Pediatric Physical Therapy in Indianapolis

Based on age, there are milestones for tasks related to mobility a child should meet within a certain timeframe. In infants, mobility focuses on developmental milestones including rolling, crawling, and walking. Mobility in older children focuses to tasks such as stair navigation, environmental navigation, walking and running speed and form, and accessibility of various environments. Your KCT PT will assist in identifying what should be addressed with regards to mobility tasks across treatment sessions. In addition, PTs can help determine and obtain the appropriate assistive devices including walkers, gait trainers, standers etc. based on your child’s abilities.

Balance refers to maintaining a state of equilibrium during static and dynamic tasks. Balance incorporates the cohesiveness of three of our sensory systems – vision, somatosensory, and vestibular. Your balance system helps you stand, walk, turn, and move throughout your environment without falling. Your KCT PT can help identify the reason for impaired balance skills and provide appropriate intervention strategies or referrals to address these concerns.

Physical therapists often look at a child’s functional strength to determine areas of improvement. In infants, a baby’s ability to maintain a specific developmental position or transition through multiple positions can provide information areas of weakness. In older children, the way a child sits on the floor, transitions to standing, climbs up and down stairs, walks, and runs can provide insight on their movement patterns and potential strength deficits. Asymmetrical strength, when a child uses one arm/leg more often than the other, can also provide direction for strengthening interventions.

Flexibility and range of motion of our joints play a vital role in allowing our bodies to move through space with proper movement patterns. There are normal ranges for each joint of the body which varies by age. Common range of motion deficits in children can include tight ankles, hamstrings, and hips which can lead children to use compensatory movement strategies and delay their ability to achieve big milestones including crawling, jumping, and stair climbing. Your KCT PT can assess a child’s range of motion and address it through various intervention strategies.

Gross motor skills are abilities that let our bodies perform tasks which involve large muscle groups including our trunk, legs, and arms. These are whole-body movements kids utilize every day when they walk, run, and jump. Gross motor skills combine other body function elements including balance, coordination, strength, and body awareness. Depending on age, there are specific age ranges for achieving skills including crawling, walking, running and jumping. Your KCT PT can identify delays in a child’s ability to perform age-appropriate gross motor skills and provide skilled intervention to help progress toward those skills.

Whether it be pain associated with an injury or chronic pain, PTs have training in interventions associated with reducing pain levels. Pain can be complex biologically, psychologically, and socially and requires individualized treatment. PTs work closely with other disciplines to help children understand and treat their pain to help restore and maximize their quality of life. KCT PTs have a toolbox of training that can help reduce pain through movement, manual therapy, evidence-based modalities, and family education.

Gait training aims to help a child establish or restore a normal walking pattern, with or without an assistive device. Our PTs can meet the child at their level, whether they are still learning to walk independently or need to regain a normal walking pattern after an injury or surgery. Our Brownsburg location has a LiteGait device onsite in which our PTs utilize during gait training to allow simultaneous control of weight bearing, posture, and balance while walking.

PTs are experts in movement and movement patterns and can identify the need for an orthotic, custom or off the shelf, to help improve a child’s mobility, balance, and gait pattern. PTs work closely with physicians and certified orthotists to provide the device which will enhance and maximize a child’s independent movement patterns. In addition, PTs collaborate with prosthetists in the fitting of prosthetic devices and provide gait, balance, and strength training to help promote independent mobility.

Good posture allows your body to stand, walk, sit and lie down in the most efficient manner. Deficits in posture can cause increased strain on your ligaments and muscles while moving or performing weight-bearing activities, resulting in the potential for musculoskeletal pain in and around surrounding joints down the road. Your KCT is trained in postural assessment and can help determine the appropriate exercises and/or orthotics needed to improve posture and efficiency with movement.

Our physical therapists participate in state licensure-required continuing education opportunities to ensure assessment and intervention practices mimic current evidence-based research. Each therapist is provided with a K1ds Count Therapy annual CEU stipend to promote clinical and professional growth. Our PTs participate in regular in-service learning opportunities together to provide the most current intervention strategies based on evidence-based research.