, which helps organize the central nervous system, assists the child in inhibiting and/or modulating sensory information, and assists the child in processing a more organized response to sensory stimuli. Once the child has developed a solid foundation in the lower DIR levels, specific cognitive (problem solving, abstract thinking, math reasoning, etc.), motor planning, visual thinking and social problem solving activities are also integrated into treatment.

Speech Therapy:  The speech and language program at The Hirsch Academy is rooted in the belief that communication skills are an essential part of a developmental education program. At Hirsch, students with language and articulation needs are provided with additional support in order to reach their academic and social goals. Within this program, we are able to provide students with comprehensive evaluations as well as progressive speech-language therapy that are catered to each student individually.

Speech-language therapy provided at  Hirsch  is unique in its approach as we strive to assess each child according to not only their level of speech and language development but also according to their developmental level as outline in the DIR program. The fundamentals of the DIR program and developmental speech and language normative data are what drive our therapy practices, not a set of “goals” to be met. How each student interacts socially is just as important as the level at which they achieve their speech and language goals. It is our goal that each student acquires the skills and strategies to become successful communicators reaching out from Hirsch to every aspect of their lives.

Each speech-language pathologist holds a graduate degree, is certified with the American Speech, Language and Hearing Association and is licensed in the state of Georgia. Each therapist is highly skilled and utilizes progressive therapy techniques as well as Lindamood Bell’s Visualizing and Verbalizing program and Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking curriculum.