“In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and SNAP–the job’s a game!” -Mary Poppins
The full story of how Miss Maggie Speech Solutions came to be is a lengthy one but it started with…Mary Poppins, the original “Game Queen”. For a couple of years, I sat on this idea to create an Instagram account for sharing my favorite games and activities. Family game night was a staple in our home growing up–we played countless rounds of Yahtzee, Candyland, Mad Gab (which I don’t think I ever lost at), Bingo, and Don’t Wake Daddy. You can say my childhood years spent connecting with people around a table or on the floor playing a game wired me for the career I have now. Being both a mom and speech-language pathologist, I spend most (if not all) my days playing games.
When an outsider looks in on a speech therapy session, it can be difficult to see more than just play going on. But I’m here to tell you there is SO much more! A game or activity is never JUST a game! Games and activities DO have a job…they can teach us a lot of life skills at all stages–childhood through adulthood. Turn taking, patience, sportsmanship, language concepts, direction following skills, cooperation, creativity, the list goes on!
So I figured I would take what I knew about games, activities, speech therapy and “brand” myself. But what should my name be? In every setting I’ve worked in, I’m referred to as “Miss Maggie” and I’ve always thought of myself as a Mary Poppins of sorts–carrying around a bottomless bag of random things and you never quite know what surprises are going to be pulled out. Then when the item appears, it magically becomes a game! When I worked in the schools full time, I even dressed up as Mary Poppins for Halloween one year–I love a good costume theme (see picture above of said costume). I frequently would go back to this picture and say “Yep, that’s me! Only the bag gets bigger every year the more I learn in this field”. The vision of an umbrella and a bag full of stuff stuck in my head whenever I thought of myself as a therapist and also as a person in general. Thus Miss Maggie Poppins was born to the Instagram world in November 2023! My goal over there is to show some of my favorite games and activities, talk about the “jobs” they can do for you, but most of all provide an element of FUN in your life! I also sprinkle in other bits of randomness like local outings, resources, “day in the life”, therapy information, gift recommendations, products I enjoy, and tips/hacks. I have a million creative ideas to share and if they can help someone get a job done, I am SO happy to hear that!
“Winds in the East, mist comin’ in. Like somethin’ is brewin’ and ‘bout to begin”...
A few months after starting Miss Maggie Poppins over on Instagram, the winds of change started blowing. I couldn’t put my finger on what was in store but I knew something was coming. In every setting I’ve worked in, I felt like I never quite “fit in”...don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my job as a speech therapist! And I love parts of every pediatric setting–schools, private practice, hospital. All places have their perks and pits but what I enjoyed most was my patients and their families. It was NEVER my intention to be a “business owner” or to go out on my own as an independent clinician. In fact, if you had told me a year ago that in May 2024 I would be a private practitioner dabbling in a little bit of school contracting, Early Intervention, and seeing patients out of a home office I would have said “yeah right, my bag is not organized enough for that!” (truth be told I STILL kind of find myself saying that).
But I’ve learned over the years that if there’s not a game/activity that quite gets the job done…I create it! So I decided that maybe what I really needed to do in my career was…CREATE the job I wanted and “solve” my own problem. I kept the name everyone knows me by, Miss Maggie, and added Speech Solutions so people would know exactly what kind of “problems” I was looking to solve and rebranded once again to Miss Maggie Speech Solutions.
Of course I had to maintain the umbrella in my logo as a nod to Mary Poppins…but this umbrella also represents a lot of other things than just the “Game Queen”. The field of speech therapy itself is a wide umbrella that covers articulation, language comprehension, expression, social skills, feeding, swallowing. When we think of all of the things that can fall under any type of “disability” umbrella, it can be overwhelming. Your family’s journey with disability may sometimes feel like being caught under a dark cloud in a rainstorm. My hope is that I can be someone to weather the storm with you. Though I may not be able to make all of the clouds disappear, I want to at least hold the umbrella for you.
And that’s the long short of how Miss Maggie Speech Solutions and her umbrella logo, something I never dreamed of happening, happened. I should really learn to never say “never”. After all, Mary Poppins said “anything can happen if you let it”.
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