Children's Therapy Works Blog

Our new school

2010-11-08T19:50:00.003-05:00

After years of throwing ideas around, we finally decided to put a school together. As I have watched the evolution of diagnosis and disorders, there seem to be fewer educational options for parents and children. This is so contrary to our times - we are technologically far more advanced then we have ever been; we have the latest and greatest research and more information available then any other time in history - yet our educational system is failing our children. Even as I write this it sounds so harsh. I don't mean to be disrespectful towards the wonderful teachers our there. I am not sure if we have more children with issues, we are expecting more out of our children or maybe there are other reasons for this.
Our lifestyles have changed, our attitudes and expectations have changed. The fundamental development of our brains have not really changed. They have definitely evolved - we attend to more, we multi task and our children are exposed to many more options then ever before. We believe we are providing them with sensory rich experiences. I am seriously questioning that though. I have three beautiful boys - 13,11 and 7. They are smart, sassy and BOYS! They don't stop moving, they fight, they are untidy and eat me out of house and home. I have also run them through some of the programs that we offer at Children's Therapy Works. As I watch these boys grow and change, there is one thing that I can say for certain - they need more outside play, less time in front of the PS3 or XBOX and I would love to see them use more of their imaginations outside.

Back to the school - because of the above reasons, excess stimulation (or focusing issues); need for more movement (translated into Hyperactivity and poor attention) and yucky handwriting (dysgraphia), we opened Let's Learn Academy. An integrated, neurologically based educational program that focuses on a child's abilities not disabilities. Our goal is to create a safe environment that allows exploration using interactive learning and exploration.
We have incorporated White board technology through Promethean, programs such as Interactive Metronome and Fast ForWord that are well researched and data driven and numerous other programs that ensure neurological change.

We have a small group of children and wonderful parents who believe in what we are doing. That is what we need to ensure success. Please lend your thoughts to how we can grow and improve so that we can have the most positive impact on the future - our most precious resource is our children.

Therapeutic horseback riding

2010-04-11T21:47:00.003-04:00

Andy and I spend our Saturdays at the barn with a group of fantastic volunteers doing therapeutic horse back riding. This adds a 6th day to our work week, but it is well worth it! Most of the time by the time we get to Friday afternoon, I am done. The thought of working another day just feels tough. But then I get to the barn and see the smiling faces of all our kids and their parents, leaping out of the car to come and ride. All these kids participate in therapies during the week, but none of the therapies compare to what they experience every Saturday at Shelland Place Farm. Every Saturday we have some kind of tiny miracle occuring.... This past Saturday, we had a couple. The first one was a little guy who struggles at school and home with ADHD and dyslexia. I am told that he has mood swings and tends to have a hard time emotionally; except on Saturdays. He jumped out of the car and ran to me with a picture in his hand. He had gone home the week before and drawn a picture of Jedi ( the horse he rides) on one side and Lenny (the giant Warmblood who is a gentle giant) on the other side. The mini miracle was that he had drawn himself with a HUGE grin and his hands in the air in a victorious show. He was so excited about this picture and how the horses made him feel. No medication made him feel like this -yet his Saturdays are his time to shine where there is no pressure to read or write, nothing to have to respond to, except the complete and absolute acceptance that a huge, majestic animal called a horse gives a seven year old who is struggling to find himself in the academic world. It is times like this that I know we have to keep doing therapeutic riding, because these Saturdays change lives.

Autism Awareness

2010-04-06T22:04:00.002-04:00

Last week there were noticeably many spots on NBC news about ADHD/ADD , Autism spectrum disorders and learning disabilities. I always find it interesting watching these spots as the reporters turn to the medical doctors for information regarding these diagnosis'. Of course that's where we all look as parents. But I have to say that I am always disappointed to see nothing on the therapies that are most effective for our kids. Occupational, speech and physical therapists are highly under rated in our media. In fact therapists are the professionals who understand the inner workings of many diagnosis' , not just the symptoms. I would love to see the media focus on therapists. We dedicate our lives to making changes in other peoples' lives, not with quick fixes but with ongoing training and education to find one more thing that can make life better for our clients. There is so much technology out there and yet the area in which we need the most education is not being highlighted!

Speak out about your therapists - they are special people in your families lives!

2010-03-23T09:54:00.002-04:00

As many of our clients already know, we focus our therapy on using evidenced-based, neurological programs during intensive therapy that make changes efficiently and effectively. This means that our clients come often for "boot camp" to do programs such as Interactive Metronome, The Sensory Learning Program and or therapies 3-4 times a week for short periods of time. This sounds like alot and it is. The parents work hard, the kids work hard and so do the therapists. But it is days like yesterday that make it all worth it.

