Kidz With Abilities: Myrtle Beach’s New Pediatric OT Clinic for Children with Autism and Developmental Delays

There is something that parents of children with autism or developmental delays understand that no one else quite can — the particular weight of a waiting list. The months that pass between a pediatrician’s referral and a first therapy appointment. The long drives to clinics in larger cities because there simply is not enough specialized care close to home. The feeling that the window for early intervention is ticking while the logistics stay stubbornly unresolved.

For families living along the Grand Strand — in Ocean Drive, in Cherry Grove Beach, in Myrtle Beach proper, and all the communities in between — the arrival of a dedicated pediatric occupational therapy clinic is not a small thing. It is the kind of addition that changes the calculus of daily life for the families who need it most.

Kidz With Abilities, a new pediatric OT clinic based in Myrtle Beach, has opened its doors — and with it, brought a philosophy of care that puts the child first, the play first, and the potential front and center. Here is what families along the Grand Strand should know.

What Is Kidz With Abilities?

Kidz With Abilities is a pediatric occupational therapy clinic in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, founded and led by Valerie — a pediatric occupational therapist with more than a decade of hands-on experience working with children across a wide range of diagnoses and developmental challenges. She serves as both founder and program coordinator, and the clinic reflects her core conviction: that every child, regardless of their medical history or developmental profile, has the capacity to grow, to learn, and to thrive.

The clinic recently celebrated its grand opening with a ribbon cutting hosted by the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce — a formal welcome into the local business community that has been serving the Grand Strand since 1938. That milestone marked not just a business opening, but the beginning of something genuinely useful for the families who call this stretch of the South Carolina coast home year-round.

The name itself says something about the approach. Not “kids with disabilities” — but “kidz with abilities.” The framing is intentional. This is a clinic built on the premise that what a child can do matters more than what currently stands in their way.

Who They Serve: Children of All Ages and Diagnoses

Kidz With Abilities works with children of all ages — from toddlers in the earliest stages of development through school-age children navigating the demands of the classroom and daily life. The clinic specializes in autism spectrum disorder and developmental delays of all kinds, but the scope of who they can help extends well beyond any single diagnosis.

Children seen at Kidz With Abilities may be working through challenges related to sensory processing, fine motor development, gross motor coordination, visual motor skills, social interaction, emotional regulation, feeding aversions, or the foundational skills needed for success in school. The unifying thread across all of it is the belief that meaningful, personalized intervention — delivered at the right time, in the right way — can fundamentally change a child’s trajectory.

For parents who have been told their child’s needs are “complex” or who have bounced between providers without finding a cohesive plan, a clinic built specifically around this population — with a team that wakes up every morning thinking about pediatric OT and nothing else — is a different kind of resource entirely.

Play-Based Occupational Therapy: How It Works

If you have never had a child in occupational therapy, the term can sound clinical in a way that does not quite capture what actually happens in the room. Pediatric OT — done well — looks a lot like play. A child climbing, balancing, reaching, sorting, building, laughing. A therapist right beside them, shaping the activity with precision, reading what the child’s body and nervous system are telling them, and adjusting in real time.

That is the model at Kidz With Abilities. Every session is personalized — built around the specific child sitting in front of the therapist that day, their diagnosis, their strengths, their struggles, and the goals their family has set for them. The play-based framework is not just a philosophy; it is a clinical strategy grounded in decades of research showing that children learn best when they are engaged, when they feel safe, and when the activity feels like something they chose rather than something done to them.

The practical targets of that play are real and meaningful: the grip strength to hold a pencil and write their name. The ability to button a shirt or tie a shoe. The tolerance for the sensory chaos of a crowded school cafeteria. The capacity to sit in a classroom long enough to learn. These are not abstract goals — they are the building blocks of a child’s independence, and they are exactly what Kidz With Abilities is built to develop.

Services Offered: From Clinic to Horseback

What sets Kidz With Abilities apart from a standard outpatient clinic is the breadth of therapeutic modalities they bring to bear. This is not a one-size-fits-all operation. Some children respond best to traditional clinic-based sessions. Others unlock entirely in the water. Others find something in the rhythm and movement of a horse that no conventional therapy room can replicate.

Clinic-Based and In-Home Occupational Therapy

The core of the clinic’s work is individualized occupational therapy — delivered either at the Myrtle Beach clinic or in the child’s home environment. In-home sessions carry a distinct advantage: therapists can work with a child in the actual setting where daily life happens, addressing the specific sensory and functional challenges that show up in that space rather than working to transfer skills from a clinical environment to a real one.

Speech and Language Therapy

Kidz With Abilities also provides speech and language therapy services — a natural complement to occupational therapy for many children with autism and developmental delays, where communication challenges and motor or sensory challenges frequently travel together. Addressing both under one roof means a child’s full therapeutic picture stays coordinated and coherent.

Aquatic Therapy

Aquatic therapy uses the unique properties of water — its resistance, buoyancy, temperature, and pressure — to target sensory input, balance, coordination, and muscle tone in ways that land-based therapy cannot always achieve. For children who are hypersensitive or hyporeactive to sensory input, the water environment can be remarkably effective at reorganizing the nervous system’s response. It is also, not incidentally, a lot of fun — which matters enormously when you are asking a child to do hard things.

Equine-Assisted Therapy

Perhaps the most distinctive offering in the Kidz With Abilities lineup is equine-assisted therapy — OT delivered on horseback. The natural movement of a horse provides children with a continuous stream of vestibular and proprioceptive input while therapists engage them in purposeful activities targeting social interaction, muscle tone, attention, and problem-solving skills. For children who struggle to regulate in traditional settings, the calming, rhythmic quality of a horse’s gait can create a window for therapeutic work that nothing else quite opens.

Why This Matters for the Grand Strand Community

The Grand Strand is often discussed in the context of tourism — the beaches, the golf courses, the restaurants, the events that draw millions of visitors every year to Crescent Beach, Windy Hill, and the broader Horry County coastline. But underneath the tourism economy is a real, permanent community — one of the fastest-growing in South Carolina — full of families raising children, navigating school systems, and looking for the kind of healthcare resources that any community needs to function.

Pediatric specialty care has historically been one of the gaps in that picture. Families in Horry County have long made do with long drives to Columbia, Charlotte, or Wilmington for services that should be available closer to home. The growth of dedicated clinics like Kidz With Abilities signals that the Grand Strand is maturing as a year-round community — not just a destination, but a place where people can genuinely put down roots and find what their families need.

Early intervention in occupational therapy is not a luxury. For children with autism and developmental delays, the research is consistent: the earlier and more consistently a child receives targeted therapeutic support, the better their long-term outcomes in communication, independence, social connection, and academic performance. A clinic that can begin that work sooner — without the barrier of a long waitlist or a two-hour drive — is a meaningful addition to a community’s quality of life in the most literal sense.

How to Connect with Kidz With Abilities

If you are a Grand Strand parent looking into pediatric occupational therapy for your child — whether you are just beginning to ask questions or have been navigating this road for years — Kidz With Abilities is worth a direct conversation. The clinic serves children of all ages and diagnoses, offers multiple therapy formats, and is built from the ground up around the idea that every child has more potential than their challenges might suggest on any given day.

You can learn more about their services, meet the team, and reach out to schedule an evaluation by visiting kidzwithabilities.com. If you are not sure whether your child would benefit from a pediatric OT evaluation, that conversation starts there too — with a team that has spent more than a decade asking and answering exactly that question for families across South Carolina.

Frequently Asked Questions