De Facto Leaders

Therapists and educators supporting K-12 literacy have a lot of diagnoses and labels to navigate, and some of them are controversial. In some debates, the diagnosis itself is in question; Central Auditory Processing Disorder being one example. With hyperlexia, some people suggest that there is a certain way hyperlexic people need to learn to read; but the verdict is still out as to whether there is one specific method that is more effective for them. Diagnoses and labels can give us a roadmap. But this roadmap is often incomplete, with unclear directions for getting to our end destination. That means that clinicians need to have a good clinical problem-solving process to navigate all these debates. I believe that labels are useful; but only when we know what to do with them. That’s why in this episode, I talk about 4 specific labels/diagnoses (DLD, CAPD, hyperlexia, dyslexia) and what they mean for literacy instruction/intervention. Specifically, I discuss: ✅The DLD vs CAPD debate: The case for DLD and why some people are skeptical about the CAPD diagnosis  ✅Why I don't teach "working memory drills" and how I go about addressing working memory issues in a functional way ✅How professionals can engage in healthy discussions about debates in the field without getting defensive  ✅A discussion on dyslexia vs hyperlexia and intervention planning for each.  ✅Current research on hyperlexia and red flags for misinformation. In this episode, I mentioned an article called Why is it so hard to reach agreement on terminology? The case of developmental language disorder (DLD) by Dr. Dorothy Bishop. Please note I made an error in the original recording and said she was an SLP. I was incorrect; she is a psychologist. I’m talking about this topic because it inspired me to create the system I teach in my online course that teaches pediatric SLPs a system for boosting comprehension and processing,  Language Therapy Advance Foundations. I’m doing some extra live Q & A sessions in the members group and also opening up some 1:1 consult availability for members in July 2022, so if you’ve been on the fence about joining, now’s the perfect time to take the leap. If you’re an SLP who wants to learn a framework that will allow you to streamline your therapy so you can show up to sessions confident you’re giving your students the skills they need to thrive,  check out our enrollment page and learn more about how to become a member here. The De Facto Leaders podcast was formerly the “Are they 18 yet?®” podcast. As of November 2022, the name of the show has changed, and we’ve shifted from a focus on parenting to a focus on supporting clinicians and educators to design effective services for kids (but parents are still welcome to listen). Episodes published before November 24, 2022 will still contain some of our old branding.  We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Schools often get criticized for not teaching enough “real world” skills to kids, and there’s a lot of truth to that statement. Most of the therapists I work with are worried that what they do in therapy isn’t functional enough to transfer to day-to-day skills; and this is a legitimate concern. A lot of the clinicians I mentor have somewhere between 30-40 minutes with students; which means they have to make every second count. Some of them wonder if the traditional “pull out” therapy model is even useful at all. The truth is that there are certain skills that can be effectively addressed in more of an “academic”, small group or 1:1 situation. When we think about the language skills needed to support reading and literacy, it’s actually ideal to address some of the foundational skills in this “school” format. Otherwise kids don’t get the intensity they need to develop automaticity. So when we ask the question of whether language skills should be taught in an “academic” format vs. a “functional, real-world” format…it’s not a black or white, either/or kind of a thing. School-age kids need a blend of BOTH. With that in mind, schools and the people working in them are doing a lot of things right. This is why I feel disheartened when I see negativity directed towards schools suggesting that they’re not teaching kids anything useful.  We don’t need to burn it all to the ground; we need to find out which things schools are doing right and do more of it. That’s why I aim to help clinicians focus on high-impact skills, and ways to address skills from multiple angles: From very structured situations that isolate skills, to highly functional situations that require kids to integrate many skills at once. (which is what they’ll have to do in the “real world”). I recently got some great questions from readers about how to do this with syntax skills. Syntax is definitely one of those “high-impact” skills; but the key to making it functional is teaching it in a way that allows kids to learn new language patterns AND develop the internal dialogue needed to learn new words and sentence structures independently. In this episode, I share how to do that. I’m talking about this topic because it inspired me to create the system I teach in my online course that teaches pediatric SLPs a system for boosting comprehension and processing,  Language Therapy Advance Foundations. I’m doing some extra live Q & A sessions in the members group and also opening up some 1:1 consult availability for members in July 2022, so if you’ve been on the fence about joining, now’s the perfect time to take the leap. If you’re an SLP who wants to learn a framework that will allow you to streamline your therapy so you can show up to sessions confident you’re giving your students the skills they need to thrive,  check out our enrollment page and learn more about how to become a member here. The De Facto Leaders podcast was formerly the “Are they 18 yet?®” podcast. As of November 2022, the name of the show has changed, and we’ve shifted from a focus on parenting to a focus on supporting clinicians and educators to design effective services for kids (but parents are still welcome to listen). Episodes published before November 24, 2022 will still contain some of our old branding.  