We have a young man who was first tested in December of 2009, just 3 months ago. His scores were very low in areas of Visual perception, motor planning ... everything related to mild Autism Spectrum Disorders. He has wonderful parents who have devoted their time and efforts to making learning easier for him and the payoff is showing!

We re tested him last week using another test so as to maintain validity and he has shown an improvement of ONE FULL standard deviation in visual perceptual skills! And it is showing in everything he does. The teacher has made comments at school like " he is more organized, getting his tools together before going to lunch , whereas before everything was haphazard". His handwriting is improving and he has commented that it is easier (we have not worked on any handwriting!).

I can go on and on, there are improvements daily both from mom, the teacher and the child. Whenever I doubt myself or the process, I just need one little guy like this to remind me that what we do here is nothing short of amazing. That the team of therapists participating in this process are wonderful and the parents who hand their children over to us are trusting that this is the right thing to do. But when I put my head down at night, my thoughts are mostly about my little people who sacrifice their afternoons to come play with us, whose lives we are influencing and who I hope will look back one day and say " gee I can't remember what that crazy lady's name was , she had a funny accent and made me do silly things, but we had alot of fun together and even though I spent alot of time at therapy, look where I am today!".

This is when I cry happy tears because we became therapists in order to change lives and that is what we do during intensive therapy programs. For that, I am grateful!

You tube

2009-08-27T21:25:00.002-04:00

We are excited to upload our first video to youtube. It has definitely been interesting working out how to use all the cool software out there. The great thing about video is we can watch children blossom from the time they come in until they leave with a whole new set of skills to go home and practice with. This particular little sweet heart is a little girl named Emma, with a benign brain tumor in her hypothalamus. She is blind and very brave! It is incredible to see the spunk and life in this little girl and her family. Mom is an amazing person who is upbeat and embraces every opportunity to live life to the fullest. I am always inspired by families like these. It makes my job so worthwhile. This is when the passion for what we do takes over - it is not a job it is a love and that is why we do it!
These are my thoughts on just one of our brave little girls who lights up the room with her presence!

Summer

2009-06-18T14:59:00.004-04:00

Blogging is definitely new to me, so I have to practice this, the more you blog , the easier is gets - so I hear. We are on our way to California - driving across country in an RV with three children and a 3G card. Thank heavens for 3G! It is amazing how much thinking you can do whilst driving. I have written a column for Around Town Publishing on sensory integration which will be published in July - look out for it. As I wrote, I was trying to condense the amount of information I am trying to convey into 400 words. We have so much information out there now that it is definitely challenging imparting such important information, but that's OK because I have another 5 columns to go! I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak out on important issues related to Autism, Sensory Integration and Learning Disabilities. I truly believe that the more we learn, the more we can help families figure out how to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.
Yesterday whilst packing, I was watching Oprah with one eye. I had to put all my packing on hold when I watched a little boy who was not supposed to live, walk out on stage and explain to Oprah how many pairs of legs he had. After him came the little girl with Mermaid syndrome and after her, the young boy who watched his mother drown as Hurricane Katrina violently shook up his life. As the river of tears streamed down my face ( and Oprah's and Celine Dion's'), I reassured once again why I became an occupational therapist and opened my own practise - to make as many changes as I could and help as many families as I can live healthy, successful lives! The more I watched, the more ideas came to me - having non-profit organizations to fund therapies, working with families from rural areas, low income and overseas countries that don't have this technology. Then there is the intensive programming that we can do for those families who can afford premium therapy - helping them access resources that can improve their families lives and help others too.

So many ideas, but it takes a village and I am grateful to all the therapists at Children's Therapy Works who put their heart and soul into every child they work with.

I look forward to great things in the future!
Shelley

Social Skills groups

2009-05-04T13:41:00.002-04:00

Children's Therapy Works is very excited to announce our Social Skills Programs. These are comprehensive programs that are interactive and encourage children to participate in typical activities such as going to the grocery store and asking for an item, ordering from a restaurant or just playing with a friend.

For more information call: 770-754-0085

How time flies

2009-05-04T13:23:00.004-04:00

I am amazed at how quickly time flies, learning to blog has taken on a whole new meaning for me. When I first started "blogging" I figured that it had to be educational in nature, then realized that it has to be interesting. Well here we go. This morning on the NBC's Today Show with Matt Lauer, there was a segment on how furniture can hurt our children. As many as 15 000 children get hurt every year. I found that quite amazing that there was an entire segment on this information. It is very important to know, and as parents we have all had that happen in some where in the house. But did you know that 15% of children under the age of 18 have some kind of learning disability. Many of them un diagnosed; leaving parents and children at a loss of how to be most successful in learning. We don't hear alot about this information and yet it is affecting so many families that the numbers are frightening.

There are so many programs available to us today that can truly improve children and teenagers learning ability. I am often as frustrated as parents get when we can see that a child has excellent potential but needs a slightly different way of absorbing the information. Computer technology can be very useful too, we see many new programs flooding the market but how do you know what to look for in a program? Lets have that discussion tomorrow.

