Meet the Owner
Hello Everyone!
My name is Courtney Pride, MS, OTR/L. I am the owner of Pride Pediatric Therapy and an occupational therapist.
I grew up in southern Maine and moved to the Farmington Area in 2019 with my husband and our fur babies. Farmington has been our home away from home and we are so happy to have planted our roots here. I received by Masters of Occupational Therapy from Husson University in 2019 and my Bachelors in Healthcare Studies in 2018. I have been practicing in pediatrics since graduation and have loved every minute of it. Throughout college I worked as a direct support professional (DSP) and a behavioral health professional (BHP) with both adults and children, whom had intellectual disabilities, social-emotional developmental disorders, ASD, ADHD, etc. Those experiences have greatly supported my skills in the occupational therapy field. Since becoming a practitioner I have focused highly on sensory and oral-motor based feeding therapy for children who have swallowing dysfunction and/or oral/tactile sensory processing deficits, as well as reflex integration skills and the impact on retained primitive reflexes. One of the many reasons why I love OT is the creative freedom and the emphasis on playing is learning. A child can new play too much, play is my favorite occupation! As a level II student I created a sensory pathway for my clinical placement and have since been able to create and install 15+ pathways for schools across the state of Maine. I have been able to combine my love of crafting and creating with my OT knowledge and create the perfect sensory movement break for students. In my free time outside of the OT world you can find me running my wedding coordination business, Pride Events and Design Co., spending time outdoors, playing with our fur babies, visiting family and friends or playing a round or two of mini golf! Opening my own practice has been a dream of mine since my first professional development class where we had to make a poster, including all of our wildest dreams after college. So, opening Pride Pediatric Therapy has truly been a dream come true for me. I’m beyond grateful for my family, colleagues and all the children and their families that I have worked with throughout the years who have supported me and helped shape me into the practitioner I am today. I love that I get to be a piece of the puzzle in these children’s lives, helping them reach their goals and journey to independence, as well as guide and support their families.
Our Mission
Our mission is to offer families a warm and supportive environment where they can learn about their child’s developmental needs and how to nurture their child’s capacity to succeed. Our aim is to help children reach their potential by treating the whole child using techniques learned from experience and directed by evidence-based practices and working to help them and their families understand that their speed or diagnosis does not determine who they are.
We honor that each child is a member of a family unit where parents, siblings, and extended family each influence the child’s experiences. We guide and support families who are struggling with understanding their next steps to getting the services they need for their children. We are here to help develop the skills needed for prosperous futures for both the families and their child. Our philosophy centers on the idea that children learn about their environment and how to exist within their environment by playing and interacting with their surroundings. We believe it is critical to make therapy as fun and motivating as possible.
We envision a space that is open to all and provides an educational haven for parents and caregivers by giving the community direct access to the latest research and developments in pediatric habilitative and rehabilitative services and we work from a practice model that both families and therapists love. We strive to continually improve our clinic to be a collaborative and state-of-the-art facility that provides resources to families and other health professionals in the area in regard to pediatric therapy services, family assistance and equipment/adaptation needs. We value honesty and creativity and we respect the clients, therapists, partners and community we serve.
