The ABA Speech Podcast - Easy Strategies For Parents and Professionals

AAC is a special space that crosses over through many shared professional settings. Kate Granbois joins us on the episode today to talk about her job as an AAC specialist, the ins and outs of  Augmentative Alternative Communication, and getting comfortable with the process. Kate warns about her title of “AAC Specialist”, while it's a real job and title, and she holds a lot of knowledge on this topic, it's important for many other professionals in the AAC user’s life to be empowered in this skill set as well.The most important part of AAC is the user. The Communication Bill of Rights is a great resource and really highlights the fact that communication is a human right. So when collaborating, it's important to recognize that no one owns just one environment. The AAC user needs to be supported across all environments to remove barriers. Taking the AAC user's family and friends values into consideration is a critical and ethical piece that is crucial to the success of the user across their life. AAC is not just important for accessing curriculum in the school. There are social aspects and basic need aspects, and the environment needs to revolve around the whole user, not just the professional's therapy room.AAC is more than just communication, it is also knowledge on equipment, vendors, the law, and documentation. Kate gives us some broad steps for getting started with AAC assessment.Familiarize yourself with the Communication Bill of Rights and assessment frameworks.What does it take to “sit in the seat”, to do the assessment?Know the products and features and understand the feature matching process.Know and understand the documentation and the legal requirements.There is never a perfect set up when it comes to therapy and AAC, but it's important to not let an AAC device disrupt therapy implementation. Kate says it's a science and an art, and it's okay for everyone’s therapy to look different. She also shares some resources for how to get more comfortable with your therapy with an AAC user and their device. At the end of the episode, Kate reminds professionals to be compassionate because everyone is coming from a different place. Our job is to help communication skills, and communication is a lot more than learning how to ask for things.I hope that you were able to gain some new information or will utilize the resources discussed today to empower communication with your clients and better improve your therapy! What's Inside:Shared communication and collaboration.What is the “Communication Bill of Rights”.AAC assessment through intervention.Resources for getting comfortable with AAC.

The family-centered approach is a key component of therapy at Nikki McRory’s facilities, McRory Pediatric Services. Nikki is on the podcast today, sharing how she uses a transdisciplinary approach for speech therapy. She uses the Behavior Skills Training framework in her early intervention programs with both the parents and the learners.What are the steps for Behavior Skills Training with parents?Step One: InformationExplain what the skill you're working on is and why it is important. This can be verbal and written. Step Two: ModelModel and discuss this skill. While demonstrating the specific skill, talk about what you're doing and provide further clarification.Step Three: PracticeRole play with the parents to give them the foundation for the skill, but also allow them to practice with their child.Step Four: FeedbackBe sure to let parents know what they are doing well, but also let them know what to change or improve on. Keep repeating steps 2 and 3 until they are where they need to be.When working with parents, Nikki looks at the whole picture for the family. This means taking into account their cultural, linguistic, and social-emotional differences. Her formula to train parents is directly embedded into her early intervention programs. Every Friday, parents are pulled from the therapy to work on a new skill together with clinicians and will practice with their child in therapy the following week.If you’re a professional feeling nervous about telling parents what to do, remember that parents are the expert on their child, but you are the expert on speech and language. You are in the best position to help parents help their children. Nikki leaves us with a special sentiment for parents about the long haul of therapy and the importance of self-care!Be sure to check out the resources we’ve shared, I hope this has helped professionals get an idea of how to facilitate parent coaching and given some inspiration for parents to get involved in their child’s therapy!What's Inside:The Framework for Behavioral Skills Training.Robust Parent Training Component.What is a Family-Centered Approach?Helping Parents Interact and Communicate with Their Children.

Social Skills are more than just etiquette and manners. Ashley Rose, founder and clinical director of Mission Cognition Social Skills Development Center, is here with me sharing about the importance of social skill instruction. Ashley describes social skills as the inner workings of social interaction. She takes a very individualized approach when deciding exactly what to work on by learning what exactly is making it difficult for an individual to have positive interactions with themselves or others. Ashley’s centers provide the perfect atmosphere for individualized groups. She has three leveled groups, Group A being the developmental play group, for individuals with emerging language. Groups B and C are best suited to individuals with more language skills, and is her more signature Behavior Skill Training group.The planning for Ashley’s groups focus on individualization. Ashley has developed 15 Global Focus Areas that she uses to target training in her groups. She has also developed an in-house assessment tool to identify these areas. For each group, she uses templates such as Group at a Glance, Student Snapshots, and Goal Sheets. The idea behind all of this is rationale, every group facilitator should be able to explain the ‘why’ behind the goals selected for any individual. The end goal for every play group, whether it be developmental play or behavior skill training, is to give the participants autonomy and allow ease of social interaction in their natural environment. We also touch on the topic of Masking. Autistic voices are speaking out against this practice as harmful and unethical, and Ashley tells us why. At one point, the idea of teaching Masking was to help individuals with Autism reduce the appearance of self-stimulatory behavior to help them “fit in”. However, this behavior is actually a self-regulation tool. Another way Masking has been used is to teach scripting in social situations. Instead of relying on scripting, Ashley teaches language use in a more natural template. Her goal is always to give her students the most autonomy and individuality as possible.Self-advocacy and Independence are the words of the day that Ashley leaves us with. No matter the age, it is important to give your child the tools to communicate what they want and need, but equally what they don’t want. Ashley shared some great resources today and gave some awesome tips for parents and professionals for creating ease in social situations and interactions that will affect their children or students every day. What's Inside:Social Skill InstructionSelecting and Setting Social Skills GoalsIntake, Assessment, and DevelopmentFramework for Planning GroupsPlanning for Generalization, Applying Skills in the Natural EnvironmentMasking 