Have a great day :)

Early diagnosis - what do I do?

2008-10-27T13:38:00.003-04:00

If I had one wish as a therapist and practice owner, it would be that parents with newly diagnosed children knew where to go first. When we are concerned about our children, we typically go to the pediatrician first. If the Dr is well informed, he or she may refer the child to some type of child specialist such as a Developmental pediatrician or a psychologist or even neurologist depending on the issue. As parents, we come home and read everything and anything we can on the Internet about the behaviours we are seeing in our child and then talk to those people we trust or know, searching for opinions and insight into whether there is a problem or what the problem may be.

Once at the specialist, we expectantly sit down waiting to hear some type of revelation about why we are seeing these issues in this little being that we created. Voila! Your child is ...... regardless of what we are told, many times we hear or don't hear up to 60% of what the specialist has said. We may hear the "Autism, ADHD, Learning Disabled, Asbergers Syndrome .."By the time we get home we have only retained 15% of that 60%. Hence a mumble jumble of words float around our brains and merge into some type of garbled output when trying to talk to all of those beloved people whose opinions we asked for initially. Many times the "diagnosis" is such a shock that the emotional side of the brain goes into fight/flight/fright - a natural, normal, healthy place to be. The hard part of this is that we still have to function "normally", but don't have any strategies to work with. The specialist usually provides a list of services and places to go and a couple of recommendations that may or may not make sense. Another issue that we deal with is having to move "quickly" through the system of health care and services related to a specific diagnosis. Except that my child is not a diagnosis. He is a living, breathing, acting out little being who shows some quirky stuff that doesn't look quite right or like his peers.
What the specialist does not usually talk about is how to cope with all of this. Receiving a diagnosis of any kind is tough. We go through a range of emotions and thoughts : "what did I do to make my child like this?", "is this my fault or my spouse's fault" " oh, he will just grow out of this!". Denial, guilt, fear and hurt are only a few of the emotions that rally through our heads in a tornado type fashion... but where to go from here?

With so many programs available today, how do you know which one is right for your child? I hope through this blog, that I can talk about the many areas to look at and consider when building your child's team. You are their advocate, their team leader and the head of their campaign.
Therapists are definitely under rated! What I mean by that is when there is a strong team of occupational, speech and physical therapists involved in your campaign, that is where you will see the most bank for your buck.
Let's take a little step back. There are really only 3 areas red flagging us that something may be "out of sync". Motor delays, speech difficulties or social/behavioural difficulties. Those are the indicators that something is different. Well, child development is a layered process. One layer is dependent on all the others to develop fully.

Motor skills are learned. They occur in a hierarchical fashion starting with reflexes like we see in tiny infants and move up the developmental ladder of "milestones". Speech development is dependant on how well motor skills have developed resulting in sequencing sounds, then words, sentences and conversations. Social, behavioural and emotional development are intricate layers that rely on both motor and language development. My point here is that by the time parents notice red flags, there are layers of areas that could be addressed to improve those issues we are seeing and they all have to be addressed at some point. These areas function as a whole, not independently.

The latest research shows that cognitive development is dependant on social and emotional IQ and taking that a step further by incorporating play through motor and language skills is critical in developing these higher level skills.

So we come back to the original question: where do I start. Start with your therapists that use a holistic, combined approach at looking at the brain and body after looking at your child and their needs. This will provide the necessary opportunities to help you the parent and your child develop and work through the areas needed to develop a well rounded child. This of course builds our confidence in our parenting skills and allows us to be parents!

The therapist is the single best person who will be strong force in facilitating weekly changes. These changes are generally slow and small resulting in a combination of improvements. Another critical reason why you have to be a strong part of the your child's team. Step-by-step functional changes are made that affect daily living skills, communication, social development and learning skills relating to cognitive development.

Medications are quick fixes and sometimes they are very effective, however neurological development is dependant on strengthening brain function which is the super computer of a person. Without a duel-core processor, the right and left sides of the brain can't function well together. A therapy team will work on getting those skills to function well. That is key to making life long changes.

Feel free to call us or email with any questions regarding this topic. We are happy to help you through this journey!

Shelley

New Speech-Language Pathologist

2008-09-02T14:07:00.002-04:00

Hello CTW Families! Over the last 3.5 weeks, I have had the chance to meet many of the parents and children of Children's Therapy Works. For those of you who I haven't yet met, I look forward to meeting you! I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself and tell you a little bit about me. :) My name is Alyssa Siegel and I am the newest addition to the CTW Speech-Language Pathology team. I just moved to Atlanta about a month ago and I'm really looking forward to working with you and your family!

