BY YOUR SIDE – Autism Therapy Services is a multidisciplinary provider to the Autism community with a focus on two key environments: In Center and In-Home.
Our autism therapy services are designed to support children with autism spectrum disorder in building communication, behavioral, social, and daily living skills. Our approach combines multiple disciplines to create well-rounded autism therapy programs that reflect each child’s developmental needs. Through ABA therapy and other forms of therapy, children learn how to interact with their environment, express needs, and participate more fully in everyday life and routines.
Our team provides pediatric autism therapy that may include speech therapy and communication assistance, occupational therapy, and applied behavioral analysis therapy, depending on each child’s goals. These autism intervention services work together to address areas such as language development, behavior regulation, and independence. For younger children, early intervention autism therapy and early childhood autism therapy focus on foundational skills that support long-term growth.
With us, every child receives individualized autism therapy plans built through careful assessment. These plans guide our personalized ABA therapy and other developmental therapy services so that each session targets meaningful progress. We offer families center-based ABA therapy at a dedicated ABA therapy center as well as in-home ABA therapy, depending on what works best for their child.
As a trusted provider of autism services, our ABA therapy service model is centered on practical skill-building. Through comprehensive ABA therapy services and supportive care, we help children develop skills that carry into daily life.
Inside the Centers
A uniquely designed room to practice essential skills and get used to more challenging activities for autistic children, like visiting the dentist and the hairdresser. Our friends are given the opportunity to familiarize themselves with a dentist’s or a doctor’s chair and work towards tolerating sitting in the chair and having someone turn on a light near their head, or wearing a dental bib. We also have non-cutting clippers to help children get used to the sound and feel of clippers or scissors while sitting in a cape in a salon chair. The neighborhood room gives children a chance to practice in a safe and supportive environment ahead of their appointments and develop the skills to use and generalize in real-life environments.
This room is a smaller room with minimal lighting and reduced noise. It is a safe place for clients to temporarily step away from the demands of a learning environment while receiving the appropriate sensory input relevant to their needs (i.e.: a weighted blanket, vibrating pillow, sound machine, etc.). The sensory room is always the client’s choice that allows for a break in a non-stimulating environment in order to support emotional regulation and learning.
This room is set up like a typical dine-in kitchen. It provides a natural setting to practice and learn a variety of skills including sharing meals, practicing appropriate mealtime behaviors, improving feeding skills, and expanding food repertoires. A snack shared at the table creates the natural opportunity for conversing during a meal, which allows the practice of asking/answering questions, maintaining a topic, changing topics, and listening to others. Feeding activities allow for natural learning of the following skills: following directions, sequencing, and exploring a variety of sensory inputs through touch, smell, and sight. Food is never used as a motivator but rather as a natural learning activity.
This room is designed to be a rich environment of play and language, especially for our younger friends. Play is critical for building functional and social language skills. Everything in the room is accessible to the child providing them the opportunity to independently explore and engage with a variety of toys and activities. The items within the room allow children to develop both functional and imaginative play skills. This provides foundational skills for basic learning and social interactions. This room is a large space allowing multiple children to share the space and encouraging parallel play, peer modeling, and interactive play.
The playground is the centerpiece of BYS providing a highly motivating environment to explore and engage with peers and adults. This area provides opportunities for sensory regulation, social engagement, vocabulary building, motor coordination, interactive play, and many other skill-building activities. Although visually appealing, the playground can often be an intimidating and daunting place for an individual with autism. The chaotic and unpredictable nature of the playground combined with equipment (which requires coordination) may often cause a child to retreat to corners of the playground or preferred equipment. The playground area was created to help individuals learn a variety of skills allowing them to actively participate and generalize these skills to all playground settings.
This room is designed for art projects and wet/messy sensory activities. Art provides an opportunity to experience language through the sensory system. It provides relevant activities to learn basic concepts (color, shapes, sizes, and texture) for our younger friends and the chance to explore self-expression for our older friends. Sensory integration activities are meaningful and appropriate when experienced during art activities. Productive leisure skills can be one of the greatest challenges for individuals with autism. Finding and maintaining productive leisure skills through art allows opportunities for individuals to explore, create, and express themselves, creating a bridge for communication and interaction.
Designed exactly like a Kindergarten classroom, the BYS Academy classroom is a fun and vibrant place to learn academic, social, emotional, language, and life skills! Sitting down quietly for 15 minutes and focusing on a teacher for Circle Time is hard for any child, and especially for a child with autism. In BYS Academy, tolerating and building this skill is one of the many essential classroom skills we teach to prepare kids for the classroom environment. BYS Academy’s classroom has a space for circle time, stations, group instruction, individual instruction, a play area and a cool-down corner for anyone needing a break. And of course, we’re teaching each child self-advocacy skills so they can learn to ask for their own breaks when they need them.
This room was created to be a comfortable place for our older friends to enjoy a variety of games and activities. Participating in age and socially appropriate games such as board games and video games requires critical thinking, problem-solving, awareness, and the ability to predict other’s actions. It is crucial to learn and understand social language and activities in order to create appropriate and meaningful interactions with peers and siblings. Most social activities require individuals to process multiple pieces of sensory information and multitask between conversations, attending to an activity within the game, filtering unnecessary information, and making verbal and emotional contributions to the group. Learning these skills in the safe and relevant environment of the therapeutic setting allows individuals to build skills and confidence.
This is an open area designed for large motor movements. A ball pit, crash pad, and a variety of swings are the centerpieces of this room. There is plenty of room left for tunnels, walking paths, obstacle courses, and scooters. The sensory system is a multi-dimensional system requiring a variety of activities to meet its needs. This multi-purpose room was created to meet varying needs. The gym is not only used for occupational therapy but it is available for all learning activities. A variety of language learning and social activities are experienced within this room and it allows individuals to combine language learning and motor movement. Research shows that involving the whole brain (movement and language centers) improves the performance of language learning activities.
This room provides a space for puzzles, building bricks, and other building projects to be enjoyed. Puzzles and construction activities require an individual to activate multiple parts of the brain and coordinate a variety of skills to reach a single outcome. The sensory system, language, fine motor skills, spatial relationships, deductive reasoning, problem-solving, and hand-eye coordination must work in unison to create the final product. Although puzzles are typically thought to be an independent activity, large floor puzzles and building projects create opportunities for cooperative play, compromise, and being part of a group. Completion of puzzles and building projects, whether done individually or as part of a group, teaches self-confidence, maintaining attention, and emotional regulation (i.e.: patience and perseverance).
This room provides a space for puzzles, legos, and other building projects to be enjoyed without being disturbed. Puzzles and construction activities require an individual to activate multiple parts of the brain and coordinate a variety of skills to reach a single outcome. The sensory system, language, fine motor skills, spatial relationships, deductive reasoning, problem-solving, and hand-eye coordination must work in unison to create the final product. Although puzzles are typically thought to be an independent activity, large floor puzzles and building projects create opportunities for cooperative play, compromise, and being part of a group. Completion of puzzles and building projects, whether done individually or as part of a group, teach self-confidence, maintaining attention, and emotional regulation (i.e.: patience and perseverance).
Interested in autism therapy for children? Let us know how we can help you today!
