Why Great Therapy Starts With Better Parent Conversations

There are all types of options. And so I was like, you know what, I'm gonna fill this seat. I'm not about to add on to something else right now. This is some area that I'm passionate about. It's like 1, 2, 3 for me to come up with a theme and a class. And I've done it at libraries. I've partnered with, you know, other large organizations in my area. At this point, I'm sort of doing in my smaller community through mom groups and things like that. And I have grandmas coming, I have the babysitters coming, I've had dads come. And it's really nice.

Hi, and welcome back to the Untethered Podcast. Today we have Joanna joining us. Joanna is a pediatric SLP and feeding therapist based in Northern Bergen County, New Jersey. She owns Ready, Set, Speech, where she works with families on early speech, feeding, language, and literacy. Beyond her practice, she consults and advises companies that align with her mission. She's also a mom of 3, which gives her a dual perspective that's pretty rare. She gets it from both sides of the table. Her big thing is helping parents feel empowered rather than overwhelmed, and she's known for breaking down complex clinical concepts into practical everyday language for caregivers. Welcome to the Untethered Podcast.

I am your host, Hallie Bulkin. 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, tethered oral 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.

Joanna, welcome to the podcast.

I'm excited to dive in today because one of our updated missions as of recent is very in tune with what you do already. So I already know we're going to talk all about it today, but before we hit record, we were just chatting about all the amazing work that you're doing out in your community and supporting parents and caregivers. And so I am just so excited to have you here today.

Thank you. This is like one of my favorite topics because I also am in it. Like I have a 5.5-year-old, almost 4-year-old, and a 10-month-old. So it's, I hear it either on playdates or after school, whatever, from families and parents, but then I also see it in my own practice and day to day. So trying to just bridge those two areas for a more fruitful progressive path for everybody.

Yeah.

Amazing. I think it's so interesting because not everybody— I just kind of assumed like people knew how to communicate with parents and then realized that therapists, even though we can be really good with kids, that's just actually not a skill that many therapists have. And so we started to be like, okay, we have got to actually teach this. And especially being that like the parents are a very important part of the therapy process, like if you're actually talking about the parents in therapeutic sense, evidence-based practice includes like the caregivers and the patient's experiences, goals, all of the above, right? But just even thinking beyond that and going just into like the parents that are in your community and knowing how to even communicate to them, reach out to them, what to offer them so they know when their child may need some help or how they could possibly be, possibly be helping their child. I just think it's, again, it's just not something that's talked about enough.

Yeah, I think you're right. I think I didn't realize this because I'm very comfortable and there's certain things I'm not comfortable with, right? Like tech, not my thing, but like I'm very comfortable talking to parents and you would think, okay, you're an SLP, you like to talk, you're good at talking to everybody, but no, not at all. I remember in grad school where again, in grad school we learn a little bit of everything, but I had this— we had to take a class in disfluency and stuttering. And in the course we talked about counseling and just counseling with families because specifically in that area, which I will always refer out for stuttering. That's not my area, but it stuck with me how the counseling advice and all the things we learned about there, how to deal with hard information, how to figure out what the parent already is thinking and if they have buy-in or are they in denial, and just kind of a gentle but informative way to approach the conversation and continue throughout. I think like it's so important to think about that. And if we did not or do not feel comfortable from grad school and onward, then it's never too late. There's ways to, to learn. And it's important to just think about the family. Like I always say, before I had kids, I was still mindful, but even after kids, like I'm not giving a paper of 10 things that you're gonna do in a week and then I'm seeing you again in a week from now and expecting you to do it if you have 2 other kids running around and you work a full-time job. Like I wanna be mindful, maybe one carryover strategy and one thing that we can talk about and then together, discuss the week after, like, how did that work for you? Do you want me to show you it? I always ask, do you want like a voice note, a text, an email, a video? Like, what's your preferred mode of communication for your like brain? Because not everyone can do fine with just like SLP talk and they want it on paper. And then some are okay with it a different way. So just knowing the family and knowing how to navigate each conversation. And I'm not saying it's easy. It's, it's definitely a skill to learn.

