The Margaretian Model of Child Care for Neurodivergent Profiles

Home wing: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Lumen Learning Classroom · Also supported at: St. Elizabeth of Hungary’s Inclusive Development Hub (assistive technology)

The care we will provide. Structured Literacy — explicit, systematic, cumulative instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics, the approach with the strongest research support that exists for teaching children with dyslexia to read. Sessions run 30 to 60 minutes daily, one-to-one or in groups of no more than three, delivered by special educators certified in structured literacy, sustained for a minimum of three school terms before any re-evaluation.

Supporting the whole learner. Audiobooks and text-to-speech guarantee that a child’s access to stories, science, and ideas never waits on decoding. Repeated-reading builds fluency; morphology instruction carries older students into complex vocabulary.

Honestly stated. We will not use colored overlays, tinted lenses, or vision therapy — the pediatric and ophthalmological professional bodies have jointly rejected them. Dyslexia is a language-based difference and we will treat it as one.

Faith alongside. Scripture and prayers in audio and pictorial form, so reading difficulty never stands between a child and God.

Home wing: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Lumen Learning Classroom · Also supported at: St. Dymphna’s Youth Therapeutic Wellness Wing (occupational therapy)

The care we will provide. Explicit handwriting instruction paired with occupational therapy for the motor foundations — 20 to 30 minutes of OT twice weekly, handwriting practice daily in the early years — followed by an early, unembarrassed transition to keyboarding and speech-to-text by ages 10 to 12, because a child’s ideas matter more than their pencil grip.

Supporting the whole learner. Slant boards, adaptive grips, scribing, extended time, and dictation software as everyday tools, not special exceptions. We reduce the volume of writing demanded, never the rigor of thinking expected.

Honestly stated. We will never withhold assistive technology to force handwriting practice, and no child’s work will be graded on legibility.

Faith alongside. Prayer journals are kept by voice or drawing, so spiritual expression is never gated by handwriting.

Home wing: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Lumen Learning Classroom · Also supported at: St. Joseph the Worker’s Youth Vocational & Life Skills Academy (applied mathematics)

The care we will provide. Explicit, systematic mathematics through the concrete–representational–abstract sequence — hands first, pictures second, symbols last — with deliberate number-sense development. Thirty minutes of daily intervention in groups of two to four, delivered by trained math interventionists.

Supporting the whole learner. Visual representations, verbalized reasoning, and schema-based word-problem instruction — and math deliberately carried out of the classroom into real life: measuring in the kitchen guild, counting in the garden, budgeting a stipend at the academy.

Faith alongside. The liturgical calendar as living numeracy — counting feast days, Advent candles, and Rosary decades.

Home wing: St. Dymphna’s Youth Therapeutic Wellness Wing · Also supported at: St. Aloysius de Gonzaga’s Regulation & Movement Academy; St. Cajetan’s Youth Artisanal Guilds Wing

The care we will provide. Task-oriented therapy — CO-OP and neuromotor task training, the approaches international clinical guidance ranks first — in 45-minute sessions two to three times weekly, one-to-one or in pairs, organized into 10–12 week blocks around goals the child chooses: tying shoes, riding a bike, serving at the altar.

Supporting the whole learner. Weighted and ergonomic tools, activity modification, and motor practice embedded where it means something — kneading bread in the kitchen guild, planting seedlings in the garden — rather than drills for their own sake.

Faith alongside. Altar serving, gardening, and craftwork chosen deliberately as motor practice with genuine purpose and genuine dignity.

Home wing: St. Dymphna’s Youth Therapeutic Wellness Wing · Also supported at: St. Rita of Cascia’s Hope and Resilience Center (hip surveillance, epilepsy, medical); St. Joseph of Cupertino’s Focus & Processing Center (AAC); St. Thomas Aquinas’ Lumen Learning Classroom (academics — cognition is often typical)

The care we will provide. Goal-directed, task-specific motor training — the approach the international evidence rankings place first — with constraint-induced and bimanual therapy for children with hemiplegia, delivered in blocks organized around goals the child chooses: the bike, the stairs, the altar steps. Systematic hip surveillance on the published schedule by motor level, spasticity management with our consulting physiatrist, and orthotics and seating fitted, maintained, and re-fitted with every growth spurt.

Supporting the whole learner. Motor practice embedded where it means something — the garden bed raised to wheelchair height, the bakery station with the stabilized bowl — AAC for every child whose speech is affected, adaptive equipment across every classroom, guild, and cottage, and proactive pain screening, because children with CP hurt far more often than anyone asks.

Honestly stated. We do not use patterning therapy, hyperbaric oxygen, or craniosacral manipulation — approaches the pediatric professional bodies have rejected, some as actively harmful.

