One day in my son’s occupational therapy session, we had a giant “light-bulb moment.” Our son was in the corner, staring at the hinges in the door. It was as though he was stuck there and had no interest in any other activity. I remember feeling really embarrassed by it. Then, after a while, Molly, our OT, crawled over to the door and started staring at the hinges with him. I asked her, “What are you doing?” She said, “I’m staring at the hinges. You have to enter his world.”

What she was really teaching me was that if I wanted to connect with my son, in a way he could understand, I was going to have to start seeing the world through his eyes. Meet him where he is at. And, from that day forward, nothing was the same. The growth my son had was incredible. She changed MY thinking, so that I could help my son when my therapist was not there. And now, 10 years later, we still refer to this moment and remind ourselves to get into his world. Just the other day, my husband said, “You need to go look at the hinges.” 

We had many services over the years at Kidworks, including Speech Therapy, Music Group, Occupational Therapy, and various social clubs. I owe so many profound experiences in my life to the therapists at Kidworks. My son struggled to talk and spent a lot of time screaming for his needs early on. Then, when he learned to talk, he only spoke back the things he heard. He could say, line for line, every commercial, cartoon, or movie line he ever watched and would say it in a sort of robotic way. He would use these “scripts” to try to communicate with us. For many years, he had never spoken a word that came from his own mind. Then, one day, he said, “I love you” to me and it was different. I wasn’t scripted and it wasn’t spoken in that way where you knew it was from something he watched on TV.

I was lucky enough to be the first one to hear him say words from his mind and his heart and I owe that to Ann, his Speech Therapist. Ann was incredibly supportive and went above and beyond the role of SLP over the years. She watched my son and my family grow not only in size, but in knowledge and confidence. She helped us, help ourselves until the day he “graduated” speech therapy, a truly bittersweet moment for our family.

Many times, when I hear my son chatter on and on today, I think back to those days early on with Ann and think how lucky we were to have her.

I cannot express my gratitude enough to all the therapists that helped my son and my family over the years at Kidworks. Our town is so lucky to have a clinic like this- one that leads with their hearts.