Play-Based Speech Therapy can open the door to so much interaction. My guest, Emily Cohen, talks about using Play-Based Therapy with her clients and all of the benefits it can provide. Emily Cohen works with families with children as young as 15 months old, coaching the parents. We talk about all the elements of play, interaction, and language and I share some pretty cute anecdotes from my therapy experiences with play. Engagement is such a huge part, and the more they are engaged the more meaningful their learning will be. Imitation and nonverbal imitation can be the start of engaging in play. Emily shares the idea of a mirror “game”,  sitting in front of a mirror practicing making large body movements, and even using hand over hand when needed. Patience, flexibility, and following the child’s lead is key when creating an engaging play space for therapy. Kids may not always use or interpret toys or activities in the way we expect things which can make for even more enriching experiences.Stay away from toys that have batteries. When we are interacting with a child and a toy that has all the bells and whistles, moving and making noise, the toy ends up doing the work. Go back to basics and allow the student to use the toy as a prop so that you can truly build new and meaningful interaction.Interaction comes before language, so there are so many opportunities for skills in play even nonverbally. As a speech therapist, Emily coaches parents on playing with their children and working with their kids to find these opportunities. Her advice for parents is to remind them that they are their child's best teacher, every time their child is watching them is an opportunity for learning.What’s Inside:Play-Based Speech TherapyFollowing the child’s leadOpen-Ended ToysFacilitating social, play, and language interactionInteraction before language

Marisha Mets, a school-based SLP, shares tips on using language samples for assessment and intervention. Language samples offer a snapshot of students' language use in natural settings. Assessing language function in natural contexts is crucial for setting goals for students with autism.

Today I have Kimberly Scanlon, licensed and certified speech-language pathologist, best-selling author, and fellow busy parent. She has written two great books in the world of speech therapy, Toddler Talks and My Toddler’s First Words. Kimberly works as a private practice speech therapist doing primarily home-based visits and she is here giving us some tips on how to build early interventions into day-to-day life.Because Kimberly is a home-based therapist, she has less barriers in communicating with parents and families. This allows her to relate to being busy and just trying to fit that language development in.The ideas and advice Kimberly shares today focus around these central questions: What does your day look like? What is your typical routine? What do you like to do with your child? When is the best time of day for you to reach your child?We discuss ways to embed language and early intervention into your routines by finding connection-building activities that don't take away from your daily life. This makes each activity symbiotic with various parents’ personalities, cultures, and what they are at a base level comfortable with.If you’re already cooking or doing laundry, think twice about setting your child in front of a screen. Instead, think about how you could be getting them involved. We discuss how there are so many language opportunities in everything we do and our toddlers just want to be with us. Make chores fun and make them learning opportunities with these tips! Don't be afraid of this undertaking, you don't have to have them participate in the entire chore just a small part.Kimberly leaves us with this special advice, reminding parents to do the best they can and not worrying about being perfect. Take several moments throughout the day every day to just enjoy your child, judgment, and worry-free to be fully present and enjoy the moment!What's Inside:Early intervention and language strategies for busy parentsSimple ideas for embedding language practice into daily life.Kimberly’s special advice to parents.

Speech and language development is more than just the words being produced and children need to be emotionally supported and encouraged to communicate. Parental involvement is critical, but professionals are often so focused on the kids that they don’t notice the parents are depleted. Lindsey Nitake uses her Help Me Grow Speech social media accounts to get information out there.Every family is different and unique and the tools we offer need to be adapted to fit with a family’s style, so listening to feedback from parents is important. Sometimes parents are overwhelmed by the wealth of information. They need help to figure out which resources will work for their child.Social media is a great way to provide parents with educational support. It’s the most effective and efficient way to spread the information because it allows you to share resources more widely. It’s particularly useful when in-person sessions are not possible. Lindsey uses TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to share information.To be better professionals, we need to listen to each other and support each other as well. As a profession, we can be quite combative with each other. It gets very emotionally charged. BCBAs and SLPs may have different approaches but collaboration is important so professionals need to have a team-based mentality.New SLPs have to learn a lot on the job. It’s really hard being a new SLP. Oftentimes, when you start working with kids, you find out that it’s not what you learned in graduate school. You need support to figure out a treatment strategy to help them. Social media is a nice way to provide mentoring.When you’re working on communication, don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. Communication is more than just words. It’s the environment and relationships with people. You have to consider the child and their environment as a whole, and the family unit is a big part of that, which is why having parents on board is so important.What's Inside:The importance of parent involvement in speech-language development.Parent education and support.Sharing SLP resources on social media.Mentoring new SLPs.Collaborative services.

