We started working with Christina after our 15 month well visit. It has been almost 2 months and our son has advanced magnificently. We were anxious about zoom sessions due to Covid but Christina went above and beyond to help us prepare for and execute our lessons with minimal hassle.
Christina also helps us manage those moments when our toddler just isn't interested. She helps us adapt and adjust to changing aspects of his activity and interest level. Most importantly - Christina armed us with the necessary tools to communicate with our son that helped foster his ability to improve with both verbal and non verbal communication. There are always post therapy follow ups with helpful information and observations.
Christina exudes confidence, optimism and fun. It has been a delight working with her so far. We sincerely believed early intervention was the right choice for us. I've also raved about her to my pediatrician who will surely be recommending her to other parents.
My daughter and I had a great experience with our speech language pathologist, Christina Rooney, during our Virtual Early Intervention journey.
Christina took the time to get to know us as best she could before jumping in with specific directions. As our sessions continued we saw great progress for my daughter. She was able to start making choices through communicating sounds, picture cards and gestures. Christina always offered multiple suggestions and approaches for us during activities. I really appreciated how she valued the child/parent relationship and the kindness and patience she showed us as we were learning.
Thank you Christina, you are a incredible therapist!
Our daughter had a fantastic experience with her therapist, Catherine, at 606 Speech. Catherine is knowledgeable, caring and patient, especially during those early days when our daughter was feeling shy and not wanting to participate. Catherine gave us lots of helpful tips for practicing different words and speech patterns, and came up with fun games that really engaged our daughter during her sessions. Within months, our daughter looked forward to her “peech” sessions with Catherine and we could see a marked difference in her speech and her confidence. Within a year had progressed so much that she was back on track with her age group, and her newfound ability to communicate truly helped her personality to shine through!
In addition to being a great therapist, Catherine was always punctual and flexible on days when we needed to reschedule, etc. She responded quickly to all my questions and emails, and made the process so easy for us parents. I would strongly recommend Catherine, Meg and the 606 Speech team to anyone, and we couldn’t be more happy with our experience.
We started speech therapy when our son was about 17 months old. He was definitely on the young end of the spectrum, but having an older child who was such a huge talker gave us concerns with him. We were able to meet with Meg and Liz quickly from when we were introduced and we were off from there!
Both Liz and Meg were amazing with our son. He quickly engaged with both of them and was never uncomfortable at any point. Liz became one of the first names of non-familial people he recognized and he truly enjoyed all of the sessions with her.
The same goes for both of us. We were surprised at the extent of his delays, but with their help, he progressed more quickly than we could have ever hoped! We think that our sessions with Liz gave him just the boost he needed to gain the confidence to express himself verbally and get on track. We loved everything about our experience with Meg and Liz and will certainly be reaching out to them in the future for any speech needs!
Our speech therapist, Liz Abowd has changed our lives. My son’s speech was extremely limited before his therapy began. Over the course of the last several months, however, I have seen significant growth in his speaking and comprehension. More impressively, I observe a considerable spike in speech abilities every day Liz is there. In other words, I leave that morning and come home to a child who has learned a lot more than his average daily growth, and it is always on “Liz days” that this happens.
For this reason, I feel very comfortable linking the extent of his growth to his therapist. In addition to her obvious competence, I am repeatedly impressed by Liz’s professionalism.
She is always on time. She always confirms appointments. She is always willing to try to move things around if the appointment time does not work for our family. She is always courteous and pleasant to deal with. Etc. Of course, Liz’s job might be impossible if she did not love or simply was not good at interacting with kids – but her warmth and care for my son really does go above and beyond. To give you some idea, every night as we tuck him in bed, my husband and I ask my son what was his favorite part of the day. On days when Liz came, he always says “Liz play today!” On days when Liz did not come, he says, “Liz no come today!” Liz has become part of our family, and we are extremely grateful to her and her teachers and mentors for the work they have done with our little guy.