Faith alongside. Full, integrated-seating participation in the chapel our foundress’s own bent body inspired.

Home wing: St. Dymphna’s Youth Therapeutic Wellness Wing · Also supported at: Domus Margaretae Youth Residential Cottage; St. Bernadette’s Youth Animal and Ecological Sanctuary

The care we will provide. Here the building itself is the intervention, and it never clocks out: acoustic dampening, adjustable lighting, predictable transitions, and a quiet regulation alcove in every cottage. On top of that continuous environmental support, occupational therapists design individualized sensory strategies for each child, with direct OT 30 to 45 minutes once or twice weekly wherever a specific functional goal exists.

Supporting the whole learner. Noise-canceling tools, movement breaks, transition warnings before every major activity change — and the gardens and animals of St. Bernadette’s Sanctuary as living regulation spaces.

Honestly stated. We will present sensory supports as what the evidence shows them to be: powerful supports for comfort and participation — not a cure, and never a claim of academic gains.

Faith alongside. Sensory-adapted liturgy: quiet zones with a sightline to the altar, tactile icons at a child’s height, incense-free Mass options.

Home wing: St. Joseph of Cupertino’s Focus & Processing Center · Also supported at: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Lumen Learning Classroom; St. Dymphna’s Youth Therapeutic Wellness Wing; St. Louise’s Community Integration & Social Fellowship Program

The care we will provide. Naturalistic developmental approaches, peer-mediated learning, executive-function scaffolding, and self-advocacy coaching — two to five hours weekly of targeted intervention, with the rest woven invisibly into ordinary routines, and most learning happening in mainstream instruction with support. A child’s deep interests will be honored as genuine gateways to learning, friendship, and vocation.

Supporting the whole learner. Properly adapted CBT where anxiety co-occurs (it often does), explicit social-cognitive instruction, and graded real-world practice through St. Louise’s fellowship outings.

Honestly stated. We will never train a child to suppress harmless stimming or force eye contact. Teaching children to mask who they are predicts poorer adult mental health, and it has no place here.

Faith alongside. Catechesis that honors special interests as a real route to God, and sacramental preparation at the child’s own pace.

Home wing: St. Joseph of Cupertino’s Focus & Processing Center · Also supported at: St. Elizabeth of Hungary’s Inclusive Development Hub; St. Dymphna’s Youth Therapeutic Wellness Wing

The care we will provide. Functional Communication Training with augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), structured teaching, and naturalistic developmental intervention — delivered daily in embedded form, with speech-language therapy a minimum of two to three times weekly from clinicians with dedicated AAC expertise. The child’s communication device will be present, charged, and honored every waking hour, in every building, by every staff member — from the housekeeper to the director.

Supporting the whole learner. Visual schedules, video modeling, positive behavior support, sensory accommodation, and ruthlessly predictable environments.

Honestly stated. We will never withhold AAC while waiting for speech. The evidence is clear that AAC supports speech development rather than replacing it — and communication is a right, not a reward.

Faith alongside. Picture-based and object-based catechesis, with sacramental preparation adapted per diocesan guidance.

Home wing: St. Joseph of Cupertino’s Focus & Processing Center · Also supported at: St. Rita of Cascia’s Hope and Resilience Center; St. Dymphna’s Youth Therapeutic Wellness Wing

The care we will provide. Intensive AAC and Functional Communication Training, comprehensive positive behavior support, and the highest staff continuity in the house — one-to-one or one-to-two staffing during programmed activity, consistent known adults, and scheduled low-demand recovery periods that are part of the plan, never a concession.

Supporting the whole learner. A sensory-regulated environment throughout, assent-based pacing — and a standing clinical rule: when behavior changes suddenly, we look for pain first. Dental pain, reflux, constipation, and seizures all speak through behavior in children who cannot report them, and a medical workup precedes any behavioral response.

Faith alongside. Presence-based spirituality — the chapel, music, tactile sacramentals — with sacramental participation individually discerned with the pastor. No child’s place before God will ever depend on words.

Home wing: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Lumen Learning Classroom · Also supported at: St. Joseph of Cupertino’s Focus & Processing Center; St. Dymphna’s Youth Therapeutic Wellness Wing

The care we will provide. These children often carry remarkable verbal strength beside real difficulty with spatial, motor, and unspoken social learning — so we teach through the strength: explicit verbal, step-by-step instruction for physical and spatial tasks, embedded daily, and social understanding taught as clear spoken rules twice weekly rather than left to inference.

Supporting the whole learner. Structured layouts, graph paper, verbal walk-throughs of visual tasks, occupational therapy for motor planning — and their advanced reading and verbal comprehension leveraged to build confidence in every subject.

Honestly stated. NVLD is not yet a formal DSM diagnosis, and we will always say so plainly to families — while fully supporting the very real profile it describes.

