Therapy SPOT to host ‘Cookies, Cocoa, and a Caring Santa’ event on Dec. 12

The Therapy SPOT will host its sixth annual Cookies, Cocoa, and a Caring Santa event on Monday, Dec.12, from 5:30 -7:30pm at their location on Gentilly Road. The team is ecstatic to give all children a welcoming time to meet Santa and Mrs. Claus.

Crank up the cocoa and holiday cheer

Caroline Bowman, Therapy SPOT owner and Speech Language Pathologist, says that at the heart of this family event is providing an experience for the children who they serve to have a fun, comfortable, exciting, and engaging time.

They serve a wide range of children with a lot of different abilities, and a lot of the children they work with wouldn’t be able to enjoy the traditional meeting with Santa and Mrs. Claus at the mall, because of their health condition.

“We wanted to offer an alternative to a lot of the families that we work with,” Bowman says. “But we also open it up to the community.”

Caroline Bowman

What to expect with Santa

Santa and Mrs. Claus will return for their sixth visit to the Therapy SPOT. Both will individually meet each child and their families in a quiet space to interact in a way that’s comfortable for them.

Also attending will be an elf informing Santa and Mrs. Claus about their different abilities and how they can best approach each child. This prevents any uncomfortable feelings between a child and their family and Santa, Mrs. Claus, and the elf.

“We try to have the family tell us what they would like for us to tell Santa about their child, so we can make this a positive and fun experience for them,” Bowman says. “All families want their children to have these types of experiences in their life.”

Caroline Bowman

While the children wait or after their visit with Santa, there will be different rooms available in the clinic with Christmas/holiday activities. These different rooms will be: sugar cookie decorating, drinking hot cocoa, making Christmas ornaments, outdoor therapy, and playing games with each other.

Georgia Southern students that major in exercise science or speech pathology/communication disorders will volunteer to interact and engage with the children in these rooms and outside area.

More about the Therapy SPOT

The Therapy SPOT (Speech, Physical, and Occupational Therapy) is a pediatric practice that has been open for 16 years. The team serves children that need help learning skills that they are not producing naturally or developing mentally on time for their age.

Examples of a patient who needs an SLP (Speech Language Pathologist) might include a child who is unable to say particular speech sounds that they should be able to say for their age, a baby or child struggling with feeding and swallowing practices, including breastfeeding or bottle feeding, etc.

For physical therapy, they work on the larger motor skills that help children with gross motor skills of the body such as walking, crawling, sitting up, and balance.

For occupational therapy, they use play to help children learn life skills. What this looks like for babies might include bathing, brushing your teeth, combing your hair, dressing and undressing yourself, etc. With older children, this can be working with handwriting, hand and eye coordination, cooking, being more efficient on a keyboard, and more. Occupational Therapists can determine which things are hindering children in their daily activities with fine motor skills.

The therapists at the SPOT work together and are considered to be sister professions. Their job as therapists is to find out the "why" of any challenge and, in turn, to help children.

“A lot of children come for more than one type of therapy and some kids come for one type of therapy,” Bowman says. “We work on helping them learn age appropriate skills so they can be the most independent successful versions of themselves.”

Caroline Bowman

The facility's mission comes from a quote by the late poet Maya Angelou, "Try to be the rainbow in someone’s cloud," which they focus on in accomplishing their mission daily.

If you are interested in learning more about Therapy S.P.O.T. click here, or to register for the event, click here.