Good Beginnings Therapy Blog

Staff Spotlight: Meet Haley O'Connor-Conde!

Meet Haley- our superstar OT who has been with us for about a year! She was last month's Employee of the Month, and she is easily the happiest face in our office. Here are 20-something things you might not know about her...

1. Hometown: I grew up in both DePere, WI and Louisville, CO
2. Alumni of... College of the Holy Cross for undergraduate and Tufts for graduate school

3. When you’re not practicing OT/PT, you are: Running, reading or exploring Alexandria or D.C.

4. If I weren’t a therapist, I would be a teacher

5. When/how did you know you want to be a therapist? The first time I met an OT, I met her with one of her clients. Her client was rock climbing. Prior to working with this OT, her client would run away, hit and scream. Oh, and did I mention that this client was also afraid of heights? I couldn’t believe that a profession could have such a positive impact on someone’s life. I was hooked.

6. Worst/weirdest job experience you’ve ever had: I worked at a YMCA summer camp in high school… situated in a hot parking lot with minimal shade. It was not the best experience…

7. Something your best friend would tell us that we don’t know about you: I really don’t like ice cream. The last time I ate it was 20+ years ago

8. Top 3 Highlights of your life: 1. Getting married to my husband, David 2. Visiting Rome 3. Spending Holidays with family

9. Pet Peeves: When my hair doesn’t cooperate… which is always.
10. Best Vacation Spot: Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

11. Greatest challenge you’ve overcome: Moving in the 8th grade across country. At the time it seemed like the biggest thing in the world, but it gave me perspective on how change can be difficult for people. Even the smallest changes may feel big to others.

12. Weirdest thing in your purse right now: Receipts from over a year ago.

13. The last book you read is: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

14. Favorite musician/band/music: Ed Sheeran, Luke Bryan and Taylor Swift of course!

15. Favorite movies: The Sound of Music and Zoolander. Both movies are entirely different, but equally wonderful.

16. Your most overused words/phrases: “Love it!”

17. Describe your worst haircut: I hate haircuts. I always try to avoid cutting my hair trying to “grow it out”. Sadly, my hair does not grow.

18. Pick 3 words to describe yourself at 13: Fun- loving, book- loving, friend- loving

19. What’s your favorite season: SUMMER!

20. Any advice to future therapists? All kids have something to say if you give them a chance/ mode of expressing themselves.
21. If you could eat any food, as much as you wanted, without repercussions it would be? Chocolate, hands down.

22. Favorite place you’ve lived: This is a hard one… I love Virginia, but I also loved Boston, MA

23. Any Hidden Talents? I used to be in musicals when I was younger. In fact, I was in my town’s production of Jesus Christ, Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber. I was “evil priest number 3,” and had a short solo (sorry to brag).

24. One thing you just can’t make yourself get rid of: Coupons. My husband has to secretly throw them away when I am gone.

25. Sport you would get picked last for: Wrestling?
26. Your role model as a kid? My parents. They still are today!

Say hi in the waiting room-- maybe she'll sing you some show tunes. ;)

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, by Kate G.

Ten Fine Motor Crafts for Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day is right around the corner, so while we're all inside on these cold days, we've compiled some great crafts to help address those OT goals your kids are working so hard to meet!

(Organized by age level and skills addressed, click the title to follow the link to the original craft directions.)

Pom-Pom Valentine Painting

This craft is great for preschoolers. We love it for addressing pincer strength, tripod grasp, fine motor control, and bilateral hand use!

Toilet paper Roll Heart Stamp

This craft is great for preschoolers and addresses fine motor control, finger strength, and shoulder stability! Bonus points for using watercolors on the background first.

Paper Plate Yarn Hearts

This craft is great for early elementary kids. We love it for addressing pincer grasp, forearm supination/pronation, grip strength, bilateral hand use, and fine motor control. Whew-- that's a lot!

Fingerprint Tree

This craft is great for preschoolers and addresses tactile sensitivity, finger strength, and proprioception. This craft can be tailored to older children in drawing the tree and cutting the heart stencil.

Handprint Love Bug

This craft is great for toddlers and preschoolers, and addresses tactile sensitivity, fine motor skills, hand strength, and cutting skills (optional for older kids).

Paper Weave Valentine

This craft is great for early elementary kids and addresses bilateral hand use, cutting skills, motor planning, and fine motor strength. This one requires patience, but the pay-off is adorable!

Paper Heart Penguin

This craft is great for early elementary addresses cutting, visual skills, bilateral hand use, and hand strength. And he's cute!

