MetroEHS Joins WDIV for Autism Awareness Month

We are proud to sponsor Live in the D, and excited to have joined them this month to bring Autism Awareness.

Tati Amare:
As we watch children grow, we see them develop in many different ways, from infant to toddler to child. As they grow, we celebrate milestones like first steps or first words, but what if the child in your life hasn’t reached a milestone by a certain age or at all? That’s where our sponsor, MetroEHS can help families and children thrive when developmental challenges present themselves. Joining us now here from MetroEHS is our sponsor for Autism Awareness Month is Dawn Sterling, a board certified behavioral analyst with MetroEHS Pediatric Therapy. Good morning and thank you for being with us.

Dawn Sterling:
Good morning. Thank you for having me.

Tati Amare:
This is a lot to think about, but MetroEHS prides itself as a neighborhood therapy company that is accessible to everyone because you have 14 locations and 3 more on the way. Explain the work that you do with families and what makes MetroEHS unique.

Dawn Sterling:
Yes, so we are a pediatric therapy service provider and what really makes us unique is the different variety of services that we offer all in one location. So each neighborhood therapy center has a speech and language pathologist, occupational therapy, physical therapy, applied behavior analysis. We also have dieticians and mental health professionals working with us, and what really sets us apart is our feeding therapy program. So what we do, and its uniqueness, is this wrap around the whole child. So we focus on the whole child developmentally. So whatever a family may be concerned with or struggling with, we’ve got services and support for those families.

Tati Amare:
For every need. I like that. Now if I’m a parent at home and for family members of children, what are some signs that we should look for that may indicate that there may be developmental concerns with our children?

Dawn Sterling:
That’s a great question. So we look for what is called developmental milestones. So your pediatrician is a great person to get that resource from. So if you are at all concerned about your child meeting milestones, maybe they’re not meeting them in the timeframe that you expected, or maybe they had some of these milestones and they’re dropping off, you’re going to start with your pediatrician. They may recommend evaluations. Always pursue those. It’s better to rule out any concerns than to perhaps miss it.
Sometimes what’s recommended is behavior therapy. Applied behavior analysis is one type of therapy that can really help with children with developmental disabilities, and not just autism. These therapies, speech therapy, feeding therapy, occupational therapy, they are for a variety of diagnoses, global childhood developmental delay, any sort of developmental delay that your evaluators may see, there is a related service that can support these families.

Tati Amare:
All right. Now you’ve brought in some example of the items that you use to work with children. So walk us through these tools. I’m going to hold these up.

Dawn Sterling:
Thank you, Tati.

Tati Amare:
Of course.

Dawn Sterling:
MetroEHS is a collaborative pediatric center, so we collaborate with all of our service providers such as SLPs, or Speech Language Pathologists, that may help us design core boards for learners that are not communicating fully with their words yet. We also will collaborate with our occupational therapists on staff for things that may meet a young child’s sensory needs. We are movers and shakers, so sometimes we need to have things that we can play with in our hands, it might be scented to wake up some of those senses. We also have sensory oral chews. We work with a lot of very young kids and we know developmentally young children like to mouth on things.

Tati Amare:
Yeah, this is perfect.

Dawn Sterling:
So this is food grade silicone, it’s safe, it’s safer than the wooden puzzle piece that your toddler might be putting in their mouth. And then we do work on daily living skills, and this is from our OT department, as well. When children are learning to utilize a straw, this cup can be very helpful because we can squeeze it to give them a little bit of that liquid and really show them this is something you might want as we build up their ability to have independence with eating, drinking.

Tati Amare:
And all of that stuff.

Dawn Sterling:
Again, the whole child.

Tati Amare:
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Okay, so I have to ask you before, because we’re just about running out of time, how rewarding is it for you to be in this position and have the impact with these kids?

Dawn Sterling:
It is the most incredible experience. We get to partner with families. The parents are a viable and valuable member of our treatment team, so we get to work with them and really see what their children and their families are achieving as a result of our therapies. So that is the biggest impact, is seeing progress with our kids.

Tati Amare:
That’s awesome. Dawn, thank you so much for being with us.

Dawn Sterling:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Tati Amare:
This is going to be helpful for a lot of families out there. Remember, MetroEHS has 14 locations and 3 more on the way across Metro Detroit. To find a location near you and to see how they can help your family, go to metroehs.com.