Yeah. I'll end. It's making me kind of pause for a second because I'm like, huh, I know we talk about, or I talk about like they don't teach pediatric feeding in grad school. And I come to realize, wait, they also don't really teach counseling. But what's kind of fascinating was I actually had a counseling class and it was one of my most favorite classes in grad school. And I just, I never stopped before now to think like, is that not common? Like, do other people not get that in their grad programs? Because yeah. And when you said fluency, it kind of triggered my memory too, because I was sitting here going, okay, I'd one fluency patient. One, there was a fluency clinic and one of like the big names in fluency at the University of Maryland who like runs it. And I was the only person in my graduate school class who did not go through that clinic. And I don't know why, it was just how I was assigned or not assigned. And so fluency was not something that's a comfort area for me. Like it's not my specialty. Like I will also, I would also always refer out for that. But I remember going into eval a 16-year-old boy. That was my only eval that I ever did on a fluency kid. And I had my list of questions and I walk in to meet with my clinical mentor ahead of time and she's like, "Oh, can I see your questions?" And I'm like, "Yeah." And she reads through, she's like, "These are great. This is fantastic. You are ready." She's like, "Okay, go." And I was like, "Okay, can I have my questions back?" And she was like, "No." She's like, "You're going to walk into a room with a list of questions and the 16-year-old boy is supposed to communicate with you?" She's like, "You're not going to get his natural abilities or even disfluencies." If he thinks you're, if you're providing, you know, increasing his anxiety, and he's a kid who stutters, like, I was like, oh yeah, but at the same time, right?

And at the same time, I was like, oh my gosh, I can't do this.

I was like, so freaked out, right? I go in, I did it. I was so proud of myself. And I think at that point, it really taught me the importance of connecting with the patient and the human sitting in front of you and their caregiver, because the parents were in the room as well. And it was such a good evaluation. Like, it was just, it was incredible. And then with the, it was the same instructor, clinical instructor who also taught the counseling class totally separate from that. And again, just like having to role play, sitting in front of a room and being the parent versus a therapist and then switching and being the therapist versus, you know, the patient or the caregiver and having those experiences, which feel really uncomfortable even though you're in a classroom setting, 'cause you're like, this is strange, I haven't done this before, is so good because then when you're actually out there working with patients, you've already done it. You've had the practice, you've thought about it. It's not this new construct or this whole new thing. And like, I am, I can talk to anybody. So like for me, it's probably easier than it is for some other people. Like for you, it seems like it comes very naturally to you, right? So I get that it's not natural for everybody, but I'm like, if we can just remember that the person sitting in front of us, like they're human, they're here, they've got a goal in mind. If we can find out from them or the caregiver, like the patient if they're old enough or the caregiver, What is your goal? How can I help you? And we put that first and we keep that.

That's a, that's a question on my intake form. What's your goal for the next, what's your goal for the next 3 months, for the next month?

In medicine in general, right? No one actually asks why, like some people say, why are you here? But they don't actually do anything with it, right? So it's like if you're actually asking and you're using that to inform like your conversations, how much easier is it to have a conversation with a parent that says, oh, I see that you're here because you have concerns about X. Tell me more about that.

I wanna say that it's like also more difficult these days because everyone who's in grad school is doing it with the age of AI and technology, and maybe it's not coming as like quick or natural and they're just looking for, as we all are, shortcuts. But I think it was always an issue where, you know, some people, I will talk to colleagues or other SLPs that I help support in my coaching through certain other areas of my business that we've, we can speak about later, but they're like, I, I don't really know how to approach this conversation. The parent is telling me that they're doing all these things and I'm like, Well, it doesn't sound like this is— I'm thinking of a specific situation in feeding therapy. I'm like, it doesn't sound like the parent has buy-in. They thought you were coming in with a magic wand and fixing their, what they're calling picky eating. Now, it's really hard with, with technology, like I said before, and social media. I have a page where I really am passionate about like educating parents and caregivers. So I talk a lot to that audience. By default, a lot of SLPs will follow and we all follow each other. So you have that, but I think it's very hard, like in 30 seconds, how can I express to you everything about this topic while not also freaking you out and like stressing you out, but making you also feel like you're seen. There's just so many elements of it. So the connection piece is important. Getting in the room with the families and just kind of understanding what they're seeing, what you're seeing, and making sure that you're on the same page. If the parent doesn't have buy-in and they don't understand that later along the line, there might be an airway issue. I don't share all the details like on my page, but when I talk about like picky eating, I don't talk about like the airway in the same breath always, cuz I don't have time. But that's a factor that we wanna look at and that I look at with my one-on-one clients. So it's like a love-hate relationship I have with social media and technology. It— there's so much amazing stuff to it, but it's also very hard when that's how we connect with families as well. Like in a virtual communal element, there's great things about it, but it's also—

Mm-hmm.

Tricky if we're not using it the right way.