Tic-Tac-Toe Snack Craft

This snack crafts is perfect for preschoolers and early elementary kids, and addresses hand/finger strength, fine motor control, and food texture aversions (swap ingredients to addresses specific concerns). Yummy!

Valentine's Fruit Plate

This snack craft is great for toddlers and preschoolers, and addresses pincer strength, sorting, visual motor, and forearm pronation. And it's healthy!

Find the Hearts Sensory Bin

This crafts is great for preschoolers and addresses tactile perception, visual discrimination, and stereognosis (if played with eyes closed). The craft can be amended to include tweezers or just little fingers, or use conversation hearts for an extra incentive!

Happy crafting everyone-- and Happy Valentine's Day! Don't forget to bring your favorite therapist chocolate and a hug! ;)

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, by Kate G.

Staff Spotlight: 20(ish) Questions with Jimmy McKay

Staff Spotlight

Many of you might have gotten whiplash recently after you saw our newest therapist walk through our waiting room door recently! It's true, Good Beginnings is no longer all-female! Jimmy joined our staff in December, transitioning to pediatrics from the world of sports and orthopedics physical therapy. Enjoy these 20-ish questions to learn more about our newest physical therapist, former DJ, and almost-parajumper...

{Recognize this guy?}

Hometown: Bronx NY

Alumni of… Undergrad Degree in Journalism / Mass Communications @ St. Bonaventure University and DPT from Marymount University

When you’re not practicing OT/PT, you are… Busy! I’m a Triathlete and have completed more than 50 triathlons. Marathon runner and former coach of Team in Training Marathon Team for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I run 1 and soon to be 2 podcasts (one about Physical Therapy and one about Psychology & Movie Characters) and I’m a summer swim coach for the Holy Mackerels in Arlington VA. I also skydive, mountain climb & scuba dive for fun!

If you weren’t a therapist, you would be… Well, I said if I didn’t get into PT school I was going to try and be a Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer or an Air Force Parajumper.

When/how did you know you want to be a therapist? I was running a rock radio station in North East PA and started training for my first Ironman Triathlon. I was looking for a life change and it came in the form of the guys that I was cycling with, they were all PTs. Their stories about their jobs made me leave radio and find PT.

Worst/weirdest job experience you’ve ever had… I was an intern for the Howard Stern show while still in college. Fill in the blanks yourself on that one…

Something your best friend would tell us that we don’t know about you… I have 2 uvulas. Wanna see?

Top 3 Highlights of your life. Getting to run my own radio station. Graduating from PT school and the third hasn’t happened yet, but i’ll let you know when it does.

Pet Peeves: Bad Driving, Bad Spelling, Bad Breath.

Best Vacation: Backpacking across Costa Rica. Pura Vida!

The last book you read is… Butterfly and the Diving Bell, written by a guy with his eyes, because he was completely paralyzed. Crazy, right?

Favorite musician/band/music: Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews Band and AC/DC.

Favorite movies: Shawshank Redemption - Boondock Saints - Star Wars (all of them).

Your most overused words/phrases: I’m trying not to use them...

Describe your worst haircut: I was cutting my own, took the guard off of the clippers to clean it. Started cutting again, noticed the guard sitting on the countertop… took a little too much off that day.

Pick 3 words to describe yourself at 13... Awkward, Goofy and Weird. Also words I use to describe myself now.

What’s your favorite season: Summer, the hotter the better.

Any advice to future therapists? I Don’t Know is the most honest answer to a question. And the response that will get you the most knowledge from.

If you could eat any food, as much as you wanted, without repercussions it would be…._Pizza… period.

Any Hidden Talents? I don't even have any non-hidden talents.

One thing you just can’t make yourself get rid of… Old T-Shirts with funny (to me) sayings on them.

Sport you would get picked last for: Bowling...seriously, I’m terrible.

Your role model as a kid? My Parents.

Please say hi to Jimmy and give him a warm welcome if you see him around the office!

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, by Kate G.

In chores, fine motor development

New Year, New Habits: Helping Around the House

It's a new year-- a time many of us make resolutions to take better care of ourselves, get organized, connect with our family. As a parent of two very loving, adorable and energetic boys, one of my resolutions is to find some time for ME, and the best way I have found this extra time is to delegate household responsibilities! True, it’s easier said than done but I assure you it’s possible. Here are some fun and easy ways that children of all ages and abilities can help out at home, as well as specific products that enhance independence. Not only will these activities help your child achieve their therapy goals, YOU get a little time off-- everybody wins!

