Child and Family Development Charlotte

Looking for a social skills group for your child this summer?  Check out Social Butterflies Club at the South Charlotte office of Child and Family Development!

Social Butterflies Club™ was founded in 2004 by Rhonda Osisek M.S., CCC-SLP in Virginia.  The Club helps children learn how to interact with peers while having fun with sensory and speech activities combined.   Thus, this club is led by both an occupational therapist and speech therapist at CFD.  The children in the group may have a variety of diagnoses, such as expressive and/or receptive language problems, sensory processing difficulties, and fine motor deficits.  The goal of the Social Butterflies Club™ is to teach the kids how to communicate with peers in a positive way that allows them to thrive outside of therapy.

Each child is screened as part of placement. The Clubs are formed based on each child’s communication skills, social ability and age.   The Club meets for 1-hour sessions, twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday at 11 over 2 consecutive weeks. Several schedule options are offered this summer.   

I am co-leading the Club with a speech therapist.  Contact her to register your child:  Michelle Pentz, 704-541-9080 x214, mpentz@childandfamilydevelopment.com

Visit www.socialbutterfliesclub.com for more details about the Social Butterflies Club™.

Visit www.childandfamilydevelopment.com for more information about the C&FD Social Butterflies Club™.

The Social Butterflies Club has come to Charlotte at Child and Family Development. 

This summer, the Club will help kids gain social skills in a way that can be easily carried over into a classroom and everyday life because they are taught social skills in natural but structured scenarios.  The Club is led by Courtney Stanley, an occupational therapist, and Michelle Pentz, a speech-language pathologist.   

Both Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy are involved because so many of the kids who have difficulty with social skills, also have difficulty with sensory processing, and/or fine motor skills.  All of the kids interested in the club will be screened to determine which club groups would be the most beneficial for them, based on their social abilities.  We will be alternating movement and language tasks to help elicit social interaction in a naturalistic way.  The approximate schedule is 5-10 minutes of free play, 10-20 minutes of an opening circle time, 10-20 minutes of a motor activity, 10-20 minutes of a craft/cooking activity and 5 minutes of a closing circle.  The Club meets for 1-hour sessions, twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday at 11. Several options are offered this summer.  Kids can enroll and benefit from consecutive groups.  Each group will contain between 4-8 kids.

Social Butterflies Club™ was founded in 2004 by Rhonda Osisek M.S., CCC-SLP in Virginia.  It is widely used across the country. Visit www.socialbutterfliesclub.com for more details. 

Contact Michelle Pentz, MS, CCC-SLP at 704-541-9080 ext. 214 or mpentz@childandfamilydevelopment.com

  Ann Guild is the most experienced Speech Therapist on the Child and Family Development team in Charlotte, North Carolina.

She has the unique and perfect timing of celebrating her 23-year tenure here and Better Speech and Hearing Month at the same time- May!

We're always learning from her and recently posed these questions to this admirable professional:

Team:  How have you stayed motivated to be a great SLP for so many years?

Ann: The key for me has been to be a life-long learner and to keep refining skill sets for working with the population that I have chosen.  If you keep seeking other clinicians who know more than you do or who have different skills than you do and you keep learning from them, you stay an active in the pediatric rehab community.  Teaching also provided an opportunity to learn and organize my knowledge and to share it with others. 

Team:  What keeps you going as a professional at C&FD?

Ann:  C&FD has provided the opportunity to build the caseload of kids that I want to treat.  It also provides the environment to treat with other dedicated and skilled clinicians.  When I first graduated from school, I had a job that was not particularly fun.  I left after 1 year.  Since then, I have had only 2 jobs.  In each of them, there was ample opportunity to grow, change roles, teach, watch kids grow and learn, and learn from colleagues.  Those are the things that make a job rewarding and fun.    

Ann, thank you for your most notable contribution to this practice and so many kids and families.

Child and Family Development is pleased to announce a new offering at our South Charlotte office:  Social Butterflies Club™

Social Butterflies Club™ was founded in 2004 by a speech therapist in Virginia.  It is widely used across the country. Visit www.socialbutterfliesclub.com for more details.  

The Club helps kids learn how to interact with peers while having fun with sensory and speech activities combined.  It may be beneficial to children with expressive and/or receptive language difficulties, sensory processing disorder, social stressors and fine motor deficits.

Here, groups are co-led by an occupational therapist and a speech therapist. 

Contact Michelle Pentz, M.S., CCC-SLP to learn more about it. 

• 704-541-9080 ext.  214
• mpentz@childandfamilydevelopment.com

It was wonderful to host Glen Stephens of Gabriel's Sanctuary, Inc. at both of the Child and Family Development offices this week.

Glen updated us on his family life since his son's passing in February, as well as the mission and services of the organization. 

Gabriel's Sanctuary works alongside families and businesses in the Charlotte community with a focus on:

• Tutoring services for children of all ages and abilities
• Informational speaking engagements and consultations about people with disabilities for small and large group in community groups and businesses 
• Consultation services for students and families seeking special needs services from schools or systems, including IEP development and advocacy training

Visit the website or the Facebook page to learn more:  www.gabrielssanctuary.com

There's more room in the ball pit!

Child and Family Development is growing the Occupational Therapy team at our Midtown office in Charlotte, North Carolina.

We are seeking a NC-licensed Occupational Therapist or a NC-Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant with pediatric therapy experience. 

Take a look at the Careers tab on our website to learn more about this practice and how to apply.