Right. And I think like to your point, like we have to figure out how in this era of overwhelm, how do we underwhelm the family in a sense where they feel like they're getting fantastic service, but they're not leaving completely stressed out over what you just shared with them. You know, it's like we, we don't want them in overwhelm even though they're consuming, consuming, and the therapists are consuming, and it's like everybody's just consuming. Here's the thing, nobody actually remembers half of what they've consumed, or maybe I think it's like maybe you remember like a third of it. I don't even know. Either way, it's, I think the goal of like trying to just focus everyone helps also focus the nervousness.

Focus myself, my list for today. I was like all over with all the things I had to do today. I'm like, you know what? Just put it all on paper and then focus. Don't get in the middle of the day, just stick to this. And that's the same thing for the families. Like just help them focus. What's our goal? They have like a little anxious moment where they're worried about their child. They are, they're trying to process this diagnosis of suspected apraxia. I work a lot with children with apraxia and motor speech disorders and just figuring out the language and how to come about that, helping them just focus. This is what's going on. We have a problem. I don't call it, it's not a real problem, but from a mental health perspective of problem solution, we are addressing what we see. We're helping your family kind of figure out carryover strategies at home. Yes, we could be stressed. We could also be anxious. Those are normal feelings. That's where the counseling comes in. But, but there is like a path and we just have to focus and trust the process and we're the ones guiding them. So that's like the hardest part too. You could be like not sure about, okay, I don't really know what's going on today. Or like, this didn't work, but figuring out, okay, I'll go to my toolbox and get something else and try it out. And I'm actually upfront with the family sometimes. Like I had a case, it's also hard cuz some things are ongoing, what you wanna share, even if you don't share names. But I, I sometimes have like a case that starts off as like an articulation issue and then I realize, okay, there's actually something else coming in that's maybe not so so much my expertise, like a voice resonance, or maybe there's airway that I've, through your help also and through your programs, like just kind of learn more about the airway and its impact and just kind of being like, okay, I'm not so sure right now. I'm actually looking into this. And if I need to refer out, I will. But normal, most of the times we have like tools and we know where to go. We just have to be confident in it and like push forward. Yeah.

And I think that's a common challenge that many of us run into too, right? Like, right, in navigating, like, what's actually going on with this case. Okay, great. How do I communicate this to this family? And then how do we help them navigate, like, the next steps?

Is that with us?

Is that with referrals? And, like, to your point that you made earlier too, I love that you're like, I'm not gonna— you're like, I don't have time to even go through all the things at once upfront. But I think even if you had the time, it would be so completely overwhelming. They're not gonna hear as much. They may not come back, right? They're gonna be like, whoa, that was like brain overwhelmed, I'm done, I'm out.

Like, I—

That's a great point. But it's like, you need— my goal, especially like with a new, like a newer family, right, is to make that connection, to build the rapport with the kid. I feel like if the family sees you building rapport with the kid, then they're like, oh, my kid likes you, okay, great, I like you, you know. It's like, and then answering the parents' questions and even just saying— I, I like, kind of like to give them a disclaimer, like, all right, Listen, there's probably more things that I'm going to want to share with you as time goes on. And as I think it makes sense to discuss those things, we'll talk about them. If anything comes up that I need to research further, I totally will. Like if you have any questions and I don't know the answers, like, you know, I love like leading with things like that because then they're like, oh, this person doesn't have an ego that they're working from. Like they understand that they're not like queen bee of the world. Like everybody, it's like everybody—

I love her.

I love it. It's like everybody still has more to learn and I'm willing to do the work and help you and your family, right? So if you like, that's kind of like my message to them is like, I'm here to help you. What you're seeing, I see it too. Let's figure this out together. And oh, by the way, like as we go, like we might be talking about some other things, but like, let's just get started. Let's see what happens. Because then I think families are like, oh, okay, great. Right? It's like versus like doing an eval and you're like, here's the 10 places I want to refer you and here's the 75 issues that I'm seeing that we could address. It's just, I know it's not that much, but it's just like, that's what it feels like to a parent. They just feel completely overwhelmed and they're like, pump the brakes. Right. So I'm like, here's the thing.

This is not what they're studying. You show me like accounting and money. Like, I don't understand. Like, it's going to take me a while. My husband's like, sometimes we've done this already, Joanna. We've went over this. I'm like, I know, but I'm slower to learn this, you know? So it's the same thing with another novel area for these families that don't work in it day in, day out.

