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In today’s episode I welcome our favorite physical therapist, Amy Martin!  Amy was my son’s PT from the time he was about 3 months old until he was 9 when we took PT off of his IEP.  Amy has always provided me and our IEP team with wisdom on the importance of functional movement. Amy describes functional movement in terms of strength, positioning, balance, flexibility and provides lots of examples of how functional movement impacts a child’s access to school.  

Amy and I discuss how IEP teams can add motor breaks and activities into the Supplementary Aids and Services, and then she describes how PTs can train the rest of the team in implementing those breaks, giving us lots and lots of examples.  Then, she provides insight into the many benefits of movement breaks throughout the day and describes how such breaks can help to organize a child’s systems and regulate him or her.  

Of course, I can’t talk about movement without talking about behavior, and Amy has provided a lot of insight into the intersection of these two topics over the years, so I had her describe how motor breaks can help a child access their school environment with fewer behavioral issues, as well.  

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Meet My Guest

Amy Martin has over 25 years experience working with children and families and has worked in a wide variety of settings as a PT, from hospital ICU’s to rehab, home health, outpatient, private practice, and medical mission work in Ecuador.  In that time, Amy has had the enormous benefit of learning from hundreds of dedicated and expert professionals, specialists, educators, and parents not to mention all the amazing kids!  Her team at Empower House in Florence, Kentucky provides rural and urban home and community services, early intervention, school-based services, and private therapies face to face or via telehealth.  Amy believes that connecting with families experiencing the joys and challenges of living with special needs is one of the most meaningful acts we can do and it is her mission to support communities in being more inclusive. She is also a trained dancer and singer and loves to incorporate music and creative movement into therapy sessions to make it more fun!  She is the President and founder of Pediatric Therapy Specialists, Inc. DBA Empower House.

AMY J. MARTIN, PT

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Listen to Episode 08 here: Getting More Services Out Of An IEP here: https://ashleybarlowco.com/getting-more-services-out-of-an-iep/