©Litchfield County Times 2005

In Watertown, Children's Needs Come First

By: Amy Mulvihill

       For Cathy Risigio-Wickline of Watertown, the triumvirate of occupational and behavioral therapy businesses she runs under the banner Therapy Unlimited is more a personal crusade than a traditional business venture.
     Sure there are earnings reports, financial audits and expense tabulations to oversee, but at the end of the day Mrs. Risigio-Wickline maintains that she only cares about one thing-helping children who otherwise would be marginalized by the educational system. "I just love what I do," Mrs. Risigio-Wickline, a board-certified occupational therapist, said during an interview at her home last Friday afternoon. "Some people ask me questions about finances and I am clueless. I can't even balance my checkbook," she continued with a self-deprecating laugh. "I have someone who handles that aspect of the business for me because it's not my forte. My philosophy is, you do your job, you do it well and if you do that you will make money," she said.
For Mrs. Risigio-Wickline, this simple strategy has paid dividends, as Therapy Unlimited now encompasses three bustling businesses.
    There is the Children's Therapy Center, a treatment center located in Watertown center where Mrs. Risigio-Wickline and a staff of trained physical therapists, behavioral and occupational therapists, child psychologists and nurses work with children with severe emotional, mental, behavioral and/or physical disabilities.
    Then there is Kangaroo's Korner, the day care center she and her team of therapists and educators run on a 22-acre property adjacent to her sprawling Watertown home, and finally there is the work Therapy Unlimited does through Family Junction, which is the state's birth-to-3-year-old developmental program.
    Through Family Junction, Mrs. Risigio-Wickline and her colleagues serve approximately 185 children in the Western and Southern regions of the state. Through the programs at Kangaroo's Korner and the Children's Therapy Center, she and her staff work with another 150 children, ranging in ages from 6 weeks to teenagers.
     It's enough to make one's head spin, and while Mrs. Risigio-Wickline readily acknowledges the challenges of having so many things going at once, she is resolute in her devotion to these businesses because she knows what it means to need help and have no one able to give it. "I have really bad ADHD myself, so I really understand what that's like for a child," Mrs. Risigio-Wickline acknowledged at the outset of the interview. "All I got growing up was, 'Motormouth,' and 'You talk too much'. I always felt different, but I didn't understand why. I was like, 'Why is my brain always like bing-bing-bing-bing?'" she said gesturing wildly. "I ended up going into what I needed help with," she noted.
    Indeed, despite some educators advising her to focus more on learning a trade than on attending college, Mrs. Risigio-Wickline attended Quinnipiac University, graduating suma cum laude with a degree in occupational therapy. She has since returned to school and is acquiring a master's degree in nutrition. It was during her college years, Mrs. Risigio-Wickline said, that she began to understand her own brain and develop methods of not only coping with her limitations, but using them to her advantage. And she seems to have gotten the last laugh.
     Although Mrs. Risigio-Wickline does still talk at a pace only slightly slower than the speed of sound, and does seem to be juggling approximately a million items in her brain at any given time, she is also a highly successful and engaged human being with an unnerving ability to rattle off, with only minimal prompting, impressive amounts of information that would send most other human beings scurrying for almanacs and encyclopedias.
     Indeed, she attributes her success to her boundless enthusiasm for her subject and her relentless drive to prove the doubters wrong.
"Because of my ADHD I always think I have to struggle to prove myself," she noted. "It was just recently that I realized that I should be proud of all I've accomplished too."Mrs. Risigio-Wickline's road to success began in earnest at college where she wrote out a goal list for herself. "At college [a counselor] made me write down what I wanted to do in five years, and I said I wanted to have my own practice, and I had it in one year after graduation," she related.
    While still living at home in Waterbury with her "wonderfully supportive" parents after graduation, Mrs. Risigio-Wickline was drafted to give a presentation to the Redding public school system about ADD and ADHD. Although desperately nervous beforehand, Mrs. Risigio-Wickline pulled together an insightful and illuminating presentation in one day. This led to additional freelance work around the state, as educators sought to understand attention disorders, and eventually to Mrs. Risigio-Wickline founding the services she offers today. For instance, the day care came as an outgrowth of her individual therapy practice. "Parents would say to me, I want to go back to work, but my child has Down syndrome, or this and that, and no center will take him and I don't want to leave them somewhere that they're not wanted ... ," she recounted in her machine gun delivery. Pausing for dramatic effect, she recalled her reaction to this information: "I was like, 'What!'" I said, 'They have to take them. It's in the ADA [American's with Disabilities Act].' Then I said, 'I'm going to do something about this,'" she added, laughing a little at her own gumption.
     So, she did, and now Kangaroo's Korner receives accolades far and wide for its innovative treatment methods and its willingness to take even the toughest cases. "I wanted to set the standard for centers and show them how they can take [all kids]," she said, "and wonderfully, that's what has happened." For this, Mrs. Risigio-Wickline credits her staff and the holistic approach to treatment she espouses. "We start with a full assessment of the child," she said, noting that the assessment covers everything from sleeping patterns and nutrition to family and social relationships. "We talk to everyone-babysitters, parents, grandparents, teachers. I don't just look at the here and now. I look at every part of the child's life," she explained.
    For instance, she said, a child might be brought to her with poor hand-writing skills and low motivation, for which she will investigate treatment options ranging from muscle strengthening exercises to dietary adjustments.
"We're whole people," she noted. "You can't just look at one part of us and say, 'Oh this is working.' You've got to build the foundation skills." Her methods certainly seem to have paid off, as Mrs. Risigio-Wickline's press kit is full of testimonials from grateful parents. "Imagine our delight to have found a facility like Kangaroo's Korner," says one typical testimonial. "Our children receive the services they need and the social skills they deserve. They have every opportunity to do things that other children do everyday ... [I] remember crying when I saw the first picture Summer painted there," concluded the statement.
    More than proving the doubters wrong or achieving a level of success that allows her to live in a gracious house with her husband, Jeffrey, their three children and her two step-children, this is what keeps Mrs. Risigio-Wickline going.
"Those kids that parents or teachers say, 'Oh, he's just not a student' about, those are the kids we love to help and that's why I do it," she said.

9/08/2005