We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Topic maintenance is a skill I’ve seen on many language therapy IEPs in the category of “pragmatic language”, but often it’s a surface-level symptom of something else. When we’re talking about “topic maintenance” we’re often referring to someone’s ability to stay on a topic during a conversational exchange. Yet when we focus only on what we’re seeing externally, intervention can end up being unproductive. In some cases, it can even reinforce a negative self-image. That’s why in episode 69, I wanted to talk about the root causes behind topic maintenance issues and how we can support students in a way that builds connection and self-esteem. I’m talking about this topic because it inspired me to create the system I teach in my online course that teaches pediatric SLPs a system for boosting comprehension and processing,  Language Therapy Advance Foundations. I’m doing some extra live Q & A sessions in the members group and also opening up some 1:1 consult availability for members in July 2022, so if you’ve been on the fence about joining, now’s the perfect time to take the leap. If you’re an SLP who wants to learn a framework that will allow you to streamline your therapy so you can show up to sessions confident you’re giving your students the skills they need to thrive,  check out our enrollment page and learn more about how to become a member here. The De Facto Leaders podcast was formerly the “Are they 18 yet?®” podcast. As of November 2022, the name of the show has changed, and we’ve shifted from a focus on parenting to a focus on supporting clinicians and educators to design effective services for kids (but parents are still welcome to listen). Episodes published before November 24, 2022 will still contain some of our old branding.  We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

I get a lot of questions about how to write language therapy goals… I ALSO get a lot of questions about whether I offer goal banks in any of my courses. I do offer a version of a “goal bank” in Language Therapy Advance Foundations, my course that teaches SLPs a framework for building metalinguistic awareness and independent word learning...but it’s not a goal bank in the traditional sense. In my opinion, goal banks do both students and clinicians a huge disservice. While I understand that clinicians need tools to help them be efficient with their paperwork, I think there’s a better solution. That’s why in this episode I share what that is. Specifically, I talk about: ✅Why my course curriculum for clinicians focuses on vocabulary FIRST before I address high-level comprehension and executive functioning. ✅ Do we need to work on the “observable/measurable” behavior? Or the strategy? ✅My alternative to the “goal-bank” and why it helps drive more effective intervention. In this episode, I mentioned the Effective Language Therapy for SLPs Facebook group, where I share regular tips and strategies for building language and literacy skills in K-12 kids. You can join the group here. I’m talking about this topic because it inspired me to create the system I teach in my online course that teaches pediatric SLPs a system for boosting comprehension and processing,  Language Therapy Advance Foundations. I’m doing some extra live Q & A sessions in the members group and also opening up some 1:1 consult availability for members in July 2022, so if you’ve been on the fence about joining, now’s the perfect time to take the leap. If you’re an SLP who wants to learn a framework that will allow you to streamline your therapy so you can show up to sessions confident you’re giving your students the skills they need to thrive,  check out our enrollment page and learn more about how to become a member here. The De Facto Leaders podcast was formerly the “Are they 18 yet?®” podcast. As of November 2022, the name of the show has changed, and we’ve shifted from a focus on parenting to a focus on supporting clinicians and educators to design effective services for kids (but parents are still welcome to listen). Episodes published before November 24, 2022 will still contain some of our old branding.  We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

When people ask me where they should start in language therapy, I usually say they should start by building vocabulary. That usually results in a couple raised eyebrows and questions...mostly because they aren’t really sure how I’m defining “vocabulary”. That’s why in episode 67, I wanted to talk about what I actually mean when I say we should “work on vocabulary”, and why it’s so important to giving kids the skills they need to thrive. Specifically, I share: ✅Why vocabulary is much more than naming and identifying words.✅The 5 linguistic skills that impact word knowledge and why they support vocabulary growth.✅How to “work on vocabulary” in a way that supports literacy, executive functioning, and independent word-learning. In this episode, I mentioned the Effective Language Therapy for SLPs Facebook group, where I share regular tips and strategies for building language and literacy skills in K-12 kids. You can join the group here. I’m talking about this topic because it inspired me to create the system I teach in my online course that teaches pediatric SLPs a system for boosting comprehension and processing,  Language Therapy Advance Foundations. I’m doing some extra live Q & A sessions in the members group and also opening up some 1:1 consult availability for members in July 2022, so if you’ve been on the fence about joining, now’s the perfect time to take the leap. If you’re an SLP who wants to learn a framework that will allow you to streamline your therapy so you can show up to sessions confident you’re giving your students the skills they need to thrive,  check out our enrollment page and learn more about how to become a member here. The De Facto Leaders podcast was formerly the “Are they 18 yet?