100%. 100%. So, okay, you have this, these Caregiver in Me classes, and I would love for you to talk a bit about those. I know you help like SLPs and stuff launch that in their own practice too, which is very much so aligned with like one of our newer mission, like our overarching mission in my business right now is like, how do we get more SLPs, OTs, therapists out there basically being that person in their community, right? Positions them as like the expert, but also gets their community access to a resource that actually can help them and their kids. So I would love for you to like, tell me, is that what this is? Like, what does that look like? Tell us whatever you want to share. Right.

Or no, there's like so much, but I guess I will say that this kind of came from an area of like, I, like I said, I, I'm passionate about educating and inspiring parents and caregivers without the intimidation. But there was also, I saw an interest and a need on the SLP end of, you know, doing these Caregiver and Me classes in their own practice, whether they're off for summer and they want to go out in the community, or they're trying to fill up those morning slots in their private practice. There are all types of options. And so I was like, you know what? I'm going to fill this seat. I'm not about to add on to something else right now. This is some area that I'm passionate about. It's like 1, 2, 3 for me to come up with a theme and a class. And I've done it at libraries. I've partnered with other large organizations in my area. At this point, I'm sort of doing in my smaller community through mom groups and things like that. And I have grandmas coming, I have, you know, the babysitters coming, I've had dads come, and it's really nice. It doesn't mean that your child needs speech therapy. I don't— I say that this is not speech or language or feeding therapy, but it is through an SLP lens, and it's an approach to language development through music, movement, and play. And every week we have a different theme, but at the same time we have the same set of songs and props that the children expect because we know about that repetition and how that supports development as well and for things to stick. So I'm musical, I like music, so that's kind of like my thing, and I'll incorporate that. I try to do a sensory bin here and there, but the goal of me supporting these SLPs is like, you might be really good at— I don't know, you play the guitar, or you might have like a great community center that's letting you use their space and you could do feeding Starting Solid support. So I do Starting Solids coaching as well. That's a whole separate area. But let's say you wanted to make a class for this, a smaller area. So I try to give the SLPs the tools of like the how, the roadmap basically is what I call it, to launch these and bring another stream of income to your private practice. And think about it, it's, it's a marketing as well. A lot of the families see my style, they see my rapport, and then they either might need me later along the line, they might just consult with me and say, okay, I think I might need services, or they might refer me to someone else. So it is a form of marketing in a sense. You come out, like I just had one today, like I feel like my hair is out here. You come out like sweaty and like all full of your animated and you're ready to like get your next coffee of the day. I love it. And I think it's just a great way to connect in your community and see the need. So I recommend if you wanna know more about it, you can also, you know, go to my website, readystatspeech.com and connect with me there or on Instagram. And I'd love to support you, but I think Those types of things of just thinking like, it doesn't have to be, and I know we're all tired and we have all so much high caseloads, but there are ways, like it doesn't have, you could do pop-ups. I started off with pop-ups when I was still in the school and simultaneously starting my private practice. So I wasn't like committed to weekly. And even now, like I, my son's getting a, like a small little procedure airway related. So like I post them monthly in my chat. And so next week I have the ability to be like, we're not having a class next week. And I'm not tied to anything. So there's so many ways around it. I don't want people to feel like this isn't gonna work for me. It can work for you. You have to use a little bit about your like creative brain for SLP brain that we have, and then the rest, and then the rest kind of will come together.

I hope everybody like re-listens to what you just said. There was so much good business advice hacked into that because it is like, this is such a great marketing tool and positioning tool to help people step into like being the go-to in their area for whatever your niche is.

Right? So it, like you were saying, like you could do this for starting solids.

You could do this for language, for whatever. And I think it's really a phenomenal way to get your name out there, especially if you're just starting, or maybe you're established but you're trying to fill those midday spots, which I know are challenging in a lot of private practices. So why not? Why not offer something to the community to bring their awareness to like the milestones and development and like what their kids should be doing? And then maybe if they're there and they're not, they're feeling like my kid is not quite where I would expect them to be. Well, now they know where they can go for help.

Right.

And even if it's not with you, at least you have brought their awareness and now they're going to get their kid the help they need. And so I just think it's like such a very organic marketing thing that helps you. A lot of us, and honestly, I was this way too, right? I opened my private practice in June of 2014, June 1st, 2014. And back then, like I had built a reputation for myself. And so I had families coming to me, right? Right. Honestly, my private practice is what it is today because of the reputation I've built. I once tried to run Google Ads for fun because I had like a $200 credit offered to me from Google. So like they only wanted me to, and I tried it and like literally we got like, it didn't help. But I was like, well, we don't really, we don't need this. And so we have like always had such a need, like more of a need than I have therapists, right? In my private practice. So it's like, well, what am I, you know, because I've built relationships with other area providers. I have just established a great reputation with our families and establishing a good reputation amongst families, whether they actually hire you or work with you, like maybe they come to your classes, but they're not necessarily actually on your team. Yes.

