Jake Feldewerth hit every developmental milestone a few months late. He was still lying down when he should have been sitting up. He was still sitting when he should have been crawling. He was still crawling when he should have been walking.

During his pre-kindergarten years, Jake’s gross motor and fine motor skills lagged behind other kids his age. He could not lift his knees to run or alternate his steps to climb stairs.

“He was like an old lady,” says his mother, Cari Feldewerth.

Jake had trouble with stamina and endurance, she says. His breathing became labored.

The Fort Zumwalt School District in O’Fallan, Mo. evaluated him for its special needs program, but determined he was “normal” and ineligible for services, Feldewerth says. She returned to the district for more evaluations, all with the same verdict.

“We were frustrated he could not get any services,” Feldewerth says.

A special education teacher recommended Feldewerth take Jake to Leaps and Bounds, a St. Peters, Mo.-based pediatric therapy center specializing in training kids with sensory processing concerns.

In March, Jake began visiting Leaps and Bounds twice weekly. Occupational therapists helped him build strength, endurance and coordination. Now the 5-year-old is running, climbing rock walls, and breathing clearly.

Shawna Benne sends her adopted son, Cooper, to Leaps and Bounds to help him control his body movements and impulsive behavior.

“When he was in preschool I noticed he didn’t play with the other children,” Benne says. “He didn’t know how to walk up to a person without touching them, or how to engage them in conversation without pulling their shirt.”

Cooper could not maintain eye contact or sit up straight in his chair. He could not write his name. When he tried to hold a sandwich to his mouth, it would fall apart.

Benne says teachers told her Cooper had “oppositional defiance,” but she did not buy it. Cooper was kind and wanted to communicate, she says. Something was standing in his way.

In January, Benne took Cooper to Leaps and Bounds. For 10 months, he has received occupational therapy, visual stimulation, and deep pressure treatments.

Now 5-year-old Cooper can sit up and maintain eye contact through most of a conversation. He can talk to people without touching or rubbing them. He can write his name and the alphabet. And he is making friends, Benne says.

Co-owners Lisa Cooseman, OT, and Carrie Salyer, OT, created Leaps and Bounds in 2005 with their husbands, co-owner Matt Cooseman and office manager and co-owner Rob Salyer.

Lisa Cooseman and Carrie Salyer had become frustrated working as school therapists, where the goals had to be “educationally relevant.” In a school setting, occupational therapy focused on tasks like handwriting, using scissors, or putting on clothing, they say.

Cooseman says she and Salyer realized they could do much more to help families outside the school environment, addressing concerns that affect children at home and in the community. They also could help children who did not qualify for school-based services because they did not have a special education diagnosis or severe enough developmental delay.

Leaps and Bounds serves children of all abilities, ages birth through 18 years. It provides occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech-language therapy. Kids work on motor coordination, sensory integration, handwriting, feeding, therapeutic listening and various social and life skills.

The facility includes two large sensory gymnasiums, four smaller treatment rooms and two parent observation rooms equipped with two-way mirrors. Equipment includes a suspended Spandex “spider web,” rock wall, trampoline, giant slide and swings of different shapes and sizes.

“These are here for a specialized reason,” Cooseman says. “To help children get all the sensory input they need.”

“Kids need to experience things through movement, touch and sound,” Salyer says. “A child’s occupation is to play. Their job is to interact with peers and attend to their instructors in class. When those things are disrupted we look at why, from a sensory processing perspective.”

For more information, visit www.leapsandboundskids.com

Source: Raymond Castile/Suburban Journal