Spraying and wiping surfaces and windows

Squirt bottles help strengthen hand muscles, as well as reinforce hand separation skills necessary for a mature writing grasp and scissor skills-- and kids love to spray them! Throw in a squeegee and now they’re strengthening their wrist and forearm. This a great activity for children two and older.

Folding Laundry

Younger children can help sort and match socks and underwear. For older children, folding laundry (matching corners, aligning seams) is a great way to work on spatial awareness, discrimination and visual closure, fine motor skills, and general motor planning and sequencing skills.

Loading the Dishwasher

My husband and I have a friendly competition on who can fit the most articles in the dishwasher-- sometimes I think we spend more time loading the dishwasher than it would take to wash and dry them by hand! Why not have your school-aged child help-- it's like real life Tetris...with less sitting, and more standing and squatting. Let younger children play at the sink with bubbles and a sponge, washing non-breakable dishes and utensils. They are working on sequencing, tactile exploration and discrimination, bilateral motor coordination, standing endurance and visual attention.

Vacuuming

You know how your child’s therapist has been suggesting proprioceptive (heavy work) activities and strengthening/endurance opportunities? Here's your opportunity! Good-bye dog fur and crumbs, hello regulation, body awareness, and endurance!

Sweeping

Kids eat dinner, Mom and Dad spend the rest of the night hunched under the table scooping up half of dinner that ended up on floor. Sounds familiar, right? Let the kids grab their dustpan and brush and easily maneuver themselves under the table to sweep up the crumbs. Now they are integrating reflexes, emphasizing body awareness, enhancing bilateral motor coordination and saving our backs. Double win!

Meal Prep ideas

Chopping: Have you seen those nylon knives with serrated edges and a blunt tip? They are the perfect tool for children 5 and up to practice their cutting skills. Delegate that salad or chopped fruit to your child as your “sous chef.” Bonus: children involved in meal preparation are more likely to try their dinner choices and broaden the variety of their diets!

Cherry Pitter: Yes these do exist and they are fantastic! Just put the cherry in the holder, squeeze the handles, and out goes the pit. Perfect for hand strengthening!

- Olive grabber/ Pickle Pinchers: This kitchen tool that looks like the ever-frustrating claw game you find at arcades, but it’s so much more fun. When your child uses this kitchen tool to grab olives and pickles from a jar, he or she is strengthening hand separation skills and the web space between the thumb and index finger.

- Mix it up: Have your little ones help stir various batters, soups, noodle dishes and they are reinforcing bilateral coordination and upper extremity endurance.

- Fern Barry, OTR/L

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, by Kate G.

Now Launching: Pathways to Play!

It was almost four years ago that I became a mom. And while I had plenty of experience as a pediatric physical therapist under my belt, motherhood completely changed my perspective on my job, including how I educate parents, and sometimes how I recommend treatment! No experience in the medical world, no childcare experience, compared to the personal, emotional roller coaster I experienced as a new parent, carrying the full weight of responsibility for the health and well being of a tiny, fragile life. I worried about things I swore I would never worry about and broke rules I swore I would never break! My empathy shot through the roof when I returned to work after my maternity leave, meeting children and parents and seeing them through a new set of eyes.

I can't tell you how many parents I have met over the years who walk into our practice absolutely terrified of the physical therapy referral they've been given for their precious, new baby (commonly for torticollis or a motor delay). With new empathy on hand, I've hugged many a mom as I've tried to reassure them the road ahead of them isn't as daunting or scary as they might think. And I can't tell you how many times, after a few sessions of education and encouragement, I've had those same, reassured parents marvel, "I didn't know ANY of this stuff about development! Why doesn't anyone teach us this??"

It is so rewarding to encourage, educate, and empower parents to maximize their children's developmental potential, and now after years of dreaming, Good Beginnings to excited to offer support and educational groups for new parents-- Pathways to Play. No diagnosis or referral required. All are welcome!

The mission of Pathways to Play is to provide a comfortable environment where families can bond and support one another, while facilitating ways for families to manage time and stress while caring for your new baby. Sessions will provide a hands-on, fun play experience for you and your baby while providing information on developmental milestones and recommendations for appropriate and affordable toys and activities. It also allows vital time to connect with other parents in the same stage of life, and extended time with health professionals not always available during busy well-checks and appointments. Groups will be organized by the age of your infant, so topics will be catered specifically to your stage of development.

We expect to launch our first group in January 2017-- if you are interested and looking for more information, click here, or get in touch with us at info@gbtherapy.org! We can't wait to have you join us on this adventure!