Faith alongside. Verbal, Socratic, conversational formation — playing directly to these children’s deepest strength.

Home wing: St. Aloysius de Gonzaga’s Regulation & Movement Academy · Also supported at: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Lumen Learning Classroom; St. Dymphna’s Youth Therapeutic Wellness Wing; St. Cajetan’s Youth Artisanal Guilds Wing

The care we will provide. The full guideline model: behavioral supports embedded in every day, organizational-skills training, task-chunking, daily report cards — and medication for ages six and up where families and physicians choose it, reviewed monthly once stable. Around it all, abundant scheduled movement and heavy-work breaks, placed deliberately before academic blocks, because for the child with ADHD movement is not a break from the treatment. It is the treatment.

Supporting the whole learner. Standing desks, wobble seating, structured environments, and the guilds — where a child with boundless energy discovers that kneading dough and hauling watering cans are honorable work.

Honestly stated. Movement will never be taken away as punishment — removing recess for unfinished work removes the medicine because the symptom appeared. And we will not offer neurofeedback or brain-training as primary treatment; the evidence does not support them in that role.

Faith alongside. Prayer built for moving bodies — walking the Rosary, processions, active service roles — rather than demanding long stillness.

Home wing: St. Aloysius de Gonzaga’s Regulation & Movement Academy · Also supported at: St. Dymphna’s Youth Therapeutic Wellness Wing

The care we will provide. CBIT — Comprehensive Behavioral Intervention for Tics, the first-line treatment named by the American Academy of Neurology — delivered one-to-one by certified clinicians in the standard course of eight sessions over ten weeks, with boosters as needed. Medication is considered only if CBIT proves insufficient, in consultation with a neurologist.

Supporting the whole learner. Something just as important as the therapy: a whole community — staff, Sisters, and children alike — deliberately trained to not react to tics at all. Stress-reduction strategies and private retreat space when tics flare with fatigue.

Honestly stated. We will never ask a child to simply suppress tics without CBIT’s actual techniques — suppression without training increases distress. Because most children with Tourette also have OCD or ADHD, we screen for both, always.

Faith alongside. Full participation in liturgy with a quiet retreat always available — stepping out never means losing your place.

Home wing: St. Dymphna’s Youth Therapeutic Wellness Wing · Also supported at: St. Louise’s Community Integration & Social Fellowship Program; St. Bernadette’s Youth Animal and Ecological Sanctuary

The care we will provide. Cognitive behavioral therapy with graduated exposure — weekly 45–60 minute sessions with licensed child psychologists or clinical social workers, across a 12–16 session course, with small groups of three to five for gently graded social practice. For autistic children, CBT will be properly adapted — concrete language, visual supports, the child’s interests woven in, a longer arc — because unadapted CBT measurably underperforms for autistic children, and they deserve the version that works.

Supporting the whole learner. The skills leave the therapy room: trained cottage caregivers carry them into daily life, St. Louise’s outings provide real-world practice at a gentle gradient, and the animals and gardens of St. Bernadette’s Sanctuary offer a kind of calm no clinic can manufacture. Where indicated, SSRI medication carefully monitored.

Faith alongside. First Reconciliation prepared with particular gentleness so it never becomes a source of fear — and scrupulosity, the anxious conscience, recognized and answered pastorally rather than dismissed.

Home wing: St. Dymphna’s Youth Therapeutic Wellness Wing · Also supported at: Domus Margaretae Youth Residential Cottage; St. Bernadette’s Youth Animal and Ecological Sanctuary

The care we will provide. Trauma-Focused CBT — 12 to 25 individual sessions with trauma-certified therapists — inside a home run on a trauma-informed framework (ARC) that every caregiver, Sister, teacher, and nurse will be trained in and supervised on weekly. This is not a therapy a child attends. It is how the whole house runs: consistent adults, predictable days, choices offered, no surprise touch, life-story work done gently over time.

Supporting the whole learner. Sibling relationships preserved absolutely, family engagement wherever family exists, expressive arts, and the quiet companionship of animals for children who are not yet ready to trust people.

Honestly stated. So-called “attachment therapies” involving holding, restraint, or forced regression are condemned by the professional bodies and categorically banned at St. Margaret’s, without exception. For a child whose defining wound is that adults leave, the fact that ours stay is the treatment.

Faith alongside. The Marian Mantle — a theology of belonging expressed less in words than in permanence: you are wanted here, and no one is sending you away.

