Do NOT bring your child here…read more
If you don't read past the first few sentences, just please find someone else to take your baby or child to who is educated in child development, trauma-informed care, and knows how to work with children. This woman is not safe. If 0 stars was an option that is what Windsong would be receiving. I have never written a negative review but I feel strongly about protecting anyone else's child from the trauma that my baby and I endured in her office.
I brought my 9-month-old baby to Frankie for sleep issues that we've been experiencing, which she assured me over the phone her services would help with. I thought it was strange that she didn't take the time to explain her practice/techniques during our first phone call to schedule but figured I would get more information during the visit.
When we arrived for our visit, Frankie had me fill out paperwork, which took over 20 minutes while she was in a separate room on a phone call for part of the time and then presumably doing other work. When I finished, Frankie took the paperwork from me but did not review any of it, simply flipping over the papers to make her own evaluation notes. I figured she would get more information verbally so I still wasn't concerned yet. She asked "what is going on with her?" I explained the sleep issues that my baby was experiencing. She cut me off to tell me why my baby isn't sleeping and then did not ask ANY other questions to dig deeper and try to figure out what was going on. She also did not spend any time observing my baby's motor patterns, which I thought was strange as she is a licensed OT.
She then asked me to strip my baby down to her diaper and immediately picked her up without interacting with her at all first. Like I said, my baby is 9 months old and at the peak of her stranger-danger phase. Which Frankie would have known if she had any knowledge of child development or reviewed the extensive paperwork I filled out, where I answered the question, 'How should we approach your child?' with 'Slowly, with toys or singing.' So of course my baby starts crying and instead of trying to calm her down or build trust first, Frankie immediately starts working on her, which of course only makes her cry harder. I try to sing, smile, hold her hand to calm her down but my baby continues screaming and crying. Frankie does not give her a break or attempt to calm her - instead she tells my baby "that's not even real crying, that's just yelling" as my baby's face is clearly wet with tears. She attempted to reassure me by telling me that she wasn't hurting my baby - I actually wasn't worried about physical pain at that point as it was very clear that psychological distress is what my baby was experiencing, which Frankie seemed completely indifferent to. I was prepared for my baby to be upset, for things to maybe be uncomfortable, and for her to cry. But I have never seen a baby or child treated this way by a health professional - with absolutely no respect or responsiveness whatsoever.
After finishing the body work, Frankie proceeds to look in/work on my baby's mouth - stretching and pulling with her fingers and tools as my baby continues to scream and cry and then starts repeatedly gagging, unable to catch her breath. At this point I calmly pick up my baby to give her a break since I realized that this woman was not going to respond to her needs in any way. As I pick her up she immediately projectile vomits all over me, which was not acknowledged by Frankie.
I then calmly explained my concern for how forceful and unresponsive she was being as she was in my baby's mouth. I explained that I am a pediatric speech pathologist and was worried about causing oral aversion with the method she was using. I fully expected Frankie to listen to my concern and offer to slow down or work with me on a way to make me and my baby feel more comfortable. Nope. She IMMEDIATELY got defensive - huge red flag. She told me that she's been doing this for 40 years, there was no other way, of course she is going to cry when someone puts their fingers in her mouth, we have to get it done in a certain amount of time, asked me how I would expect her to keep my baby calm, etc. I told her that she could have spent time building some rapport first (like during the 20 min we were filling out paperwork), she could have moved slowly to help my baby warm up to what she was doing, that my baby was at the dentist earlier in the day and did not cry at all when the dentist was in her mouth, and that things can take more time with kids/babies and that's okay. Frankie then jumped up out of her chair and said "I think we're done" and stormed out of the room. To which I happily scooped up my baby and ran out of that place.
Please continue reading in attached photo.