®” podcast. As of November 2022, the name of the show has changed, and we’ve shifted from a focus on parenting to a focus on supporting clinicians and educators to design effective services for kids (but parents are still welcome to listen). Episodes published before November 24, 2022 will still contain some of our old branding.  We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Back when I first started practicing, I found language therapy to be super overwhelming. There were so many peer-reviewed articles, books, and seminars, and it was hard to sift through it all and determine how to apply it to therapy.  These days, we not only have to sort through lots of quality information…we have to ALSO sort through lots of inaccurate information.  This can make it really hard to make it hard for professionals and parents to figure out how to support kids' language and literacy skills with the little time you have with your students. I do what I do in order to be a solution for that problem. I get hundreds of emails each month from SLPs sharing their most common language therapy challenges, and although times have changed, the basic questions stay the same. I hear things like:"Where do I even start?""How do I know what skills are most important/how to sequence/what to focus on?""How do I write good goals?" When I dig a little deeper, I usually find that people are making ONE of three common mistakes. Now it goes without saying...these are SUPER common. I know because I used to do every single one of them due to lack of clarity and info overload. So if any of this sounds familiar, you're certainly not alone. These three patterns are what informed the framework I teach SLPs designed to build the language skills kids need to support language processing, literacy, and high-level strategic thinking. I’m talking about this topic because it inspired me to create the system I teach in my online course that teaches pediatric SLPs a system for boosting comprehension and processing,  Language Therapy Advance Foundations. I’m doing some extra live Q & A sessions in the members group and also opening up some 1:1 consult availability for members in July 2022, so if you’ve been on the fence about joining, now’s the perfect time to take the leap. If you’re an SLP who wants to learn a framework that will allow you to streamline your therapy so you can show up to sessions confident you’re giving your students the skills they need to thrive,  check out our enrollment page and learn more about how to become a member here. The De Facto Leaders podcast was formerly the “Are they 18 yet?®” podcast. As of November 2022, the name of the show has changed, and we’ve shifted from a focus on parenting to a focus on supporting clinicians and educators to design effective services for kids (but parents are still welcome to listen). Episodes published before November 24, 2022 will still contain some of our old branding.  We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In episode 65, I take a break from the regular content to talk about burnout and boundaries; and specifically how I use systems to help me set healthy boundaries and reduce burnout. Back when I started working as an SLP in 2004, I found there was one area of my life (work-related) that caused an exponentially larger amount of stress than other things in my life. ​So much, in fact, that this ONE thing was impacting me in other areas of life outside of work. Like health and relationships. That’s why in this episode, I share: ➡️ What I didn’t feel prepared to deal with when I first started my career (that I was NOT expecting).​➡️ How having one super stressful responsibility at work had a snowball effect on other areas of life.​➡️ Why not having a system for a challenging area at work took a toll on my relationships at home.​➡️ The questions you can ask yourself to identify the ONE area of your life causing the most stress (that if addressed, could lead to improvements in all other areas). I’m talking about this topic because it inspired me to create the system I teach in my online course that teaches pediatric SLPs a system for boosting comprehension and processing,  Language Therapy Advance Foundations. I’m doing some extra live Q & A sessions in the members group and also opening up some 1:1 consult availability for members in July 2022, so if you’ve been on the fence about joining, now’s the perfect time to take the leap. If you’re an SLP who wants to learn a framework that will allow you to streamline your therapy so you can show up to sessions confident you’re giving your students the skills they need to thrive,  check out our enrollment page and learn more about how to become a member here. The De Facto Leaders podcast was formerly the “Are they 18 yet?®” podcast. As of November 2022, the name of the show has changed, and we’ve shifted from a focus on parenting to a focus on supporting clinicians and educators to design effective services for kids (but parents are still welcome to listen). Episodes published before November 24, 2022 will still contain some of our old branding.  