The ABA Speech Podcast- Easy Strategies for Speech Therapists, BCBAs, and RBTs

Have you ever wondered about how your child should be playing? Today Kayla Chalko,  SLP from Walkie Talkie, talks with me today about the importance of play for learning. We talk all about play milestones and the importance of parent-to-child connection in building up to those. What are the benefits of play? The amount of time that someone could spend doing formal instruction, versus the time spen...

Ineffective communication in all humans, will affect how we behave. Children who cannot communicate, do not have the life experience to handle their feelings and situations and that presents in their behavior. Ashley Scott, SLP-BCBA, shares in this episode the ongoing and intentional processes of building expressive language in children. There is a difference between having vocabulary and function...

Crystal Sanford is an SLP,  Autism Mom, and owner of Sanford Autism consulting. She is sharing her professional and parental journey. Crystal’s focus is on IEP advocacy and parent support. It's really integral to include parents as part of the team. The whole process can feel daunting for parents. To begin with, parents can feel isolated in dealing, and navigating the special ed process can m...

Knowledge is power. When you know more, you’re going to understand more. If you are listening in real-time, my brand new toddler course launches this week! I have created the course, Start Communicating Today, for parents and professionals to help their toddlers and preschool-aged students with Autism communicate. This ASHA-certified course, from the set-up to the material, is parent-friendly. Wit...

Allison Fors is an SLP, blogger, and product creator. She has worked in both a school and private setting and is now a stay-at-home mom focusing on her resource creation. Today we’re discussing the big word in the development world; milestones. What does that even mean? A milestone is a skill that 90% of children are doing at that age. The problem is, we often treat milestones as averages when an...

Jaclynn Bosley is a great friend and colleague who I have worked with across many different settings over the years. She is the owner and operator of Thrive Early Learning Center. We discuss the importance of family involvement, some ideas for parents as they’re seeking the support of ABA therapy, and what early intervention looks like in Jaclynn’s center.  Getting a new diagnosis can be overwhelm...

As we prepare to go back to the classroom for face-to-face education, I think it's important to talk about play and social skills for our younger students. Unstructured play time can be something students with Autism or other complex communication issues really struggle with. Often these students do not independently engage so it's important to ask, “What can I do to help these kids enga...

Dual certified SLP-BCBAs are rare in our therapist community, so many providers find it very difficult when collaborating with other professionals who overlap the scope of care. I am discussing a great professional article that tackles this hot topic with my former supervisee and fellow SLP and BCBA, Eleyonzettah E. Bonilla. The article, Interprofessional Collaborative Practice Between Behavior An...

We should inspire and not require students when on our journey to beginning communication. Anne Page emphasizes this as she joins me today to discuss her role as an Assistive Technology Lead and the importance of how we use AAC with our students.  Alternative Augmentative Communication (AAC) is a tool that can be used for students with varying needs and  accesses. We discuss the wide variety of ap...

AAC is a special space that crosses over through many shared professional settings. Kate Granbois joins us on the episode today to talk about her job as an AAC specialist, the ins and outs of  Augmentative Alternative Communication, and getting comfortable with the process. Kate warns about her title of “AAC Specialist”, while it's a real job and title, and she holds a lot of knowledge on thi...

The family-centered approach is a key component of therapy at Nikki McRory’s facilities, McRory Pediatric Services. Nikki is on the podcast today, sharing how she uses a transdisciplinary approach for speech therapy. She uses the Behavior Skills Training framework in her early intervention programs with both the parents and the learners. What are the steps for Behavior Skills Training with parents...

Social Skills are more than just etiquette and manners. Ashley Rose, founder and clinical director of Mission Cognition Social Skills Development Center, is here with me sharing about the importance of social skill instruction. Ashley describes social skills as the inner workings of social interaction. She takes a very individualized approach when deciding exactly what to work on by learning what...

Play-Based Speech Therapy can open the door to so much interaction. My guest, Emily Cohen, talks about using Play-Based Therapy with her clients and all of the benefits it can provide. Emily Cohen works with families with children as young as 15 months old, coaching the parents. We talk about all the elements of play, interaction, and language and I share some pretty cute anecdotes from my therapy...

