The Work We Do: Cheryl Rondinella, Manorville Speech

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My name is Cheryl Rondinella. I am the speech-language pathologist here at Manorville Speech in Wading River.

I was born in Greenlawn. I did both my undergraduate and graduate degrees at Adelphi University in Garden City. I graduated in 1997 and worked in an adult facility … I did some home-based therapy until I found out what I wanted to do, and I found I loved working closely with children and families.

I have worked the whole gamut of ages but I decided over the years to specialize in children. I have about 22 years of experience working in the early intervention population, which is all home-based, and then also in my office now.

We do treat patients here in the office and we do groups for parents.

I work on a lot of skills in the therapy session. Some of the things would be eliciting attention from a child, so the child would look toward my face, will look into my eyes, will look toward my mouth to watch my mouth movements so that they can imitate those mouth movements.

When I touch a child, I do what we call prompt therapy. It truly helps a child form sounds. Any child who has any difficulty forming sounds, if they have instability in their jaw, anything … I’m giving them what we call input to help them form the sounds that they’re unable to form on their own.

I really am a goal-oriented therapist and I like a child to succeed and I like the parents to see success because I believe it gives them hope. It really is something that’s very rewarding — it’s not just a job. At least for me, this is not just a job and a living, this is something that I feel is a calling.

“The Work We Do” is a News-Review multimedia project profiling workers on the North Fork.