The ABA Speech Podcast - Easy Strategies For Parents and Professionals

Since July 2010, Erin Long has been the president and founder of Worldwide Speech. Parents who are living abroad may find themselves seeking specialized speech therapy, but for whatever reason, they’re struggling to find speech-language therapists in the countries they’re living in. That’s where Erin’s company steps in. Her services have expanded over the last decade, and she calls herself “a special ed company for anyone living abroad”. Erin spent a lot of time proving that teletherapy can work, but now it’s what people want.Have you ever dealt with the paperwork for moving an IEP abroad? Erin says that it loses its status as a legal document since it’s created under the auspices of American law. Sometimes companies are reluctant to send employees overseas if there’s a child in the household with an IEP because complying with it in a foreign country can be incredibly hard. Erin’s company provides speech therapy, OT, and special education for children all over the world, no matter where their parents’ jobs take them.Even for rural Americans, teletherapy is a viable option. Children with mobility issues can benefit from virtual services, and older teens who may be reluctant to admit they still go to therapy can see a therapist privately from their home. For some of Erin’s clients, virtual services offer support and a lifeline for the main caretaker who was previously isolated in a community that had no services of any kind.Therapists and teachers have had to adjust in the last year, and it’s been inspiring to watch that pivot! If you want more tips and strategies on how to use teletherapy effectively, sign up for my FREE webinar on supporting children with autism virtually.What's Inside:Rehabilitative services all over the world are just not equal to American standards, so the demand for American therapists is high.Providing services across multiple time zones can lead to some interesting scheduling problems, but with a little planning, families, and providers can flex with this challenge.Even stateside, virtual services can fill a niche for students who aren’t mobile or who live remotely.

Landria Seals Green’s mother says, “A child’s education is as good as the adult in front of them.” With that as her mantra, Landria became a medical-based SLP. For 20+ years, she’s focused on AAC technology, and she’s done a lot of AT work. At a Verbal Behavior workshop, she saw Dr. Vince Carbone present what she describes as speech therapy on steroids. She felt confident about her work as an SLP, but in order to become the best kind of therapist and to improve her marketability, she knew that she needed the BCBA certification.What really drew Landria to the dual certifications was the method of collecting data. Becoming a BCBA made her more finite in her methodology and gave her more tools to help her students.  And as a therapist who is looking for any tool that will help her understand the child and see where they’re at, Landria has loved the possibilities that have opened up for her students.Are we working with families to make sure that all of the funds and services they receive actually benefit the child? Landria sees the therapist’s role as a bridge to the child’s future. She listens to the family’s dreams for the child because she has what you might call a “greeter” theory. Is everything that you’re working on with the child only going to land them a job as a greeter at the store? And is that what the family wants for that child?I think you’ll love this big picture approach to therapy that sees the child as a whole person rather than the small parts you might see in your weekly sessions. For more inspirational and fun-filled ideas about SLP and BCBA strategies, follow Landria on her social media channels as SLP Guru.What's Inside:Why Landria prefers to find features on an AAC that fits a student rather than trying to make an AAC work on the student.By focusing on the “rhythm of communication”, Landria teaches students how to respond appropriately to peers, teachers, and casual strangers.Helping students find authentic social connections is a challenge that Landria takes on with a unique out-of-the-box approach.

Chris Wenger, whom you might also know as Speech Dude, comes from a family of educators. He started off as a special ed teacher, but he moved into the speech-language field when he realized that the tools he needed to help students were in speech pathology. Because he’s been on both sides of the IEP table, and because he was a teacher first, he’s seen a wide variety of students and he knows how to write an IEP that ropes in parents. Today we have a fantastic conversation about creating a curriculum that teaches older students how to interact online or with their peers on social media.Starting with the phrase “How you do anything is how you do everything”, Chris’s interactions with his students online often inspire his TikTok videos and Instagram posts. Students need to be able to make inferences and they need the ability to perspective-take. If you see a picture that you like, you comment once on it. But five times? People will wonder what’s going on with you. If you comment on a really old video or post, it can give away that you’re doing a deep dive on a person’s profile. These are the kinds of scenarios that Chris identifies so he can teach his students how to interact appropriately online.What’s a digital footprint and why should students care? Even for kids in the AP classes, they still need some explicit instruction on online “netiquette” so that they understand that what happens online can affect their offline life. The idea that kids today instinctively understand online behavior doesn’t help kids who actually don’t. That’s where Chris tries to fill in that gap.Chris’s best advice for a future or present SLP is simple: You don’t have to be a perfect SLP; just do your best to be a happy one. Your positive vibrations can be felt throughout your classroom. Check out Chris’s social media channels or his Boom Learning store for more strategies or curriculum for older students.What's Inside:How to get a teen to turn their camera on when no one really wants to.Chris teaches his students about “the hidden curriculum”, or the unspoken rule about how to act online.If you want more engagement out of a classroom or an audience, Chris’s positive energy and approach fires up participants.