We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In episode 64, I share a Q & A from the Language Therapy Advance Foundations members’ group about working on complex sentences with students in early elementary school. Part of the framework I teach focuses on building skills like morphology (e.g., knowledge of word parts like prefixes & suffixes) as well as syntax (the rules of how sentences are put together). These skills can not only boost a student's ability to decode what they’re reading, they can also have a positive impact on their ability to process the big picture of what they’re reading/and or writing. I get a lot of questions about when students are “ready” for this kind of work. There’s a misconception that these skills should be reserved for “older” students in late elementary and secondary school. That’s why in this episode, I wanted to share why waiting until students are “ready” to work on syntax is a fallacy, and what we should do instead. I also share how to teach kids in early elementary school to use difficult sentence-types, even before they’re able to read and write difficult words or long sentences. This episode was taken from a Q & A session with Language Therapy Advance Foundations members. Language Therapy Advance Foundations is my course that teaches pediatric SLPs a framework for language therapy designed to give them the vocabulary and language processing skills needed to thrive in school and life. If you’re an SLP, and you want a better system for language therapy so you can show up to sessions confident you’re setting your students up for success, check out the Language Therapy Advance Foundations enrollment page here. The De Facto Leaders podcast was formerly the “Are they 18 yet?®” podcast. As of November 2022, the name of the show has changed, and we’ve shifted from a focus on parenting to a focus on supporting clinicians and educators to design effective services for kids (but parents are still welcome to listen). Episodes published before November 24, 2022 will still contain some of our old branding.  We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In episode 63, I share a Q & A from the Language Therapy Advance Foundations members’ group about dyslexia diagnosis and treatment, as well as working memory goals. I get a lot of questions about who is qualified to diagnose and treat dyslexia; especially when it comes to the SLP’s role in the process. Understanding the process of dyslexia diagnosis in the schools vs. medical settings can be especially confusing.  That’s why I wanted to share this Q & A session with my LTA members where I talked about the SLP’s role in the process; including the differences between school vs. medical settings. Another topic that comes up with diagnoses like dyslexia is working memory; and I get asked all the time if addressing “working memory goals” in therapy is a good use of time (this is also relevant when considering things like ADHD or auditory processing disorder).  In the second part of this Q & A, I share how to make the best use of therapy time considering the available research; including how to keep therapy functional and focused on tasks that are likely to improve “real-world” skills (as opposed to rote drill exercises with weak carryover).  Some of the questions I address in this Q & A include:✅Where can you go to get an “official” dyslexia diagnosis?✅Are school therapists “qualified” to treat dyslexia, even though they might not be able to officially diagnose it?✅Is it a good use of therapy time to focus on auditory memory and working memory exercises?✅If you suspect that a child has language processing issues AND weak working memory, what should we be working on with them? In this episode, I mention this position statement from the  American Speech-Language and Hearing Association about the speech-language pathologist’s role in reading and writing. This episode was taken from a Q & A session with Language Therapy Advance Foundations members. Language Therapy Advance Foundations is my course that teaches pediatric SLPs a framework for language therapy designed to give them the vocabulary and language processing skills needed to thrive in school and life. If you’re an SLP, and you want a better system for language therapy so you can show up to sessions confident you’re setting your students up for success, check out the Language Therapy Advance Foundations enrollment page here. The De Facto Leaders podcast was formerly the “Are they 18 yet?®” podcast. As of November 2022, the name of the show has changed, and we’ve shifted from a focus on parenting to a focus on supporting clinicians and educators to design effective services for kids (but parents are still welcome to listen). Episodes published before November 24, 2022 will still contain some of our old branding.  We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

There’s been an increase in depression and anxiety in kids in recent years, which is why I wanted to have an expert on the show who’s had years of experience working with childhood trauma and anxiety.In this episode, I talk with Dr. Ambroes Pass-Turner, who has worked in mental health for over 20 years and has experience working with children and adults. Dr. Pass-Turner is an expert in working with behavioral and emotionally disturbed children, adults, families, and offenders within the criminal justice system. She is a Doctor of Counseling Psychology and the owner of APT Counseling Services, LLC. She is a professor at Grand Canyon University in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and Georgia Military College. In this conversation, we talk about: ✅ Red flags of anxiety and depression in kids; as well as signs and symptoms of abuse and trauma.✅ The school-to-prison pipeline: What it is and how to take steps to prevent it✅Navigating special education eligibility for kids with mental health diagnoses; as well as effective educational accommodations for kids with anxiety. ✅How to use self-talk to build self-esteem in kids.  ✅How to encourage kids to take care of their mental health, even when they don’t want to. Dr. Ambroes Pass-Turner is an author and published the books, Rex’s Journey: Helping Children Understand and Cope with Emotions and Childhood Sexual Abuse: Pathway to Mental Health Issues and Delinquent Behavior.You can learn more about Dr. Ambroes Pass-Turner at her website here. The De Facto Leaders podcast was formerly the “Are they 18 yet?®” podcast. As of November 2022, the name of the show has changed, and we’ve shifted from a focus on parenting to a focus on supporting clinicians and educators to design effective services for kids (but parents are still welcome to listen). Episodes published before November 24, 2022 will still contain some of our old branding.  We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.