Blossom & Bloom Therapy Services

Hi Vero! Since my practice's start almost 2 years ago, we have slowly and steadily infiltrated homes, schools, and public spaces making positive connections with kids and their families, sharing love and support, and making an impact. We are a small practice that values authenticity and emphasizes relationship-based, child-led therapy. I am so proud and beyond grateful to say that we have had the most amazing group of clients/families here on the Treasure Coast, and currently have room for a few more on the schedule 🌷 If you believe your child would benefit from Occupational Therapy, please reach out to me via phone/text/email/PM and I will answer any questions you might have.

💛🌷🩷✨

www.blossomandbloomtherapyfl.com

Additional services:
🌸 Standardized Sensory Profiles with report (any age)
🌸 Professional Academic/Functional Recommendations
🌸 Primitive Reflex Testing/Home Program

I am so proud and excited to introduce Meghan as our newest clinician! She may be new to Blossom & Bloom, but she isn't new to me 😉 I had the pleasure of mentoring Meghan during her pediatric clinical internship and I'm looking forward to watching her make a positive impact on our clients and their families! 🌷🩷

Had such a wonderful evening celebrating the season with these amazing women and enjoying some togetherness. I am so thankful to have found compassionate individuals to join my team and grow with me! ❤️🎄2024 coming up next!

So thankful for the opportunity to spend this day with my employee and other colleagues from our community learning from Sally Haughey about the power of play (which we are SO passionate about at Blossom & Bloom!). Here are mine and Ms. Fernanda’s Superpower Peg Dolls made during our workshop. We believe in the power of curiosity, love, kindness, and connection. ✨🩷

We had SO much fun participating with Special Needs Inclusive Trick or Treat at the Park today! 🩷🩵

For anyone interested! It’s a new playgroup and we are trying to spread the word 💙❤️💛💚🧡

I'm so excited to share that we are welcoming a new therapist to the team! Blossom & Bloom is no longer a "one-woman show" and I couldn't be happier! Fernanda is skilled, creative, intuitive, and fun and I am confident that our clients and families are going to fall in love with her!

As the owner of Blossom & Bloom, this represents to me the growth and accomplishment of the practice and our continued commitment to providing accessible pediatric Occupational Therapy services to Indian River County (and beyond!). 🌷🌈☀️

Ok Facebook friends all across the country…if you are struggling and need a warm meal for your family, check out We Are Lasagna Love. It is as simple as signing up in your area and if there is a neighbor signed up as a volunteer you will be matched! I got to make my first lasagna for a neighbor in need today and I absolutely love the simple kindness in this whole concept.

If you need a meal, please sign up.
If you’re fortunate enough to make a meal, please sign up…..they say kindness is contagious! ☺️

www.lasagnalove.org
From their site:
“Lasagna Love is a global nonprofit and grassroots movement that aims to positively impact communities by connecting neighbors with neighbors through homemade meal delivery. We also seek to eliminate stigmas associated with asking for help when it is needed most. Our mission is simple: feed families, spread kindness, and strengthen communities.”

When kids exhibit challenging behavior, we can be stress detectives 🕵️‍♀️ …. finding and removing barriers.

Artist: KWiens

https://www.facebook.com/100087870753308/posts/173342848938073/?mibextid=cr9u03

Autistic kids have play skills.
We know how we like to play.

Play does not have to look a certain way, it just had to be fun and natural for the person.

If your therapist is 'teaching' your child to play in other ways, ask them why.

The best way to help our kids learn new skills is by playing THEIR way beside them, showing interest in THEIR world, and connecting through THEIR interests and joy. That's where real relationships happen and genuine learning occurs.

Em 🌈✌🌻
AuDHD SLP

PARENTING HACK: When you're exhausted and your kids want to PLAY PLAY PLAY, choose the game "What's on my butt" -- a game where the parent sprawls facedown on the couch and has to guess what objects the kid is setting down on their butt. 😆 A toy dinosaur? An orange? Who cares, you’re lying down.

Best. Idea. Ever. 🤩

(via on IG)

Wishing you all a delightful Easter filled with joy, laughter, and love. May this holiday bring you an abundance of colorful eggs, delicious treats, and memorable moments spent with your loved ones. Let's celebrate the arrival of spring and the beauty of new beginnings. Happy Easter everyone! 🐰🌸🐣

For children with sensory sensitivities or neurodivergence, holidays like Easter can be overwhelming and/or overstimulating. Here are some ideas to help make the Easter holiday more enjoyable and inclusive for your child:

🌷Prepare in Advance: Talk to your child about the upcoming holiday and what to expect. Use social stories, pictures, or videos to help them understand the traditions and activities.

🌷 Create a Schedule: Create a visual schedule or countdown calendar to help your child prepare for Easter. This can help reduce anxiety and provide a sense of predictability.

🌷 Activity Modification: Consider modifying activities to better suit your child's needs. For example, if your child has fine motor difficulties, use larger or easier to grasp items for egg decorating.

🌷 Strength-based Focus: Choose activities that align with their special interests and strengths. For example, if your child loves sensory play, consider an Easter egg hunt with different textures inside the eggs, an Easter themed sensory bin for sensory play or incorporating their favorite toys or characters into your various Easter activities.

🌷 Take Breaks: Provide your child with a quiet and calm space to take breaks if they become overwhelmed. This can be a separate room or a quiet corner of a room with calming toys or activities.