I cannot say enough good things about Liz and Meg. We started with speech therapy when my son Jake was 18 months old. He could only muster a few words and we were both frustrated with our inability to communicate with one another.
Liz started us off with a few simple, common sign language signs to use, and suggested we assemble a picture board to allow him to associate the picture with the sound of the word. Right away we were able to start communicating better with each other, and my day to day interactions with Jake became infinitely better.
Over the next several months he slowly but surely began to use speech instead of the signs and pictures (though, he still uses the signs out of habit!). She gave me tools and suggestions each week for us to practice. She came equipped each week with new toys and games but always brought at least one old favorite. I was most impressed with her ability to modify her lessons to accommodate Jake's mood. If he was restless, she'd make the lesson a running game. If he saw a book he wanted to read, she'd switch to reading the book. Anything to keep him engaged.
When life and illness got in the way of our weekly scheduled meeting, she was always willing to reschedule so that we wouldn't lose a week of lessons to ensure we wouldn't lose momentum.
We've recently just graduated from the program, but Liz and Meg gave me some excellent additional resources to use and reference so that I can keep working with him. I'm going to miss having them both in our lives.
I know we've said over and over that T's language skills have exploded since she started working with Liz, but we were blown away over the long holiday weekend how much more clearly and how many more words we've noticed with T. She's not only saying more: she's much more able to express her feelings and needs; she tells stories about experiences she remembers and expresses them in ways that we can understand; and her imaginative play and the stories and actions that go along with it are just amazing.
She had none of these skills a month ago! We are so happy with the work Liz has done. Thank you so much for helping our daughter!
How do you thank somebody that has truly been an invaluable gift to your family? G. was 14 months old when Meg Chalmers came into our lives. He wasn't imitating in speech or play. He'd bang his head against walls. He hadn't said mama yet, or anything really. I was worried he had autism. I so badly wanted to unlock doors for him and help him thrive in his environment, but I was lost.
Enter Meg, the most AMAZING speech therapist we could have hoped for. An answer to a nervous Mommy's prayers. She is kind, gentle, patient, loving, silly, and compassionate. Week by week she helped Gray see through the fog. She gave us reassurance and strategies. The twins love her so much they squeal when she arrives. She has not only loved them like her own, she's opened up a world of communication for G.
Hearing him say, "I love you," still gets me. He continues to learn and grow each day. I do not know where we'd be without this absolute GEM that was sent to us. I am humbled and honored to have known you, Meg. We will never forget you!!!!!
In the eight months we have been working with her, Meg has been a godsend to our family. Her deep theoretical and practical knowledge base, endless patience, and gentle nature make her not only an effective speech pathologist, but one of our little girl’s favorite people as well. Meg creatively tailors our daughter’s therapy to her unique speech-related needs, her separate sensory needs, and her idiosyncratic toddler interests. As a result, our daughter remains motivated and engaged–and has made far more progress than she would ever have been able to otherwise. Meg also helps us, as parents, to meaningfully support throughout the week the work that she and our daughter do during their sessions. We simply can’t recommend Meg highly enough.
My four year old was experiencing speech delays and it was somewhat difficult for anyone besides Mom and Dad to understand. We worked with 606 Speech for less than a year and now I think she sounds more articulate than the average 5 year old, wow! Fantastic improvement. I think what we appreciated just as much was the approach. Meghan and her team have a beautiful approach with children; positive, supportive and encouraging. Whitney just loved the time she spent with the 606 Speech team. It's hard to find good solution to issues with your kids, and such a blessing when you find an amazing team like this.
At the infant toddler stage a parent hopes “they will catch up or grow out of it” Children are sponges at this age and although you think they do not hear or understand, they do. My children are still in speech at the age of 4 but they have progressed very well and it is because of all the foundation skills Meg taught them as toddlers. Their speech skills have progressed very quickly and they will be in preschool ready to be with all the other kids. Thanks Meg for your diligence, guidance and expertise.