Some of them just come to classes.

Yeah. They're gonna refer to you. They are going to tell their friends about you. And that word of mouth marketing is the absolute best thing that can happen even still today because we are in an AI crazed world where 40% of the AI on social media are bots. And by next year, next year, they said it'll be 60% of the accounts. And I don't know if people with like larger followings, like recently saw this happen. It didn't happen to me, but people lost thousands of followers overnight because I think that like Instagram started to cut down. I remember that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This was a couple weeks ago.

I think it wasn't me, but I remember people with lots of follow, like lots of followers.

They're like, oh my gosh, I lost all these followers overnight. And I was like, well, I didn't, which makes be filled, right? Because that means that my accounts following me are real humans and not bots. Right. But we have to remember, like, you think you're out there doing all this work. Are there even humans behind who you're talking to? And so if we can kind of like, a lot of us, even in like my business mastermind that I'm in with like 7 and 8 figure business owners, we are mentors, like billionaires, multimillionaires. They're not doing business on social media. They're doing business over text message. Because they're talking to a human and then, and they're having conversations and they're meeting in person. And I was like, huh, we got so far away from that after, like, because of the pandemic, right? Everyone was like home, it just became easy. And I was like, I know a lot of us crave that, like, back to be like back in person and that human interaction. If we're craving it as therapists, guess what? The families with kids are craving it so much. So much. So like, be that place for them. How easy is that?

I think we're lucky in the sense that our field, like as much as they'll try, we can't, you can't really replace like the job of us and like building communication because the in-person connection is so important. I'm like old school. Like I'll be like, my brother's like, Joanna, work hard, work smarter, not harder. I'm like, I'm working smart and hard, but I like the in-person touch. Like, you know? Yeah. So yeah.

Arguably even online, cause I've seen apps pop up for years in our space and they've never really taken off. They've never replaced us. Like I just saw something pop up last week that's like got Ash's name attached to it related to feed feeding, and someone on my team signed up for it. It's free, and it's like sending a tip to a parent every week. And my team was like, what is this? Like, this is just dumb. They're like, this is not helpful.

Right. No, there's so much out there. You have to figure it out. Listen, I am learning about AI and like the beauties of it and how we can use it for good. Disclaimer, I am the, like an SLP advisor for an AI company that creates visual supports in seconds and it's called Glint. And I will tell you, I use it in my practice. I use it at home when like I need to keep my toddler on schedule and he's like all over. But I see the people are running it. It's a different type of AI. So you really have to figure it out. The people are running it. We're working to figure out what the best latest practices are for incorporating literacy. And I haven't figured out how to put like motor speech practices inside this AI tool. I'm like, you just can't, you can't do the back-to-back thing, but there's so many beauties for like SLPs in the schools. I would have killed to have this, which is partially why I'm so passionate about it and like why I put my name behind it. But it creates like individualized, personalized visuals in seconds that you can bring into your sessions and give to your either child with AAC or without AAC. So just filtering out like the noise and like what doesn't make sense for our families is also important and helping them navigate that. Like we're not shoving multiple products in front of their faces or products that we haven't tried, or, you know, like advice that we don't really know if it has worked in and we're just kind of experimenting. We're not doing that. There's so much, like you said in the beginning, there's so much consumerism lately and everything thrown in our face that we have to be, we're responsible now when we're working with this family one-on-one. Now we're in charge. Like, what are we recommending? How are we recommending it?

Like, so that's important to me. 100%. 100%. And I love that you actually said that because we use AI in my business and we use it behind the scenes for a lot of like team stuff, like helping like internally. And so I think AI 100% has a time and a place. We also have created Hallie AI, which is a like user-end app for therapists and it's our content. It's not like on any, it's not a bot or any of those like ChatGPT, whatever, like kind of cloud-based things. It's actually like a private created, custom created tool. So right now the only way to get access to it is like being in one of our programs. And we are like working on like how we're gonna like, where else we're gonna give access to it. But it's for the most part all like, you can, you can chat with it on my websites, but it's more like surface level stuff and we'll point you to like the right product to help you kind of figure out your next steps on the front end, like customer service space. But then on the back end, it's actually like got 5,000+ hours of like all of my content courses, everything in it. And so we've controlled the information that's gone in, so we know everything that's gone into it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And we know it's quality evidence-based information. You can— the crazy part, and this is what really weirds me out, you— so you can have like a chat with it and then the chat history's there, but you can also have a phone call with me and it sounds like me. It's not actually me, it's Hallie AI.