🌷Above all, be patient and flexible. It's okay if things don't go exactly as planned. The most important thing is that your child feels supported and loved.

Remember, every child is unique, and it's important to create an inclusive and welcoming environment for all. By making small adjustments and being mindful of your child's needs, you can help make Easter a holiday to remember! 🐣🌷🥚

Play!

Far too often, even the youngest child is directed by adults to engage in superficial and rather rote learning activities, such as labeling colors or naming letters.

But when a child is taken away from opportunities to play, they miss out on learning about themselves, the world, their bodies and their agency. Self-generated play ideas, like building a house from blocks, will teach a child about gravity, weight, the force they must use with their arms to balance the blocks jut right against each other, spatial relations, ocular skills . . . the list goes on.

What about play with blocks that consists of lining up blocks over and over, for a long period of time? Should this be re-directed?

Why? We don't know what we don't know.

When a non-speaking autistic child plays, we don't know what they are thinking or learning. Truly, we don't understand the purpose of their play and so, we cannot know how it might be supporting the child? Can we theorize?

Certainly.

This play may be calming, regulating given all the stressors in a child's life. This play may allow a child to think and plan and sequence the ways in which the blocks are aligned. Alternatively, the child's thoughts may be deep in a fantasy - is this pretend play in their own head? Are they figuratively a thousand miles away?

We don't know, we won't know, and we cannot know. But we can accept that this is how the child needs to play, today.

We can let autistic children play!

Only then will they have the fundamental ability to feel safe in the world, to self-regulate, to engage, to experiment, to try things, and to learn academics, when developmentally ready.

*Edited to add: several people have pointed out that this quote is one that should be credited to the Black community. The appropriation that has taken place to refer to Neurodivergent people has been an upsetting one, and I'm sorry for that. I will leave the post as is so not to erase anyone's labour in educating us.*

I’m tired and sad. The biggest of tired and the deepest of sad.

I read a quote this week from David Meer that said ‘Neurodivergent people have to be twice as perfect to be considered half as good.’

I feel that deeply. My heart hurts.

Things can’t change fast enough for our Neurodivergent kids.

Em
AuDHD SLP

Check out these beautiful locally made sensory kits! 😍

We ❤️ sensory play ☺️

💪🏾As OTs we should always be aware of a client's postural stability and strength. It impacts so much of what they can do in terms of fine and visual motor, balance, and ADLs.

There are many activities we can do to improve it:

⭐️Crawling over pillows: Crawling is a great way to provide input to the shoulder girdle and engage the core. Crawling over soft pillows is even harder because it challenges our vestibular system and really encourages us to activate muscles.

⭐️Reaching in quadruped: for all the same reasons crawling is great. Add in a reaching component to move their center of gravity and require I arm do all of the weight bearing.

⭐️Working on a vertical surface: Think of painting on an easle or playing with magnets on the fridge. With our arm flexed forward and stabilized, our shoulder girdle is strengthening, which is really important for those controlled fine motor movements.

⭐️Make them move slowly: lots of kids move super fast and we think they are really strong. Actually, the slower we move, the more muscles we have to recruit and maintain activation. Pretend to move like a turtle!

⭐️Sitting on an unstable surface: This should only be used during therapy, or when an adult is monitoring the child. While yes, it can help strengthen, they also can fatigue really fast. Wiggle cushions or yoga balls aren't great for these kids in the classroom, when they are expected to do any fine motor tasks and the teacher isn't paying attention to fatigue.

⭐️Coloring (or any activity) in prone: Activating those back muscles are just as important as core muscles. Ideally, the child is weight-bearing through the elbows, or lifting their arms and shoulders off the floor and using their hands to toss a ball.

The Well-Balanced OT

Meaningful connection above all else 💗🌷

As an occupational therapist, I always encourage play!

Whether children are very young, not even ready for preschool. Or perhaps they are middle school students, spent and ready to unwind at the end of a long school day.

Play serves many functions, such as building skills like thinking, planning, sequencing, initiating. Play also is self-calming and regulating. This is true for people of all ages, as seen in a game of tag or some red light, green light!

Often though, play looks different for autistic children, and can present as what used to be called "non-purposeful" or rote. An example of this might include lining up toys or cars. But let's reframe this using a neurodiversity-affirming perspective.

Lining up toys brings organization to what may be a messy bin of items and perhaps introduces order to an overwhelming world. In fact, this type of play may be extremely calming to an overwhelmed child; more time engaging in this occupation could mean the difference between having a meltdown during a long school day or feeling calm and self-regulated.

In addition to these potential benefits for this type of play, there are many skills that are being addressed as well, only some of which are even mentioned in this visual!

A supportive idea is to gently and respectfully join an autistic child as they engage in this type of play. Line up cars yourself. Determine your own criteria for what cars go where in your own row.

Imitating a child in this way validates their actions and lets them know that their ideas are valuable and respected, which in turn will increase an autistic child's self-confidence and feelings of worth!

The purpose behind creating my music is never about becoming a "star". It's about sharing the "stardust" inside my songs.

As important as the functional goals are, it’s even more important to work on building a trusting relationship that is safe for the client.

Build rapport and connect. That connection will open the doors to greater collaboration, regulation, and learning, which will lead to better goal achievement!

It's a win-win situation!