Home wing: St. Rita of Cascia’s Hope and Resilience Center · Also supported at: St. Elizabeth of Hungary’s Inclusive Development Hub; St. Thomas Aquinas’ Lumen Learning Classroom; St. Louise’s Community Integration & Social Fellowship Program

The care we will provide. The complete published pediatric surveillance schedule — heart, thyroid, hearing, vision, and sleep — run proactively on calendar for every child, by our pediatric team with visiting specialists. Speech-language therapy two to three times weekly, including AAC where helpful; physical therapy for muscle tone and gait woven directly into daily cottage life; and genuine literacy instruction, because we will never assume a ceiling on any child’s learning.

Supporting the whole learner. Audiology and ophthalmology on schedule, oral-motor therapy, and full membership in the choirs, guilds, and fellowship of the whole community.

Faith alongside. Full sacramental life, adapted catechesis, and real liturgical roles — choir, greeting, procession. Not accommodated into the parish. Belonging to it.

Home wing: St. Elizabeth of Hungary’s Inclusive Development Hub · Also supported at: St. Joseph the Worker’s Youth Vocational & Life Skills Academy; St. Cajetan’s Youth Artisanal Guilds Wing

The care we will provide. Systematic instruction with task analysis — every skill broken into learnable steps, taught in focused 15–20 minute blocks with high repetition and celebration, embedded across the entire day. Adaptive-skills training happens in a real teaching kitchen, a real laundry, and real community settings; a self-determination curriculum builds toward a person who makes their own choices, at whatever scale their life allows.

Supporting the whole learner. Community-based instruction with transport, AAC wherever communication needs exist, and vocational formation through the academy and guilds — because contribution is a human need, not a reward for ability.

Honestly stated. The greatest clinical danger for these children is diagnostic overshadowing — pain and mental illness misread as “behavior.” Our nurses screen for both actively and separately, always.

Faith alongside. Sacramental preparation per diocesan disability guidance, with a standing principle: the Eucharist is not withheld for want of verbal articulation.

Home wing: St. Rita of Cascia’s Hope and Resilience Center · Also supported at: St. Dymphna’s Youth Therapeutic Wellness Wing; St. Thomas Aquinas’ Lumen Learning Classroom

The care we will provide. Coordinated multi-system surveillance per the international consensus guidelines — immune function, calcium, cardiac health, palate and speech — delivered by our pediatric team with visiting immunology and cardiology. Speech-language therapy, often intensive. And proactive psychiatric monitoring at least annually from early adolescence onward, because this syndrome carries a significantly elevated risk of adolescent mental illness, and watching for it early is not optional.

Supporting the whole learner. Immune-conscious environmental care, dietary monitoring for calcium and nutrition, targeted learning support at Lumen, and seamless coordination with every visiting specialist.

Faith alongside. Ordinary, full participation. Medical fragility will never translate into spiritual exclusion.

Home wing: St. Rita of Cascia’s Hope and Resilience Center · Also supported at: Domus Margaretae Youth Residential Cottage (the dedicated food-secure cottage)

The care we will provide. The evidence is unambiguous that a structured food-secure environment is the foundation of care — so one cottage will be purpose-built for it, with secured storage designed into the architecture itself, so that no child is ever publicly restricted, conspicuously supervised at the table, or shamed. Alongside it: endocrine care including growth hormone where indicated, nutrition planned monthly by our chefs and dietitian together, daily physical activity for muscle tone, and sleep monitoring before and during any growth hormone therapy.

Supporting the whole learner. Predictable routines, behavioral support from psychologists who understand the syndrome, and trained residential staff who never mistake neurology for defiance.

Honestly stated. Hyperphagia — the relentless hunger of Prader-Willi — is a neurological drive, not disobedience, and no child will ever be treated as though it were a moral failing.

Faith alongside. Feast days and fellowship meals planned deliberately in advance, so the child with Prader-Willi celebrates with everyone, never apart from them.

Home wing: St. Rita of Cascia’s Hope and Resilience Center · Also supported at: St. Dymphna’s Youth Therapeutic Wellness Wing; St. Louise’s Community Integration & Social Fellowship Program

The care we will provide. Lifelong cardiac surveillance — the central medical priority in Williams syndrome, on the published schedule, with blood pressure in both arms — plus calcium monitoring and anesthesia-risk flagging on every medical record. Anxiety care weekly where needed, because anxiety is very common in these warm, deeply feeling children. And an education built deliberately on their remarkable verbal and musical strengths, with music woven into every single day.

Supporting the whole learner. Hyperacusis accommodation (their sound sensitivity is real distress, not preference), visual-spatial support, and a genuine musical vocation pathway — choir and liturgical music as calling, not consolation.

Honestly stated. The exceptional friendliness of Williams syndrome is one of its gifts — and a genuine safety vulnerability. We will teach stranger awareness explicitly and build protective planning around every child, without ever teaching them their warmth is wrong.

Faith alongside. Real musical vocation in the liturgy, for children whose gift for music is often extraordinary.