I know.

And I was like, guys, this is weird. This is very weird. But some people really like it. I think most people use the chat feature, but it will help you with like treatment planning. If you're stuck in session, it'll help like talk you through like different ideas of where maybe you can go next. It'll help you write like tiny little sections of your reports. But the idea is like you still have to be the brain and you still have to know what you're doing. And the second that you start to, there's a couple things here, right? The second you start to let AI do all your work for you, your brain actually starts to lose the ability to write reports, treatment plan, do the therapy. So like I wanna caution everybody because there's actual research behind this that's showing how the human brain is changing and how it will continue to change over time for people who solely rely for the, like, for their, what they do on AI. I also call it a 24/7 pocket mentor, but I've been very clear to say this does not replace working with a human mentor. This is to supplement that. This is when you are in the moment and you need somebody right away. Yeah. To like, yeah, to give you an idea or to come up with whatever, but like having a human mentor and being able to talk through it, so important. And then the other piece is what we're also just seeing with like all these AI tools, One of my business mentors shared with me, they were like, yeah, all this AI has been created. It is costing companies more money and more human power to actually implement all the AI they've put in place that they think is supposed to be saving them time and money, but it's actually doing the complete opposite. And I think this was out of, I don't know if it was like Harvard or Yale or whenever somebody like did like an actual, like actual research around this. And they're like, in the past year, it's actually absurd. Like people are spending, I don't know, it's like more than like 40 hours a week on AI stuff that they weren't spending time on before. It was actually faster for the human to do it because people don't know how to properly use it or what they're using. So you need to like have, like, yes, use it, but you need to know what your purpose is. Like, what's the goal and is it actually helping you? And is this a skill you can actually replace with AI or are you trying to replace yourself? Because there will be no replacing SLPs in the AI world. Like, it's just not, it's not possible when you're working human to human. You can't put a robot with a human and get the same results. You absolutely can't. Like, fight me on it. I know you agree with me.

No, I agree with you.

I agree with that.

Even just like, yeah, we're in agreement, but like even just like, like you going back to what you just said, like I always think about this, like, know, I like, I need to know your why, like know your why. I'm saying know your why. Like I sometimes when I'm overwhelmed, I'm like, okay, hold on. Why am I doing this again? Is this serving like my practice or my business? A purpose, or even in the home. And I think that's important also, bringing it back to the parents and the caregivers or the products that we use, everything. It's about knowing your why. Are you just doing it to do it? Are you trying to figure out something new and it's helping you? It's still aligned with your why. That's so important. And if I can just talk one for one minute about another coaching aspect of my business, I do the Starting Solids coaching and how it started really is struggling. Long story short, struggling with one child and seeing the benefit of kind of getting, you know, I had the PFD experience and I knew kind of where to go, what to do. But then I saw on social media a lot of this information, like your child should be eating this at this age. And, but it didn't give all the in-between information. And I see friends going from my child's eating X, Y, and Z to like, my child doesn't eat anything. I'm doing it this way. Oh, I'm offering them like a cube of cheese. Cause I saw this. I'm like, but you've never given them any other type of, you know, like. Mm-hmm. You're starting here, but that's for someone who was already eating prior, like all these steps prior. So long story short, I realized, wow, there's such a need here. I struggled also, and I did not like the feeling. It was not easy from the sense of like the parent overwhelm piece, not from like the knowledge and content piece. And so now, like with my son, I'm having a different experience, but in my practice virtually, I'm trying to also connect with as many families as possible. And it's tricky because you have to figure out, okay, is this an actual— Yeah. You know, pediatric feeding disorder, or does this require actual feeding therapy? Or is it that the pediatrician is not necessarily supporting you in this journey of starting solids and they're saying, okay, start with this, give this much, this many times a day, giving you a paper and then go. And now you're overwhelmed and you want to start from the beginning in a successful, positive way and responsive feeding and understanding kind of the value of positioning and placement and all those early things that have so such an important place in the trajectory of feeding. So I've kind of also positioned myself in that sense. On my website, there's a section for coaching and a specific section for starting solids. And I can really like figure out if this is a feeding issue where like, okay, you're virtual, I can't see you, but let me see who I can refer you to. Or I can take you on as a private feeding client if you're near me. But there's a lot of times where it's okay, you just need maybe a few sessions of like starting solids and— Yeah. Support and like figuring out your family's needs and how to get you on track. So just knowing that's like for my, that's like part of my why. I just kind of want to like put that little plug in as well. The why will guide your practice and also your, if you're, if you own a business, I think it will guide, and you can tell me more about this, but I think it guides a lot of your decisions as you go.