Child and Family Development is glad to support our neighbors in Charlotte.

This month, our Speech Therapy team partnered with Forest Hill Preschool and completed free screens to children ages 3 and under. 

Two members of the Physical Therapy team completed APTA Clinical Instructor training this month.

 Child and Family Development partners with several regional universities to assist graduate students in completing required internships. 

Summer is a great time to complete the Cogmed Working Memory Program. 

Cogmed Working Memory Training is an innovative computer-based program designed for children contending with attention deficit challenges. Easy to implement at home, it is clinically proven to increase a child’s working memory capacity and concentration while building impulse control and complex reasoning skills. Among other advantages, Cogmed Working Memory Training can be the means to better academic and professional performance.

Visit their website, http://www.cogmed.com/, for more information about this state-of-the-art intervention.  A free parent webinar is available.

Last year, Dr.  Joy Granetz became one of a few trained Cogmed Practitioners in our area.   She is currently accepting Cogmed clients for the late spring and summer.   

To find out if this program is right for your child, call Child and Family Development South Charlotte office at 704-541-9080 to schedule an initial appointment.    

My Disclaimer...

This blog is going to be for a step by step guide to my child's developmental milestones  I have a girl, please note that girls typically develop speech milestones faster,not to mention she should since I am a pediatric speech therapist,  whereas boys typically develop physical milestone faster.  It can be used as a guide for other families, but please keep in mind that all children develop at different rates and should you have any concerns about where your child should be, you should speak to your pediatrician or schedule an appointment with a speech, pysical, or occupational therapist in our office.

Her 4th month....

She continues to drool.  No swollen gums, no redness, just chews her hands, chews her dresses, chews my hands, my arm, shoulder, basically anything and everything that she can get in her mouth.  No one really tells you how gross it is to always be slimed by your sweet adorable cute baby.  I really don't want a finger sucker, I am a believer in it is much easier to get rid of a pacifier than it is to get a kid to stop sucking fingers.  She sucks her thumbs all the time.  Does anyone think it would be bad to paint her nails with that bitter stuff they use on older kids?...Just Kidding.

She sits in her Bumbo seat now for short amounts of time, while playing with toys, or waiting on mom and dad to finish eating dinner.  That is some hard work for her.  She sits in her exersaucer...shhhhh don't tell Erin Harkins or Jessica Sapel, Physical Therapists in our south charlotte office.  I only do it for short amounts of time and I have put a book under her feet so her feet fully touch the bottom, I know they have told me it is not good for a baby's hips to be in that position for a long amount of time.

Tummy time is still not her favorite, but she is tolerating it for longer amounts of time, and she does it without a pillow under her.  She is soooo close to rolling over.  I keep swearing that she is going to do it, but then she doesn't.

When on her back, she kicks so much that she can move herself around on a mat, or turn herself completely around in her crib, while swaddled (I believe I have a Houdini, b/c she can certainly get out of a swaddle if she wants to bad enough, especially if her daddy put her in it ;) ).  She can lift her hips up off the floor.

When lying down on the floor or in your arms on her back, she does what I refer to as baby crunches.  She tries to lift herself into a sitting position.  Again, I think this stims from being nosey...kind of hard to be nosey lying down on your back.

Her cooing has changed.  She changes the pitches of her voice now...the cat does NOT like this, the cat's tail is huge when she comes to see what is going on!!  She is beginning to have more sounds...daddy is mad, still no dada.  She talks more when her hand is in her mouth.

Read about each of these suggestions on the Child and Family Development blog this month.

Learn even more by contacting local chapter in Charlotte, Autism Society of Mecklenburg County: www.autismsociety.org

Child and Family Development enjoys collaboration with United Sleep Medicine Center. Our pediatric therapy team often refers to this organization and others in the Charlotte community. 

According to the experts there, disrupted sleep in children can result in:

• behavior or discipline problems
• delayed growth and cognitive development
• ADHD-like behaviors (hyperactivity, aggression, irritability or mood swings)
• poor school performance
• difficulty getting along with peers
• inability to control emotions
• poor sleep habits
• Circadian Rhythm Disorder

The Infant and Child Division offers evaluation and management services.  Visit their website for more information, www.unitedsleepmedicine.com.

Child and Family Development is accepting new referrals for speech therapy services.  Typically, the first appointment occurs within 1 week of the initial call to our office. 

With diverse expertise, interests and experiences, we are ready to provide a wide range of evaluation and treatment services. Our SLP team includes:

We accept insurance plans including Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS), Cigna, Medcost, Primary Physician Care (PPC), United Healthcare (UHC), as well as NC Medicaid. 

Visit our website to learn more about our services and therapists and call our office to schedule the initial appointment. 

Greetings!

I am so excited to be a part of the Child and Family Development pediatric therapy team!  I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself. 

I moved to Charlotte from Ohio in 2006, after completing my undergraduate and graduate work at Ohio University in Athens, OH.  Since moving here, I have worked with children ages birth to 15 years in a variety of settings including public schools, private schools, home, daycare, and preschool settings.  I have experience working with children with hearing loss, language disorders/delays, learning disabilitites, Autism, developmental delays, articulation/phonological disorders, apraxia, augmentative communication, and other difficulties. 

Since starting at C&FD, I have been extremely impressed with the quality of services and level of knowledge the therapists display, as well as the love, support and motivation of the families and children that come here.  I am so glad to be a part of this TEAM.

To learn more about me, read my biography on the C&FD website.