Lori Frost is a traditionally trained speech-language pathologist who has spent most of her 40-year career in public schools working with preschool and elementary kids. She met Dr. Andy Bondy when she was working in the Delaware Autism Program and that’s when she began learning about applied behavior analysis. This fundamentally changed her practice and made her more aware of what was leading to good outcomes and what was leading to poorer outcomes for the students she worked with.When she was working with Dr. Bondy in the Delaware Autism Program, they were helping a little boy who was non-speaking. They tried a range of things including speech imitation, sign language, and picture point systems but he made little progress. When he wasn’t able to communicate, he displayed challenging behaviors. It was only when Lori presented individual pictures carefully selected to be of interest to the child, let him touch the picture, and pass it to his communication partner, thus doing something very overtly to communicate, that he made progress. This was the beginning of PECS or the Pyramid Educational Consultants in 1992 where it grew to have 6 phases in its protocol, offices in 15 countries and made the manual available in 16 languages.The long-term goal for the kids is to be as independent as possible and independence is only possible if you initiate, so teaching the kids to initiate communication is the first skill taught in the PECS protocol. The starting point always has to be tailored to each student’s likes and the things they enjoy. It can take time to figure this out. If kids start with PECS at the right time, they usually transition to a speech-generating device quite easily. This normally coincides with phase 4 of the PECS protocol when the kids have mastered the following skills:InitiationPicture discrimination Able to make some picture sentencesEven after this transition, PECS remains a useful backup for when technology fails or is misplaced or forgotten. PECS has great results with younger kids. Around 80% of kids who are six and younger who are on PECS for nine months to a year start to talk.Lori’s most important advice for parents or professionals supporting autistic kids is to listen to the kids and be guided by their wants and needs. What's Inside:How PECS began.How PECS has grown.The importance of initiation of communicationHow useful are speech-generating devices as communication tools?When should speech-generating devices be introduced?

Laura Smith was a speech-language pathologist, mostly in elementary education, before her children were born. After her daughter was born, she realized that she wasn’t reaching her developmental milestones. She crawled and walked late and feeding, dressing, and speech were also delayed. When her daughter was diagnosed with apraxia, she focused her professional interest on learning everything she could about it and started her private practice specializing in childhood apraxia.For many parents, the diagnosis of apraxia feels devastating. They wonder if their child will ever speak. What does the future hold? It’s normal to feel sad and to grieve and there should be no guilt about having these feelings. Once you have a diagnosis, you can have a plan.Early Signs of Apraxia:Lack of babbling - a quiet baby.Vowel sounds but a lack of consonants.Lack of a word by age one.Pop-out words - words that a child says a handful of times and then never says again.Word sounds morph into other word sounds.A “go-to” sound - a sound that is frequently repeated.How to find an appropriate therapist:Search on Apraxia-Kids.org for a therapist in your area.Find a therapist through The Prompt Institute.Ask the right questions using the list on SLPMommyofApraxia.com.Resources for speech therapists and parents:Apraxia-Kids.org is full of articles and on-demand webinars.Dr. Strand’s free online course, Diagnosis and Treatment of CAS, is packed full of useful information.Dr. Edwin Maas’s webinar, Principles of Motor Learning and Childhood Apraxia of Speech, is a great place to get an understanding of the basic principles of motor learning.Laura’s most important advice for parents of kids with apraxia:Recognize that this is a lifelong neurological disorder.Early and appropriate intervention promotes the best outcomes.Don’t be scared to advocate for your kid.Have a growth mindset and be willing to learn.What's Inside:Laura’s personal journey of having her child diagnosed with apraxia - testing, assessment, diagnosis, and intervention.Diagnosing apraxia - early signs and characteristicsHow to find an appropriate therapistResources for speech therapists and parents

Whether you’re a professional or a parent, you can use these strategies from Chloe Hill in the classroom, in therapy, or at home. As a pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist, Chloe’s focused on pre-reading or emerging reading skills. She works with students to help them develop phonological awareness. For young readers, it can be as simple as:Becoming aware of lettersUnderstanding that letters stand for somethingExposing them to booksPointing out print while out in publicChloe and I also cover some of our favorite reading strategies in the classroom. Chloe loves the CROWD strategy which stands for:C- Completion promptR- Recall promptO- Open-ended promptW- Wh questionsD- Distancing promptWhat if a book is too hard for a child to understand? We also cover strategies you can use to adjust it for a child’s level. This episode is chock-full of so many early learning resources that can help any parent or professional who is looking for inspiration. Check out Chloe’s TPT store or follow her Instagram account for more ideas too.What's Inside:A book can be a window or a mirror into a different world, and we should consider the diversity of our literature collection for the children we teach.How Chloe uses the CROWD technique to teach different reading concepts throughout a story.We should be mindful that reading progress looks different for everyone.How is reading development taught to children with complex communication needs?