development

By Jerilyn Lecce, Occupational Therapist In recognition of April as Occupational Therapy Month our Occupational Therapist, Jerilyn Lecce, has provided this interesting article about primitive reflexes. When a baby is born, it displays various automatic responses that are essential for survival. These responses are directed from the brainstem and/or spinal cord and are performed automatically, … Read more

By Glenna Wortman-Obie, MA, Director of Communication, Intermountain Please, read that headline once more . . . then, one more time. In the minute or so it takes you to read that headline three times, another 2 or 3 people will go to the emergency room with a traumatic head injury—1.5 million Americans each year … Read more

By Daniel Champer, LCPC, Intermountain Clinical Manager of School Based Services Her name was Bertha, and she was every bit as old as her name makes her sound. Her Q-tip hair barely bobbed above the tip of the broom that she used to meticulously sweep the street in front of her house as I mowed … Read more

Elizabeth Kohlstaedt, Ph.D., Clinical Director It’s hard to believe that my time at Intermountain is coming to a close.  27 years ago, on June 14, 1990, I came to Intermountain Children’s Home as their clinical director.   It was a beautiful location set atop a hill, overlooking Helena and housing 24 children in 3 open cottages. … Read more

By Kathleen Slack, MS, Intermountain Special Education Teacher Scared, closed off, and wary is how they come to me.  Super vigilant of a world perceived as unsafe, unpredictable, and hurtful.  They view the world as devoid of trust or care. These are the children I teach in the residential program at Intermountain. These children seem … Read more

By Katie Harlow, LCSW, Clinical Supervisor of Intermountain School Based Services We are all part of a family, whether it be the family that we were born into, the family that chose us, or the family that we choose to create. Families are special in that they are designed to be a safe place for … Read more

By Don Kelley, LCPC, Intermountain Therapist, Kalispell Smoked my first cigarette in 2nd grade, drank my first beer in 9th grade, wrecked on a motorcycle and totaled out another car by age 18, and two arrests for MIP before I started smoking dope and dropping a few chemicals by age 20. Welcome to Montana! Born … Read more

By Daniel Champer, LCPC, Intermountain Clinical Manager of School Based Services During a recent trip back to the home that houses most of my treasured childhood memories, my mother abruptly halted the evening conversation after our kids had successfully been coerced into slumber and disappeared up the creaky old farmhouse steps with an alarming twinkle … Read more

By Tracie Dahl, LCPC, School Based Outpatient Therapist for Intermountain A game of Truth or Dare can easily be taken too far. Spin the Bottle can land on over-aggressive players.  However, these remembered games of adolescence have a level of nostalgic innocence that disappears when experimentation goes mobile through a text message, instant message, or … Read more

By Dr. Julian Nolen, Licensed Psychologist at Intermountain Adolescence. For many, these four syllables are enough to fill us with terror — searching warily for distracted drivers or checking our teenagers’ beds to confirm that they are, in fact, in their beds. In our own lives, we remember this as a time of poor decision-making … Read more