As a young child, Nathan Morgan was diagnosed with autism. Along his journey of speech therapy, IEPs, and occupational therapy, he felt inspired to give back to his community so he went into social work. Today, through his day job and his self-advocacy work, Nathan supports families who are trying to navigate what autism means.Within the autism community, people have different ways they like to interact with other people. Some may prefer a blend of verbal and sign language, or only verbal, or some verbal but mostly some form of technology. Unfortunately, verbal communication is still the communication that most people want to push, and this leads to some tension over how to encourage inclusivity when everyone may prefer a blend of communication methods.The pandemic has been an awesome opportunity for individuals with autism to connect with others in ways that make them feel the most comfortable. Nathan approaches this with the question, “What can we take moving forward that will help us improve our community?”. From virtual conferences to Facebook groups to face-to-face game nights, Nathan shares a variety of ways that the autism community is interacting and communicating with each other throughout the pandemic.If you’re looking for more ways to engage and communicate with your students, check out my FREE April webinar called 5 Strategies to Help Your Students with Autism Engage and Communicate. Everyone who attends the live session will receive free therapy material and a certificate of participation. See you there!What's Inside:Knowing that communication is going to look differently for different people, Nathan has created group interactions that allow adults and teenagers with autism to communicate in the way that they feel most comfortable.Nathan shares his thoughts on how autism can be weaponized in language and discusses both his professional opinion and personal perspective on whether to say “autistic” or “person with autism”.For adults with autism, it can be harder to find resources, especially when you combine that with the myth that autism is a childhood disease, so Nathan is taking on that challenge with his Facebook group.

Are you nervous before a therapy session because you don’t know how it will go? Let’s make therapy fun and functional again by giving you the tools you need to reach every single one of your students. If you have students with autism and they’re not making a lot of progress, or you’ve used every trick in the book to help a student and you’re stumped, my course Help Me Find My Voice is a great next step for you.Inside Help Me Find My Voice, you’ll learn:Assessments to use with studentsCommon SLP terms explainedSimplified goal setting conceptsEasier data collectionHow to plan therapy sessions for students with emerging skillsYou’ll also have lifetime access to this course, plus access to a private Facebook group where you can collaborate with other SLPs.This course is geared for speech-language pathologists, but it also benefits anyone who’s working on communication issues with students. Enrollment is open now, but it will close on April 14th. And I don’t know when I’ll open this course again.We’ve had over 400 people join us already for this 5-hour ASHA-approved course because the bite-sized modules mean you can fit your learning into your busy day. The cost is $99, and we will send you the proper CEU certificates upon completion.I also have a FREE webinar on April 6th, 7th or 13th called 5 Strategies to Help Your Students with Autism Engage and Communicate. If you attend live, you’ll receive free therapy material and a certificate of participation.What's Inside:When you’re seeing a student with autism or with complicated needs and they’re not communicating on their own, what can you do?If you need ASHA CEUs, but don’t have time for a course, I’ve structured this course to meet your current time constraints.Come and collaborate with other professionals to help you breakthrough any roadblocks you might have on difficult cases.

Recently, Deidra Darst was able to take her son who has autism to get his first big haircut in four years in a salon. Using tips she learned in my Help Me Find My Voice course, Deidra’s son has really grown in his communication abilities. As a Speech Language Pathologist, Deidra has seen first hand how ABA techniques can blend or enhance the work she does with clients. You’re going to love hearing how BCBAs and SLPS can collaborate to help students find ways to share their voices.In her work as an SLP, about half of Deidra’s caseload was students with autism. But it wasn’t until her own young son was diagnosed that she got a true window into what a parent was experiencing. She realized that 30 minutes of therapy a week just wasn’t enough, and she wanted to help parents take a more active role in therapy. Since then, she’s learned how to support parents better in her SLP practice, and she leads with the phrase, “If you have questions, ask”.How can SLPs and BCBAs learn from each other? This idea of collaboration is one that Deidra and I really explore. What we’re doing is similar, but we’re calling it different names. And we miss out on the chance to collaborate positively when we can’t understand each other. Deidra and I talk about some techniques in each of our respective fields that can enhance the work each professional does for a child with autism.Be sure and check out the Help Me Find My Voice course that helped launch Deidra’s success, and send her an email if you have any questions.What's Inside:Using vocabulary that parents and other professionals can understand and improve the chances that our goals are aligned and everyone’s headed in the same direction.Teletherapy has had a surprising benefit for therapists because it’s given them more contact and communication with parents.Deidra’s advice for parents and professionals working with autistic children.The hardest part of therapy is actually communicating with the team and making sure we’re all on the same page.

