Rooted & Rising Therapies: our story to becoming a leading neurodiversity affirming pediatric therapy in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas.
A letter from Rachel, owner of Rooted & Rising Therapies:
I would like to share the story behind Rooted and Rising Therapies. I (Rachel) have always been passionate about working with neurodivergent children, starting back in 2017. In 2017, I was a speech-therapy assistant in DFW with my caseload of primarily autistic and adhd boys. My sessions were all over the place, literally; we would do our sessions running around living rooms, playing on the floor, and in their backyards. I worked for a home health company and had no access to other therapists to understand that I did therapy differently from others.
After graduate school, I again found a caseload full of neurodivergent children. I was given a small therapy room at a private practice. The room was so small that I had to pick up the chairs and put them on the table so the child and I could walk into the room. I was struggling to sit at a table all day, and my kids were struggling to focus and engage with the office space we were given. I did not initially think about alternative treatment locations because this is how I was taught to do speech therapy in graduate school. We were taught to have our kids sit at the table with us and use a star chart for the child to earn play time in our sessions. (CRINGE). Slowly, I started seeing more and more of my caseload in the sensory gym and shifting away from the traditional therapy approach. The sensory gym is where the magic happened; the kids and I had the space and freedom to do play-based, child-led sessions. Eventually, my entire caseload had sessions in the gym; I was the lone SLP who lived in the gym with the OTs and PTs. I co-treated with OT and developed a strong understanding of sensory and regulation that also impacted my career and the way I treated my kids forever.
God closed that chapter and every other job opportunity when He placed it on my heart to open Rooted Therapies. Rooted from the get-go was child-led, play-based, and incorporated sensory regulation. I took a deep dive into gestalt language processing and niched down. Echolalia, scripting, recreating scenes, and echopraxia became my WORLD. I finally found the missing link to working with neurodivergent kids. Before, when doing child-led, play-based therapy with my caseload, they were making progress; however, it was still SLOW because I didn’t understand how their brain truly processed and developed language. I was commenting that echolalia was used “more functionally” in sessions, but I didn’t have a clue how integral supporting and understanding echolalia was. In the almost four years Rooted has been open, I have supported children progress from stage one to stage four/five of gestalt language processing in as short as a year, when before, they would have been considered “lifers.” “Lifers” means they would need speech therapy for their entire life, and they still wouldn’t reach conversational speech because the analytic/traditional approaches used on them didn’t support how their brain develops language. But not anymore, not at Rooted!
Rooted and Rising Therapies became a well-sought-after practice in DFW for autistic kids, supporting gestalt language processors, AAC users, and kids/teens benefitting from social communication and executive functioning support. Rooted has expanded to offer occupational therapy to better support the kids we serve on-site. All of our therapists have their own personal experience and passion for gestalt language processing. I am so grateful for our team; finding other therapists that are aligned with my approach are extremely hard to find. Mikayla, Austin, and Liz are a gift and they beautifully reflect the heart and mission of Rooted.
Rooted is a space where children and teens feel safe, their brains can be seen for their strengths, and they can grow into their best, independent selves! I think it’s also important for you to know that since opening my practice, I found out that I am AUDHD (autistic and ADHD). I use my neurodivergent experiences to shape the therapy we provide, how we support you as parents, and how we set up our office. If you are looking for something different, a therapy practice that works hard to connect and understand your child instead of changing them, we would love to support you and work together!