We have school-based SLP, Marisha Mets with us today. Marisha talks with us about the benefits of using language samples, her tips and tricks, as well as resources from her blog SLP Now. She talks about the origin of these resources, that many teachers and SLPs can relate with. A heavy caseload and a necessity to be efficient led Marisha in the direction she is now to share these tips with other S...

Today I have Kimberly Scanlon, licensed and certified speech-language pathologist, best-selling author, and fellow busy parent. She has written two great books in the world of speech therapy, Toddler Talks and My Toddler’s First Words. Kimberly works as a private practice speech therapist doing primarily home-based visits and she is here giving us some tips on how to build early interventions into...

Speech and language development is more than just the words being produced and children need to be emotionally supported and encouraged to communicate. Parental involvement is critical, but professionals are often so focused on the kids that they don’t notice the parents are depleted. Lindsey Nitake uses her Help Me Grow Speech social media accounts to get information out there. Every family is di...

Lori Frost is a traditionally trained speech-language pathologist who has spent most of her 40-year career in public schools working with preschool and elementary kids. She met Dr. Andy Bondy when she was working in the Delaware Autism Program and that’s when she began learning about applied behavior analysis. This fundamentally changed her practice and made her more aware of what was leading to g...

Laura Smith was a speech-language pathologist, mostly in elementary education, before her children were born. After her daughter was born, she realized that she wasn’t reaching her developmental milestones. She crawled and walked late and feeding, dressing, and speech were also delayed. When her daughter was diagnosed with apraxia, she focused her professional interest on learning everything she c...

Whether you’re a professional or a parent, you can use these strategies from Chloe Hill in the classroom, in therapy, or at home. As a pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist, Chloe’s focused on pre-reading or emerging reading skills. She works with students to help them develop phonological awareness. For young readers, it can be as simple as: Becoming aware of letters Understanding that letters st...

Michele’s oldest daughter’s first word was “calculator”. Because she was highly verbal and  seemed to need less intervention, Michele struggle to get a diagnosis for her. Her second son’s presented quite differently, but Michele suspected that he too had autism. Knowing that early intervention was key, Michele was so disappointed to realize that it took until they were pre-teens to get help. She j...

After Kelsey’s son started seeing a speech regression at 15 months old, she started on the journey to have him diagnosed. Pretty soon she realized that her second son was also exhibiting many of the same signs. Kelsey moved from Alaska to Canada because she hoped that universal healthcare would help her, but the waitlists in Canada were so long that she soon saw that without taking a more active r...

How do you differentiate your speech therapy work from your autism work? Does it even matter? Serving the whole child, Braxton Baker, an SLP, and BCBA is a huge advocate of the big picture approach to therapy. For him, ABA gave him the vocabulary to describe what he's doing, which he can, in turn, apply everywhere. For me, after ten years of being both an SLP and BCBA, I can agree with him. A...

Since July 2010, Erin Long has been the president and founder of Worldwide Speech. Parents who are living abroad may find themselves seeking specialized speech therapy, but for whatever reason, they’re struggling to find speech-language therapists in the countries they’re living in. That’s where Erin’s company steps in. Her services have expanded over the last decade, and she calls herself “a spec...

Landria Seals Green’s mother says, “A child’s education is as good as the adult in front of them.” With that as her mantra, Landria became a medical-based SLP. For 20+ years, she’s focused on AAC technology, and she’s done a lot of AT work. At a Verbal Behavior workshop, she saw Dr. Vince Carbone present what she describes as speech therapy on steroids. She felt confident about her work as an SLP,...

Chris Wenger, whom you might also know as Speech Dude, comes from a family of educators. He started off as a special ed teacher, but he moved into the speech-language field when he realized that the tools he needed to help students were in speech pathology. Because he’s been on both sides of the IEP table, and because he was a teacher first, he’s seen a wide variety of students and he knows how to...