How do we help our students generalize their language skills in the community and the larger school environment? Fellow “unicorn”, BCBA, and SLP, Katie Castro is an alumni of my Help Me Find My Voice course, and she’s also a clinical director of speech therapy at Children’s Autism Center.You can’t just hope that a student figures out how to generalize on their own. As therapists, we can build a system that helps lead them to generalize. Generalization is teaching students to apply skills in different environments and circumstances. We may not realize that when we teach a word, there are many different examples of that word. For example, how many kinds of dogs are there? If we show a picture of a Labrador and only that kind of dog, it doesn’t teach a child the variety that is inside the word “dog”.It’s hard for therapists to have the resources they need to teach generalization which is why I ended up creating some. Katie talks about how she uses multiple examples and teaching loosely to help a child learn a less strict definition of a word.It’s important to keep really specific data when you’re working with students, but when you combine specific data with IEP goals and first trial data, it can be difficult to keep track of where a student is progressing. If you want to make your progress reporting easier, then Katie and I have some techniques to streamline the process.For more SLP strategies, be sure to check out my FREE webinar 5 Strategies to Help Students Engage and Communicate. Register now for this April event.What's Inside:How I use a variety of flashcards to expand the concept of basic vocabulary words like dog, cat, or car.Maintenance goals can feel like a drag for a child, so I share ways that I keep it fresh for that child.Collecting and reporting data might feel complicated, but Katie and I have both streamlined the process so that it’s easier and takes less time.Katie incorporates parent training to help reinforce what a child learns in speech therapy, and that has actually been made easier by the pandemic and telehealth sessions.

There are times I feel stressed as a therapist because I want to get through all of the goals for my therapy session, so that’s why I love Liz’s playful approach to therapy. Liz Willis is an SLP who went back to school for her BCBA so that she could provide speech therapy and ABA services. Her dual degrees have made her feel more confident in the services that she provides, and you can really see how they inform how she structures her therapy sessions.It can be tempting to jump straight into the language piece of an IEP, but Liz suggests that you consider focusing on the social and play piece first. Every interaction begins with social engagement, and when therapists nail down the basics of engagement first, expanding into other skills can reap dividends.Liz is passionate about supporting teachers and providers, and she shares some of her favorite strategies including:How to use play centers to teach language skills.Her favorite assessments and why you should use more than one.How to encourage play in students who only like one kind of play.As an educator or service provider, there are going to be times when you just don’t have the skills your students need. Liz says that you need to recognize when you don’t know something and refer your clients out to someone else. There are so many pieces to the therapy puzzle, and collaborating makes your job easier. If you’d like to connect with Liz, you can reach her at her website, on Instagram, or at Liz@communicationandbehaviorsolutions.com.What's Inside:How early learners who have autism may play differently from their typically developing preschoolers, and why that matters.Does every moment need to be language enriched?Which comes first: engagement or play? Liz gives her thoughts on this chicken vs. egg dilemma.

Have you ever worked with a student who needs an AAC, but you don’t know which one would work best for them? If you have, then you’ll appreciate this episode. Annabeth and Mara from The Fanny Pack Therapist have found that their respective therapy styles, as a speech language pathologist and an occupational therapist, mesh so well that they teamed up to help more students.Annabeth and Mara love how AACs empower students to find ways to communicate their thoughts and needs with the people around them. They’ve found that AACs don’t prohibit verbal speech, but simply give a child a way to communicate while they work toward verbal speech. You don’t want to miss their ABCs of AACs on their Instagram page from October 2020.By collaborating together, SLPs and OTs can get a more holistic view of a child. While the SLP is evaluating a child’s expressive and receptive skills, an OT can come in and see where a child’s fine motor skills are. And once they’ve passed the initial evaluation, together, the SLP and OT can try signs, low-tech options, verbal speech, and just about anything else to see what works.I hope this episode gets your wheels turning on how you can work with other professionals or how you can help your students or clients use AACs to meet their therapy goals. Make sure you check out The Fanny Pack Therapist for more ideas on collaborating with other therapists.What's Inside:Listen to how Annabeth and Mara collaborate in the age of COVID.The importance of shared goals with other intervention specialists, and what that can look like for your students.Communication is a basic right, and an AAC gives a student a chance to communicate.How can someone improve their competency in the AAC world if they don’t have any previous experience?

Something I find so inspiring is to watch a student find a way to communicate with the people who exist in their world. For over 47 years, Susan Berkowitz has been helping students with autism learn to communicate by whatever means are necessary. Using Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), Susan is reaching students who are complete non-speakers or who struggle to communicate the full range of their thoughts and feelings.Susan has a wealth of knowledge, and she’s passionate about helping teachers, parents, and fellow Speech-Language Pathologists find the tools they need to teach their students. She tells the amazing story of one of her students who stopped his self-injurious behavior after she created a POG book filled with 120 pages of pictures that he was able to use to communicate that he wanted to run outside.There are so many options for AACs, and since the technology for this field is so new, there will continue to be new options every year. Susan has found it helpful to become good friends with the AAC customer service reps so that she has direct insight into this industry.If you think one of your students would benefit with an AAC, or you’d like to learn more about apps, games, or strategies that you can use in your therapy sessions, Susan is really a wealth of information. Check out her book, her websites, or her TPT store for more resources.What's Inside:Why we should never rearrange the symbols on a child’s AAC system.How to move a student beyond requesting and into communicating.Susan’s tips for using technology to teach students how to communicate.If you have limited cognitive energy, you’re limited by how much effort you can put into communication.