Articles by Year: 2026
Hearing Loss, Chronic Ear Infections, and Delayed Speech
Ear infections are close to universal in early childhood. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, five out of six children have at least one ear infection by their third birthday. Most of those children go…
Rigidity and Routines: When Flexibility Becomes the Goal
Every household with young children runs on routine. Bedtime happens in an order. The same book gets read for months. Most families barely notice. For some children, routine is not a preference. It is structural. The blue cup is not…
How Autism In Girls Presents Differently
The mental image most people carry of autism is a boy. He lines up his cars, he does not make eye contact, he knows everything about trains. That picture is accurate for many children and incomplete for many others, and…
Global Developmental Delay: What it Means and How FOCUS Therapy Can Help
Some diagnoses arrive with a folder of information. Global developmental delay usually arrives as a phrase at the end of a pediatric appointment, written on a referral form, sometimes with no explanation attached. Parents leave holding a term they have…
When Speech Therapy Ends: Knowing Your Child Is Ready to Graduate
Here is a little secret about great speech therapy: from the very first session, our goal is to work ourselves out of a job. Every game, every silly sound, every “say it one more time” is quietly building toward a…
School Services vs. Private Therapy: Why Your Child May Need Both
When we talk about speech therapy services at school versus in a private clinic like FOCUS Therapy in Fort Myers, the word “versus” makes it sound like a cage match. School services in one corner, private therapy in the other,…
Potty Training a Child With Developmental Delays
Few parenting milestones come with as much pressure, mythology, and unsolicited advice as potty training. Everyone has a cousin whose toddler trained in a weekend, a neighbor with a foolproof sticker chart, and a strong opinion about how soon is…
Late to Walk? Gross Motor Milestones and When to Take the Next Step
There is a special kind of suspense that comes with waiting for a baby’s first steps. The phone camera is charged, the grandparents are on standby, and every wobble near the coffee table feels like the big moment. Then a…
Is It a “Cute” Lisp, or Is It Time to See a Fort Myers Speech Therapist? The Sound-by-Age Timeline
It’s often endearing when a three-year-old announces she wants “pasketti” for dinner, or a kindergartner tells a long story in which every “r” comes out sounding like a “w.” It can also be the kind of occurrence that quietly plants…
What Does “Play-Based” ABA Therapy Actually Look Like at FOCUS?
When a child is referred for Fort Myers ABA therapy, parent reactions tend to fall into one of two camps. Some feel relief: finally, an evidence-based path forward. Others arrive with questions, having read message board posts, autistic adult accounts,…