Episode 286: It’s Not Your Fault with Hallie Bulkin, MA CCC-SLP, CMT®, CPFT™

Hi and welcome to episode 286 of the Untethered Podcast. It is your host, Hallie Balkan, and we're going to talk about something that seems to be a common theme amongst parents and maybe even therapists working in this space. But it's not your fault. What do I mean? Stay tuned. We'll jump in.

Quick Disclaimer all information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of a qualified healthcare provider. Welcome to the Untethered Podcast. I am your host, Holly Balkan. I'm a certified myofunctional therapist, feeding specialist, podcaster, business owner and mentor. This podcast is all about getting your questions answered and collaborating with colleagues to bring you the most up to date information in the orofacial myofunctional therapy, airway, tele tissue and pediatric feeding therapy space. If you're new here, I challenge you to keep an open mind and join my mission to spread this message far and wide. If you've been around since June 2019, thanks for being a loyal listener. As we jump into today's episode, remember to listen with correct oral rest.

Posture, tongue up, lips closed, teeth apart, breathe through your nose.

Let's get started.

Okay, so it's not your fault. What do I mean by that? It's actually funny. I'm not funny. I was having this Alanis Morissette song started playing in my head and it was like, it's not your fault. I can't sing. Sorry for that. And then I had to go look up the lyrics and I was like, oh, no, she's saying it. It's all your fault. Not a good. Not a good song to reference for this episode. Anyway, anyways, anyways, that's where my ADHD brain went, so bear with me here. But no, I wanted to jump on and do an episode talking about a lot of the guilt that I think that we carry and that we feel as parents, as caregivers, as therapists working with children in any developmental space, truly. But especially when it comes to, like, developmental milestones, feeding. You know, I hear all the time parents say, oh my gosh, like, what did I do wrong? Or did I mess them up? Or oh, we use the pacifier too long. Did I mess my kid up? Or, you know, I let them suck their thumb or oh, I didn't start speech therapy soon enough. Or oh, we should have started this earlier. Oh, you know, I should have trusted my gut I saw these signs before and I just am not doing anything till it now. And I just want to, like, tell you to breathe, take a deep breath. It is all okay. It is all going to be okay, right? It's never too late. I think that's really important here. It's never too late. You didn't ruin your child. And I mean that. I really, genuinely mean that. Let me share with you how I know this and how I've experienced it as a mother and therapist. Right. I have had children that I worked with that I didn't know or understand certain things about until after taking a certain course or getting a certain certification. And once I did those things, I sat back and I was like, wow, I would have done things differently. I would have done things differently with so many cases. And I could even think of certain cases that I would have done things differently with. Probably therapy would have gone a lot faster or we would have worked on things that I probably completely missed as a younger clinician. Now, the amazing thing is there's so much more information out there these days. And when I was jumping into this space, I won't tell you how many years ago. But the point is, right, we've got younger clinicians who are so highly skilled because they have just their at their fingertips, just access to so much more information. But as a therapist, I want to tell you, you're doing your best with the information you have right now. And it is your job to seek more information, to be a lifelong learner, to keep on learning. But it's not your fault if you did not know something by nature, of not having been introduced to it yet by somebody teaching a course or a mentor and so on and so forth. Okay. And the same, you know, really, I had parents in mind when I started speaking and recording this episode. Like, this is like most of my episodes, it's completely off the cuff. This is not planned. I don't have, like, notes in front of me or anything. So I apologize. Apologize if it's a little tangential, like some of my episodes tend to be. But parents, you know, there's so much guilt. So, so much guilt that's carried from feeling like, oh, my gosh, I have all this information. I wish I had this a year ago. I wish I had this five years ago. Wish I had this ten years ago. Right? I've heard. I've heard parents with grown kids say, I wish I had this information when my kids were younger. So I just want to encourage you, encourage you that no matter where you are on Your journey as you learn more information, as you deep dive into certain topics and things that you think will be helpful to your child, and you start to think, you know, oh, gosh, I wish I had this before. I wish I had this information sooner. We probably would be in a different place. Our brains go there because we're human, right? You're human. You have real emotions. So I'm not going to tell you not to feel a certain way, but I want to validate how you're feeling. And I also want to let you know at the same time, it's not your fault right now if you have the information and you choose to do nothing with with it, okay, maybe that changes. But if you are just learning this information, if you're really overwhelmed and trying to sort through, what information do I listen to first? Who do I listen to? Where do I take my child first? How do I go about figuring out the next best steps in my case or my child's case? Right? It can be so overwhelming. What I want to tell you is choose one provider, choose one thing to focus on. Determine what feels like it's most important to you. I can't tell you what that is. I can tell you what a textbook might say and you might think that sways your decision. But let me tell you, at the end of the day, a lot of families who have the most success and their children have the most success in therapy, they do so because they get super clear on what it is they desire for their child. And ultimately they find the professionals that can help their child achieve those goals. And what do I mean by this? Right? Let's say you've got a child who may have a few delays. Maybe there's a speech delay, maybe there's a feeding delay, maybe there's a fine motor delay. What do you feel is most important to you to address right now? That's where you start, right? So let's say it's the feeding. You want to