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Behaviour Therapy
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Therapy & support
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Therapy & support
How does Floortime (DIR) therapy help preschoolers?
Floortime (DIR) therapy helps preschoolers by following the child's interests and emotions to expand back-and-forth interaction, communication, play and thinking through joyful, relationship-based play, with parents coached to weave it into daily life. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow Does Floortime (DIR) Therapy Help Toddlers?
Floortime (DIR) helps toddlers by following the child's lead in play, building 'circles of communication', and strengthening shared attention, engagement and two-way interaction — the relational foundations of language and thinking. Parents are coached to weave these moments into daily routines. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow Music Therapy Helps Preschoolers
Music therapy supports preschoolers by using rhythm, song and instruments to build communication, attention, movement, emotional regulation and social connection — all through motivating, play-like activity led by a trained therapist. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow Music Therapy Helps Toddlers
Music therapy helps toddlers by using rhythm, melody and song to build communication, social turn-taking, movement, attention and emotional regulation in a playful, low-pressure way. A trained therapist tailors each session to the child, often alongside speech and occupational therapy. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow Play Therapy Helps Preschoolers
Play therapy helps preschoolers because play is how young children naturally learn, communicate and process feelings. A trained therapist uses purposeful, child-led play to build language, social skills, emotional regulation and problem-solving in a safe, joyful way. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow Play Therapy Helps School-Age Children
Play therapy helps school-age children by using play, games, art and role-play as their natural language to express feelings they cannot yet put into words, working through anxiety, friendship struggles, family change and low confidence. A trained therapist follows the child's lead to build trust, emotional regulation, social skills and self-esteem. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow Play Therapy Helps Toddlers
Play therapy helps toddlers grow communication, social connection, emotional regulation, attention and problem-solving by following the child's natural lead and building developmental skills into joyful, low-pressure play. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow does social skills training help preschoolers?
Social skills training helps preschoolers learn the building blocks of friendship — sharing, turn-taking, reading feelings, joining play and managing upsets — through structured, playful practice that they carry into everyday life. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow Social Skills Training Helps School-Age Children
Social skills training helps school-age children by turning the unspoken rules of friendship, conversation and emotion into clear, learnable steps — reading faces and tone, taking turns, joining play, and managing disagreement — practised in safe peer groups so confidence and belonging grow. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow does therapy address biting in a child?
Therapy addresses biting by identifying its function — communication, sensory regulation, frustration or attention — then teaching a safer replacement skill through functional communication training, antecedent management and oral-sensory support, with consistent caregiver coaching. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow does therapy address breath-holding spells in a child?
Breath-holding spells are involuntary, benign, self-limiting reflex events, not behavioural choices. Therapy is adjunctive — supporting parental confidence, trigger recognition and the child's emotional self-regulation — while a paediatrician confirms the diagnosis, excludes cardiac or seizure mimics and screens for iron-deficiency anaemia. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow therapy addresses clinginess in a child
Therapy treats clinginess as a regulation and attachment signal rather than a behaviour to suppress. It strengthens the secure base, uses graded child-paced separation steps, addresses sensory, language or anxiety drivers, and coaches caregivers in co-regulation. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow therapy addresses defiance and saying no in a child
Therapy treats defiance and saying "no" as communication rather than misbehaviour — using functional analysis, antecedent strategies, functional communication training and parent-mediated behavioural intervention to reduce coercive cycles, while strengthening co-regulation and the adult-child relationship. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow Therapy Addresses Difficulty Sharing
Therapy addresses difficulty sharing by targeting its underlying skills — turn-taking, emotional and impulse regulation, and perspective-taking — through graded play, social-skills work and caregiver coaching, calibrated to the child's developmental age rather than enforced as a manner. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow does therapy address extreme shyness in a child?
Therapy addresses extreme shyness through a graded, relationship-based approach that lowers social anxiety, builds communication and self-regulation skills, and gradually widens the social situations a child can tolerate, supported by parent and teacher coaching. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow does therapy address head-banging in a child?
Therapy addresses head-banging by first ruling out medical or pain causes, then using a functional behaviour assessment to identify why the behaviour occurs — self-soothing, communication, sensory or escape — and teaching a safer replacement through functional communication, sensory regulation and antecedent strategies. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow Therapy Addresses Hitting Others in a Child
Therapy addresses hitting by first identifying its function through functional behaviour analysis, then reducing triggers and teaching functionally equivalent replacement skills — communication, emotional regulation and pro-social alternatives — within a positive-behaviour-support framework, supported by parent coaching. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow Therapy Addresses Intense or Unusual Fears in a Child
Therapy addresses intense or unusual childhood fears through graded, child-led exposure combined with emotion-regulation and coping skills, never forced confrontation. The clinician maps what maintains the fear, builds a stepwise hierarchy, teaches regulation, and coaches parents to reduce accommodation and support brave behaviour. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow Therapy Addresses Limited Eye Contact
Therapy addresses limited eye contact by treating it as a marker of joint attention and social connection, not a behaviour to be drilled. Play-based, relationship-focused intervention builds shared gaze, gaze-following and reciprocity within motivating activities, with sensory accommodation and parent coaching, never by forcing the child to look. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow does therapy address low frustration tolerance in a child?
Therapy addresses low frustration tolerance through co-regulation, graded "just-right" challenge, explicit emotional-vocabulary and self-talk teaching, CBT-informed and behavioural strategies, OT input where sensory dysregulation contributes, and parent-teacher coaching across settings. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow Therapy Addresses Meltdowns in a Child
Therapy addresses meltdowns by treating them as a sign of nervous-system overwhelm rather than misbehaviour — mapping the sensory, communicative and emotional triggers, building co-regulation then self-regulation skills, and coaching caregivers in consistent, low-arousal strategies. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow therapy addresses nightmares and night terrors in a child
Therapy distinguishes nightmares (recalled REM dreams, helped by sleep hygiene, anxiety reduction and imagery rehearsal) from night terrors (non-REM arousal events, usually benign and managed via reassurance, protecting sleep time and scheduled awakenings). It targets modifiable drivers and refers onward for breathing concerns, possible seizures or trauma. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow therapy addresses a child not playing with other children
Therapy addresses not playing with other children by first formulating why it occurs — language, social-cognitive, sensory, regulatory or play-developmental drivers — then building prerequisite skills through graded, naturalistic, play-based intervention that moves the child along the solitary-to-cooperative play continuum, with generalisation across home, therapy and classroom. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow does therapy address running off in public in a child?
Therapy addresses running off (elopement) through a functional behaviour assessment that identifies why the child bolts — sensory-seeking, escape, access or avoidance — then teaches a safer functionally-equivalent replacement skill, uses antecedent and environmental safety strategies, and coaches caregivers for consistency. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
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