“How is physical therapy for children different from adults?”

Depending on the age group young children are focused on milestones such as sitting up and rolling for infants, jumping and throwing for toddlers as well as sensory integration and tolerating different positions. Young children and teens are similar to adults where strengthening become a bigger focus. Hope this helps.

It’s a different type of training and different approach as children’s bodies are still developing.

It tends to be geared more towards developmental skills we advance to such as crawling to walking to skipping and more higher level gross motor skills. With strength and flexibility addressed, but with the possible need for adaptive equipment such as bracing and assistive devices.

The PT for adults and children is very different. As for and PT (adults or children) one should have a diagnostic first. Second, training in PT and OT (occupational therapy) it is different for children in a sense that most of the conditions (diagnostics) that we treat in children, we do not find in adults. Therapy can use visual or auditory stimuli to treat a baby born with torticolis, something that we can't do in adults. We use other modalities, mostly manual in children vs let's say muscle electrical stimulation, ultrasound, etc in adults.