Oh yeah. 100%. 100%. If you don't know the reason as to why you're doing what you're doing, if you don't have like a mission that's greater and larger than you and like a vision for like the future and where you wanna take something, like what are you working towards? And it's going to become really overwhelming for you when you're working every day in the ins and outs of work and you have no idea why you're doing it or what, like I said, what you're working towards. And so I just think even having, for me, when I launched the private practice, I was like, I want to provide a boutique service that is actually providing very high quality services in the pediatric feeding, speech language arena, myo arena was when I added that in. But I feel like that's what's missing. I feel like there's all these practices every 5 minutes down the road, but I'm not hearing from families that they feel like they're being heard, that their kid is making progress. I'm like, why? Why is that not happening?

This is—

I'm like, so I was like, I'm gonna be that practice. Yeah, I was like, I'm gonna be the place they come, right? You're making me think of something.

Yeah, you're making me think of something. I had a conversation with like an, like a more seasoned SLP, and I always try because you know, if I'm full or if it's not like my area and I can't fit in the schedule, I try to refer out. But I want to make sure I'm referring to the right provider and to the right type of provider for the family and for their needs. And I was like doing not 21 questions, I saw this, uh, this other SLP in one of the centers that I go to, and I was like, oh my god, actually you might be good. And I asked her a few questions, she like kind of started giggling, and I'm like, oh, is everything okay? She's like, no, I'm getting a kick out of this, you're asking me questions, I like this, you're vetting me. And I'm like, does no one do that? Like, we forget that We don't have to do everything, but we also kind of need to be making sure that if we're making referrals or making connections, that we're doing it with other providers that have like-minded goals or are able to serve the, the family that, you know, we're possibly referring them to. So I was like laughing cuz I was like, I hope I didn't do it in a rude way at all. But she was like, no, this is actually great. I, I guess like it wasn't something she's got, she'd gotten in a while because she's so seasoned. But I'm like, I need to make sure I'm putting my reputation out there and referring to you.

Yeah.

And that you're the, you know, a rightly aligned SLP with your goals and your sort of clinical mindset. Yeah.

When I think that even speaks to like the holistic lens side of things, right? Because if you, a lot of us talk about a holistic lens, like by working with many different angles, like taking all the tools in our tool belt, thinking about the whole child, but it also goes to who's on the care team and who are we referring to and is this the right fit for the family? And like, have we done our due diligence like we've done with this, you know, referral? And talked in some of like my free trainings even, like on how do we know when to refer? Who do we refer to? How do we know that they're the right fit for the family? Like when it comes to like the airway dentist or an ENT or something like that. And sometimes it's a matter of actually going yourself with your own kid or going yourself as an adult if they see it. Yeah. If they need an adult and actually meeting the person and not even telling them that's why you're there. Like you go as a patient and yeah, it might cost you a little money, but like, How are you going to refer people there without ever having met them or without having spoken to them, without knowing what they stand for, what they specialize in? You're wasting your family's times, right? You're wasting their times if you're just sending them blindly to the nearest person that pops up on Google. So I love that you did that. And I think more people need to do that. And I know it's not comfortable for a lot of people, but I'm like, that is a skill to build.

Right. And there's a way to do it. You could be professional and respectful. I think we get nervous also Like the professionalism, it's a— I take it very seriously. I'm like more of a professional person. I think it's important to be fun and relatable also for like, you know, parents on my page. I do funny jokes, but there's like, there's a level of professionalism that's needed in, in the field. And I think there's a way to do it that you could be respectful but professional, but also relatable. Like I was just texting a family member, one of my clients, and I was relatable. I'm like, I'm super stressed about this procedure that my own son has and we're canceling sessions for that week so I could be more local and that's as much as you wanna share and privacy is all that. Also for my own family, I take it very seriously, but being seen and relatable also and not looking like back to the ro— like bots, like a robot, I think also adds value when you're working with families and you don't have to have a kid to, to be like relatable. Like you could still have empathy and validate their perspective. There's so many other things that don't require you to have a, an actual child to relate to that other one who's— Yeah. Doing things with their child with you.