address feeding first. You, you're like, I don't have the capacity to pull in an OT to work on fine motor and an SLP to work on the feed side. And you know, okay, so you say you know what OT is in our future, but right now I'm going to focus on feeding with either an OT or SLP who does pediatric feeding therapy. I'm going to figure out how we expand my child's diet. I'm going to help my child chew their foods and digest their foods better. I'm going to help my child, you know, x Y and Z, so on and so forth, right? And you don't have to know what the goals are. You just have to know that there is an issue that you need help with, and you have to figure out what is most important to you and your family right now, and that will be different from family to family. And we pass no judgment. We should pass no judgment as therapists, when families say, you know what? I hear you. Thank you for this information. Right now, we're choosing to go down this path because that is your choice as a parent. And I fully believe that when you have the power to choose what is right for you and your family and you start down that path, a lot of that overwhelm, maybe some anxiety, a lot of that will start to lift when you start to see your child thrive. But we got to start somewhere, right? And I just want you to remember this isn't your fault. You didn't cause this, and you're doing the best you can with the information you have now. So this is just a little bit of a virtual hug to all of the parents out there who are working so hard to get your child the services they need. And you're working so hard between sessions with therapists and with whichever providers are on your child's team, because you're the real MVP here. You're the ones doing the work. You're the ones living. And we. We recognize that as therapists, right? We recognize that you are the one who's putting in the time between sessions. We may be there to help your child gain a skill, help your child realize they can succeed at something. But then it really falls on you, right, to carry that between sessions so that they. They generalize that skill so that that skill becomes part of their repertoire. Part of the skills that they use on a regular basis makes their life a bit easier. It makes them function better, right? That's. We make things easier for them. At the end of the day, we just want our children to thrive. And I know that's what so many of us are working towards. And what that looks like can be different from family to family, caregiver to caregiver, child to child, therapist to therapist, unit to unit, you know, whatever that unit is in the therapy side or the family patient side, you know, it's very. It's very, very individualized. Okay? So just again, a bit of encouragement. You didn't cause this. You have not ruined your child. If they're older and you're just now realizing that their pacifier should be done, or maybe they should have transitioned, you know, should have also being keyword, you're being told they should have transitioned from a bottle to an open cup sooner or to a straw cup or bottle. Shouldn't be the repertoire. Or they shouldn't be using a sippy cup or they shouldn using 360 cups. Yes, we do believe these things. No, we're not going to judge you if your child is using them, but if your desire is to help them stop using those things and to move into more age appropriate skills, then, you know, and they have the ability to do that. Right. Or we can help them gain those skills and that is what you desire for them. Right. That's where therapy comes in. And again, just wanted to kind of put out this like psa like you didn't ruin your child and that's it. We can always help, we can always make progress. There's always things that can be done. And people are on different paths, age wise, skill wise. And so another thing I will share is that it's very challenging if you compare your child to another child because no two children, even with the same chronological age, same diagnosis, same cognitive age, no two children are going to look the same, all things considered. Right. So. And no two siblings are going to develop the same whether they're cognitively intact or not, whether they are developing their skills on time or not. It. Timelines are different. Humans are very, very intricate. You know, I was going to say beasts, but that's like a. I don't know why I came up with that word. We're, we're very intricate. We are very complex. There's a lot of moving pieces to the puzzle. And so everybody should be able to stand alone on their own in terms of like who they are and not always be compared to someone else when it comes to things like development. All right, just once more going to remind you it's not your fault. You did not break your child. You did not ruin your child. Right. But if you are looking for more information on how you can make changes, this, this podcast is a great place. And you can go to untetheredpodcast.com and you can type in keywords like pacifier or sippy cup or straw cup or you know, bottle or whatever to pull up episodes that speak directly to certain topics. So I hope that is helpful. One other plug I will give also is if you're someone who is looking for a pediatric feeding therapist, you can to pediatricfeedingtherapist.com and there's a directory of all SLPs and OTS who have added themselves that have graduated from our Feed the Peds course. We also have a new MYO directory for myofunctional therapy at the myo themyo directory.com so you can go there to find a myofunctional therapist. Note we just recently released that so there's small numbers on there. Despite having hundreds of therapists who have gone through our course, we're hoping people will add their themselves to soon. But for now, you know you can always DM me at Holly Balkan on Instagram as well if you're having trouble finding finding somebody on one of our directories and we'll we'll see if we can help you out. All right, I hope everybody receives this message. Well, big virtual hugs to you all. Thank you all for being such loyal listeners to this podcast and I do hope this just kind of gives you a breath of fresh air and a little relief today. All right everybody, I'll talk to you on the next episode.

Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you found value in this episode and want to hear more of these Myotots, Airway and Feeding related episodes, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and share this episode on your social media platforms. You can access free resources and all I offer@halliebalkin.com or pop over to hollybulcken on Instagram to get all the latest updates.