Masks are required at TVP for all entrants over 2 years old.
Please bring your own mask for each person over 2 years old who enters our building.
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As the new year comes and insurance plans change, please remember to bring your insurance card with you (or send it with your child). It is good practice to keep it on hand for every appointment with us. Thank you!
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1. TVP will see your children aged 0-21yrs old. Once your child has turned 22, we will not be able to see him/her/them in our office. Please help your young adult make the transition to an adult doc by this age. We can help if needed!
2. Due to the high prevalence of the Omicron variant in our patients, we will be converting to TELEMEDICINE ONLY for counseling, speech and nutrition visits. Your specialist in these fields will contact you if they feel like an in-person appointment is more appropriate. Thank you for your patience in this regard.
3. Most sports physicals need a date AFTER March 1st of the current year. If your middle-schooler or teen needs a sports physical, please consider calling now for a March appointment. It is our recommendation to skip the Urgent Care sports physical and come see your primary doc! There is MUCH more screening to ensure mental and physical wellness and your insurance should cover most well-visit care. Please check with your insurer for details.
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Announcing the New Mom Support Group
TVP is excited to announce a new support group available to mothers of our patients! The group will meet virtually every other Tuesday from 10-11am beginning February 1st.
Registration is required but there is no cost. The group will be led by Crystal McCown, LCSW and Dr. Alina Boelman. We hope this will be a space for new mothers to connect with each other and work through the difficulties of adjusting to motherhood while also celebrating the joys of becoming a parent. To register, please call our office (520) 722-2585. See the link on our website's "groups and classes" page for more details!
We look forward to adding more support groups, nutrition and speech classes and facebook/instagram live sessions with TVP staff! Stay up to date by checking out our list of active classes on the TVP homepage!
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Tanque Verde Pediatrics is now hiring! Looking for full-time Front Office Personnel to work in our office. Are you someone who wants to earn competitive wages and benefits, work with amazing people and loves families as much as we do? Please call our office or email your resume to frontdesk@tanqueverdepeds.com.
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We are now offering parking lot testing appointments for select patients at TVP. If your child had an exposure or has mild symptoms not needing an in-office assessment, please call our office for a parking lot test appointment. We will have openings daily until they are filled. Your doctor will assess the type of test needed and let you know how to get your child's results. (Sorry, not offering these to parents at this time due to limited supply availability.)
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Nutrition Nugget
I am not big on resolutions as they tend to give the feeling of all or nothing. However, I do recognize that January can be a time for self reflection and improvement. If you are looking to make changes, I encourage you to make changes based on how you feel and not how you look.
- I feel better when I eat vegetables with dinner.
- I feel better when I move my body.
- We feel better when we eat at home.
- I feel better when I allow myself to serve convenience foods to meet the needs of my family.
- When making a goal, make it SMART- Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Based.
I encourage you to call the office and schedule a nutrition appointment to assist with making and meeting any nutrition goals you have for your family.
-Caitlin Provencio, RD, Tanque Verde Pediatrics
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The Counseling Corner:
Introducing Goal Setting with Children
Often times in the New Year, we think about self-development, new goals, bad habits we want to kick, etc. Goal setting is an awesome topic to introduce to your children and is a way to increase family connection as you all work to help each other achieve your goals. However, if we’re not careful, we can pick too many, too difficult, or too unrealistic goals without realizing it. This can lead us to feeling poorly about ourselves, questioning our ability to change, ability to be “motivated”, or even important enough to consider being better. Often our kids are dealing with thoughts and fears of perfectionism, being unlovable, or simply not good enough. We don’t want goal setting to add to these thoughts of failure.
So how do we make it manageable, constructive, and a positive experience?
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Family Goal Setting Activity:
- Turn on some music, make a favorite snack or drink, grab your art supplies and a piece of cardstock or poster board for each family member and gather around the table.
- Section your poster into 4 sections: Physical, Emotional, Social, and Intellectual
- Go around and brainstorm different things you would like to accomplish in each area. (For younger kids, explain what each means and what might fall into that category)
- If your child mentions a long term goal (getting into preferred college or becoming an astronaut), help them break it down into short term manageable goals. Something like earning money to go to space camp over the summer, passing their math benchmark, learning about being a pilot, watching documentaries about planets or space travel, etc.