Yeah, 100%. And I will tell you, because— and if you're willing to be vulnerable and you're willing to share your own experiences in life, however it relates, right? You're talking about being relatable, whether it's your children, it's yourself. Maybe, like you said, you don't have children yet, but you have other experiences that relate. Maybe it's your friend's kid that you helped. Maybe it's another patient you worked with where you're not saying their name or giving away private health information, but you're like, this is how we— this is what we did in this situation. That puts people's nervous systems at so much because they connect with it and they're like, oh, you're a real human. That's a story. Like this, my brain understands stories. My brain understands relatable content. My brain understands when you're telling me like, you got this, we got this together. Because the parents, again, remember, like, I know you're not telling you, but everybody else, like they're— No, it's like the parents are an equal part of that treatment process, right? When we talk holistically, we got to include them and I just think that so many people seem to either not know this or they forget it, but it's just, again, it's just such an important thing to keep in our minds when working with humans.

Yeah. It's just not telling, we're not better than, I think especially maybe when you're starting off and you're like, they're not implementing any of the work or whatever, they're not doing this or they're so, ugh, they don't answer, they're not involved at all. No, they're busy. They're trying to keep up with the bills and maybe they're not on the same page as you and you need to have a reset to the the meeting, but there's always more to the picture. I don't find that if a parent, especially if they're seeking out private services, like especially that most of the time there's something else. If there's a lack of communication, either you're not, you know, communicating it properly or they're swamped with something else, or maybe they're like mentally just blocking the situation cuz it's a lot of for them to process and they are just coming in at random points. There's so much to it. So I think like putting your detective hat on is is so needed in this kind of journey.

Yeah.

Yeah. And to go back to like what you were talking about earlier in the episode with, you know, how you will provide like more practical, realistic, like strategies for the family to work on at home. Even if you have a family, well, really any of your families, like we kind of have a rule where like, unless I have a family that is gung-ho, I know they, they're asking for more. Like I'm giving them one thing to work on. Like you were saying, like find the thing and then teach. Like I like to teach them how they can implement it into their everyday life. Is this something we could do in the car on the drive home from daycare? Is this something that we can do in bath time? Is this something we can do in dinner, but maybe it's not a feeding thing, right? So it's not related to feeding, right? And so it's just like figuring out how they can implement this, which seems so simple but so impactful thing into their daily life, 5 minutes a day max. Like you're going to get people who are way more compliant and they're going to get it done maybe 3 times that week.

it's making everybody feel like good about themselves and that like, you know, they're doing that like homework, quote unquote. I hate calling it homework, but the carryover.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now, oh, this has been amazing. Is there anything else you want to share that we like haven't gone over before we start to wrap up today?

I think we shared everything. No, but talk about knowing your why and just trying to figure out, you know, there's a way to like build. And I've kind of learned that like, okay, I'm one person. I can only fit X amount of clients in a day before I go get my kids at pickup. And turn off for a little bit. So what's the next step? And I think these Caregiver in Me classes or these virtual coaching options for families, and I'm not— it's not fully public yet, but we're gonna have some webinars for families on my website too, SLP webinars. It's just, it's cool to see, like, I did not think that I was going to do this with my, like, SLP life. Like, I knew I wanted to eventually go into private practice, but COVID made me leave the schools a little faster than I expected. And it's been just really nice to see to see how my entrepreneurial side and my SLP side and my new business side are able to come together. And you know this, you show this, there really is so much that you could do. And it's cool to be on the journey. And I'll just call you for questions as I go along the way, figuring it out.

It's exactly what you want it to be. You actually said that, right? You were like, you can make this into what works for you, the frequency, what it is you're doing. And you're like, caregiving me classes, Whatever it is you desire in your business, like you can have, it's just a matter of figuring out how this works for you and then actually doing it. Like that's where I see so many doing it. People think it's like quick.

You could comment X to do this and it's not going to do it for you. You still have to like do some of it, but we can give you resources, we can give you ideas, but at the end of the day, yeah, hard work pays off. There, it's always been like that. And I think it always will be like that. You have to put in the work.

100%. 100%. We will link your website and your social and everything so that everybody knows where to find you. And just, Joanna, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thanks for having me. I'm so happy that I finally got to do this with you. Thank you.

Quick disclaimer: all information, content, and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and serves as informational purposes only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis, and/or medical treatment of a qualified healthcare provider.

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