A message from the new Owners
Hello Spring Clients families and friends!! Here’s to a New Year. We send this with glad tidings in our hearts and very exciting news. Spring Occupational Therapy is re-launching under new ownership. We are ready to serve children, families and our community once again. So what has happened with Spring OT over the last 18 months?? Firstly, Trish Williams has taken this opportunity to expand her consulting business and was looking for an OT who shared the same values and experience to take over and she thought of me! My name is Nicole MacLean and I worked with Trish years ago and we kept in touch. I am […]
Using Mindfulness for Challenging Behaviours
For the past 2 years, I’ve done respite with a phenomenal kid (let’s call her Ella). While continuously striking me with her ability to radiate joy and compassion, Ella had a tough time transitioning between activities, sharing, and keeping her hands off of other kids during group play. Early this summer, Ella and I were headed off to camp! Working with her family and camp staff (and using some good ole’ trial and error) we came up with great strategies for success, like making Ella the line leader to avoid pushing or being pushed, teaching other kids in her group the sign language she used, making a photo schedule of […]
Gift Ideas to Promote Language Development – School Aged Children
As a Speech Language Pathologist, I am often asked for gift ideas around the holidays. While toys cannot teach communication, there are toys parents can use to engage their children so learning can happen. In general, the less a toy does the better, because it allows you to do more with it. Kids with speech and language delays really benefit from finding different ways to work on the speech and language goals at home and finding a toy that can be used to target some goals is a real bonus! Check out my previous guides for ages 0-3 and school preschool aged kids Here are some of my all-time […]
Gift Ideas to Promote Language Development – Preschool
As a Speech Language Pathologist, I am often asked for gift ideas around the holidays. While toys cannot teach communication, there are toys parents can use to engage their children so learning can happen. In general, the less a toy does the better, because it allows you to do more with it. Kids with speech and language delays really benefit from finding different ways to work on the speech and language goals at home and finding a toy that can be used to target some goals is a real bonus! Check out my previous guides for ages 0-3 and school aged kids. Here are some of my […]
Gift Ideas to Promote Language Development – Zero to 3 Years
As a Speech Language Pathologist, I am often asked for gift ideas around the holidays. While toys cannot teach communication, there are toys parents can use to engage their children so learning can happen. In general, the less a toy does the better, because it allows you to do more with it. Kids with speech and language delays really benefit from finding different ways to work on the speech and language goals at home and finding a toy that can be used to target some goals is a real bonus! Check out my previous guides for preschoolers and school aged kids. Here are some of my all-time favourites: […]
My Child is Having a Public Meltdown – Now What?
It is many parents’ most dreaded scenario – The Public Meltdown. As a Behaviour Specialist, I hear concerns about this parenting challenge more than almost any other. The Public Meltdown evokes feelings of embarrassment and judgement and helplessness, leading parents to ask, “how do I deal with people thinking I’m a bad parent.” And, most importantly, “what do I do to fix this?” This is where I remind everyone, your child’s feelings aren’t your feelings. You are a capable adult with years of learning and experience in how to manage your emotions. And you can do this. What’s First? – Take a deep breath! Remember you […]
How to Become a More Confident Parent
Parenting is hard. In my almost 20 years of working with families, there has been an explosion of parenting resources, and yet most parents remain confused. How do I support my child’s big emotions? Should my child be more independent? I try and set boundaries, but that just leads to a major meltdown. Should you say yes more often? Or, is it no more often? Every day I hear that parents still feel guilty and like they just can’t get it right. It’s ok not to have all the answers – the best part of my job is walking the path with parents to support them step by step through […]
5 ways you can support therapy at home
If your child is currently seeing a Speech Language Pathologist, they are likely only working with them at most once a week (and sometimes less). In an ideal world, where time and money are not issues, sessions would be more frequent. So, instead of spending more of your valuable time packing up the kids, driving in traffic to an extra session (with a stop at the ATM), you can support therapy at home every day and help your child become a better communicator! Practice, practice, practice! We find that the students who make the most progress work on their speech and language goals work several times each day […]
It’s Time to Play
You know those kids who just seem able to entertain themselves for hours? We’ve met lots of those little ones at the clinic. We’ve also seen the opposite – kids who need parents full time and need and want to play with YOU all day! While this may sound fun to some of you, playing with children doesn’t always come naturally to parents. Spending time playing with your children is important as children learn so much through play. In fact, play is so important to a child’s development, that the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights has recognized it as a right of every child. The most important […]
They said he’d grow out of it…
Parents often assume, and are sometimes told by professionals, that their child will grow out of a speech delay. We often get calls from parents expressing that their child “sounds like they have an accent” or that the lisp everyone thought was cute at age three, is a source of frustration as they hit school age. While it is true that speech development takes time, and some children’s speech does improve as they get older, not all speech issues will resolve themselves. There are lots of children in older elementary grades who continue to have trouble speaking clearly. Many people do not simply outgrow these things. Taking a wait […]