- Always keep a list of the brainstormed ideas or next step goals so your child has ideas once they’ve completed a goal.
- Have a regular goal check-in. Maybe this is as often as once a month, or more spread apart like once a quarter. Again, make it fun! Throw a party with balloons and decorations. Celebrate the FAILED goals as well as the ones we’ve made progress on or completed!
- Remind our children that failures are learning experiences for future goals. Maybe they learned they don’t actually like baseball. Or that they love to run, but waking up early is too difficult with the demands of school. Maybe the goal was too big or difficult and needs to be broken down even more.
- Encourage your child to celebrate when goals are completed and start another one!
Goal setting encourages continual growth and change in a person. It doesn’t have to be a year long slog or embarrassment when we stop the second day. Let’s turn the energy of the New Year into something that promotes a growth mindset in our children, and gives us extra reasons to celebrate life!
Wishing you a Safe and Happy New Year from your Mental Health Team at Tanque Verde Peds
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Fostering Toddler Language During Covid
Many, if not most, toddlers have had limited interactions with people outside of the immediate family due to the pandemic. If this is causing you to worry about your little one’s language development, know that you’re not alone!
Here are just a few simple things you can do at home to help enrich your child’s language-learning environment.
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Focus on being a language model, rather than instructing your child to say words. One way to do this is by talking about what you and your child are doing as you’re doing it. “I’m making a sandwich…I hear a dog barking…You found your dinosaur–there he is!...You bounced the ball!”
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Teach the back-and-forth nature of communicating by providing opportunities for your child to take a turn talking. When your child uses a word, sound, or gesture to “tell” you something, respond back to them, and then wait for them to take another turn. See how long you can keep the “conversation” going!
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Incorporate language into your toddler’s daily routines (bath time, meals, getting dressed). Lots of new words, sounds, and fun actions can be built-in to these times of day. For instance, during bath time you can use new vocabulary like “splash, bubbles, float, hair, tummy, towel, slippery, soap, wash, dry, pour, drip” and help your child understand what the words mean through play.
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Read books with your child every day. Besides reading the words, you can point to and name pictures, talk about what’s happening, and teach your child how to turn the pages.
Most importantly, play and have fun with your little one! All of the tips above will be more effective with an engaged toddler who is having fun with you.
If you have concerns about your child’s language development, don’t hesitate to call the office for an appointment. I’d love to visit with you and your child.
-Natalie Clausen, M.S., CCC-SLP | Tanque Verde Pediatrics
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Our office is experiencing a HIGH volume of phone calls, visits and positive tests due to Omicron. Consider using our online tools to avoid the wait time and get your questions answered! Please see examples of these tools noted below:
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Questions about Covid?
??My child was exposed, do they need to be tested and if so when??
??My child tested positive at home, do I need confirmatory tests??
??My child has cold symptoms, how do I know if it's Covid??
??When are they safe to return to school??
Please see our website Covid-19 Self Assessment! It will walk you through all these questions, links to local school district guidelines, testing sites (in addition to our office) and so much more!
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Questions about a medical issue? A behavioral issue? A medication dose? Immunizations? Picky eater? Developmental issues? Please use our Symptom Tracker! Without having to wait for a call back from our nurses, you have the information at your fingertips! Click here to try it!
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Tempted to just expose your family and "get omicron over with"? Please resist that temptation for all the reasons noted in this article. Hang in there, Tucson. With mitigation methods (mask wearing, stay home when sick, vaccination, social distancing), we can get through this!
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Pfizer Covid Boosters are now available, approved and recommended for all patients aged 12 and over! If your child is at least 12 years old and 5 months out from their second Pfizer Covid vaccination, we recommend getting them a booster shot! Call our office for an appointment and fill out the online consent form!
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Thank you to all who donated diapers and foods for our drive! The food will be sent to the Community Food Bank and the diapers went to help stock the hygiene closet at Iamyou360.org. We have the best families! |
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