I was raised about 5 hours south of here in Jacksonville, FL. After high school, I moved to Gainesville, FL where I attended the University of Florida for my Bachelors degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders and minor in Education. I've gotten a lot of slack about being a Gator here in Bulldog Country, but I'm a Gator Girl and proud of it! I bleed Orange and Blue. :)

After graduation from UF, I moved up to New York City to earn my Masters in Speech-Language Pathology from New York University. I completed my field work experiences in a Huntington's Disease unit, in an early intervention center, and in an outpatient rehabilitation facility. Since my graduation from NYU, I worked in Brooklyn for the NYC Dept of Education primarily with children with Asperger's Disorder, High Functioning Autism, Social-Relational Disorders, Auditory Processing Disorders, and Expressive/Receptive Language Disorders.

When I'm not working, I can usually be found hanging out with friends, lounging on the couch with my husband Matthew and our TiVo, or exploring my new city of Atlanta. I absolutely LOVED living in New York and taking in everything the city had to offer... especially Broadway shows, Yankee games, comedy clubs, and the SHOPPING! I'm definitely looking forward to finding my niche here in Atlanta.

I'm excited to start my next chapter here at CTW with you and your children. Thank you so much for the warm welcome and I'm looking forward to help "light the way to better futures!"

Alyssa Siegel, MA, CCC-SLP

Early intervention - Baby steps

2008-08-19T09:50:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, I had a long conversation with a long term client who has become a friend too. We discussed how quickly time is passing and looked back at the beginning of our relationship together. I was the OT, she was the mom and we had a common goal: to get "Johnny" (names changed for privacy reasons) to reach his highest potential. The doctors said that he probably wouldn't walk or talk.

"Johnny" is now somewhere around 9-10 years old. His parents have dedicated their lives to finding the best programs for him both in the home, at school and as adjunct therapies. They have found the funding through hard times and changed programs in the best interest of this child.
The result: A walking, reading, learning, little boy who has made more gains then any one thought possible! If this isn't a miracle, then I don't know what is.

This mom made some very interesting points:
1. We took responsibility for our child
2. Even when we did not have the money, we knew that be investing in him early on would pay dividends in the long run - they are!
3. Education about what is available - not the moaning and groaning, but what is effective and where do we find it?

I really appreciated this conversation! As a part of this team, I feel like we ALL made a difference in this families life. It truly is a team effort and it takes time.

Mom said : this has been a long process with many baby steps, but look at we are today!

Thank you Mom for motivating us to do more, for reinforcing the fact that we are doing the right thing and it does take time, effort and perseverance.

Meeting all our needs

2008-07-28T11:18:00.000-04:00

As we head into the 2008-2009 school year, there is always a certain amount of apprehension and excitement as a parent. Who is my child going to get as a teacher this year? Will they get the best out of my child? Will my child finally be able to read or make friends?
There are so many questions that pop into my head as a parent, that I sometimes wonder how I actually let them go to school, never mind cope!

I think that many times this happens with everything we do with our kids. There is so much out there that can affect what they do, who they meet how they use their experiences to the best of their ability and what they choose to participate in. Remember as Moms, we are human and we are allowed to feel overwhelmed, tired and question whether we have made the right decision or not. If we haven't, our children will soon let us know that we need to change something.

In the therapy world, we are so challenged, as therapists and parents. How do we make the right choices regarding therapy, education, home programming etc. As a therapist, we have so many options available to us that is can become very challenging knowing whether we are meeting the child's needs AND the parent's needs. Often these are different. It becomes a very delicate balance knowing how ensuring that we are meeting all these needs. Pediatric therapists at Children's Therapy Works consider so many variables to meet the needs of our clients, our little people, insurance companies, medical doctors and schools. We hold internal conferences and challenge each other to think out of the box and get a different perspective and we ALWAYS consider the very delicate nature of parenting so that we can treat to the best of our abilities and honor our parents in the situation that they are in!

As school approaches, we shift our gears to the academic year. We are looking at some cool new computer based therapy programs, groups and other opportunities that enhance the lives of our families.

Have a great day
Shelley Margow
CEO

Welcome to the CTW blog

2008-07-22T15:16:00.000-04:00

With the constant changes in technology and the fast pace at which we are moving in todays world, I decided it was time for Children's Therapy Works to have a blog.
This is such a great way to connect with our clients, share information and just have a social network that we can access when feeling lonely, confused or thrilled about changes that our children make.

Children's Therapy Works is 10 years old this year! Wow, as I look back over the years, we have really grown, and our kids have grown with us. I get quite emotional speaking to "old" clients who are now teenagers and seeing how far they have come. It's times like these that I am grateful to those parents and therapists who forged through the good times and the bad - the pay off was worth it!

If you have any ideas or suggestions of what you would like to see in this blog, feel free to add your thoughts and ideas.

Have a wonderful Tuesday.