Bailey Womack 0:01
All right, everyone. Welcome to the fourth episode of our Therapy Insights resource roadmap show. Today we’re going to talk about some of our resources in our Access Pass in different ways. So if you’re already subscribed to Access Pass, and you have the printables feature included, you have instant access to everything we’re talking about today. And then if you aren’t a member, you can easily go to our website at therapyinsights.com. And sign up today. If you’re listening to this episode on a podcast or watching on YouTube, and you want official CEU credit, head to our website at therapyinsights.com. And click on CPUs, you’ll find a form to fill out for the pediatric SLP resource roadmap episode number four to your certificate of completion. So I’m your host, Bailey. And we have our writer Tasanyia and Heidi with us welcome. And Megan is behind the scenes pulling up our resources to display. So I need to verbalize our disclosures because we’re being paid by Therapy Insights, and we’re talking about the products today on our show. So we have an exciting collection of resources this month. Again, lots of variety. We have everything from evaluations to joint attention to delayed speech. So let’s dive right in.
Bailey Womack 1:10
So first, we have a Dynamic Case History Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluations. And Heidi, you wrote this resource. Can you tell us more about it?
Heidi Miller 1:21
Yeah, so um, this one, I’ve worked in a variety of settings and used a variety of case histories I’ve paid for and ones that I found free online. And I didn’t we didn’t have one in our resource library. So I was like, let’s make one and kind of phrasing certain questions differently, I think is a little bit helpful to get I have found to get the actual information from families or caregivers, sometimes you think you’re asking a question that’s going to give you what you want. And it wasn’t quite so some of these I’ve just rephrased to either be more caregiver forward where they’re going to understand what we’re asking versus it being too speech jargony, you know, only another SLP knows what we’re asking. So, if I mean, most of it is just the same basic questions. I mean, you always want the chronological age, developmental age, if that’s important, depending on the age of the child.
Heidi Miller 2:17
It’s always a nice way to ask who is here today, I’ve made the mistake, putting my foot in my mouth, not realizing it, somebody’s aunt or Grandma, you know. So this is just a nice way early on in the questionnaire to clear that up.
Heidi Miller 2:32
And some information on their language, something I always find interesting is where does the child spend the majority of their days that way they can share they at a school or daycares spending time with others.
Heidi Miller 2:45
This one at the front, I put this on the first page, because I think this really gives insight for family for you, as the provider working with the families that says describe a positive experience with a medical or therapy provider, and then maybe describe a negative one. So that’s a nice way for them to, you know, you don’t want them to tell you a 10 minute story. But you might want to hear that they really struggle, maybe the evaluation, they are really nervous and have a hard time or they’ve had a bunch of negative experiences before so you want to be tuned into that. The rest of these kind of just go through the typical things that you’re looking for. There’s the their language, history, feeding history, other developmental milestones they need to hit. And there’s a chart was something I really liked and added, let’s see, I’m not sure how it would print off. But it’s the page where the bottom half is a little chart. And it just gives you them a way to answer some general questions a little bit more specifically, without having to give you a story, they’re just kind of listing how often something’s happened or when they’re doing it.
Heidi Miller 3:58
I mean, this is, let’s see, it’s six pages. So it’s still kind of long something I have found that could be helpful is if you pieced a part of this out, and also gave that to the you know, if you work in a place where there’s a reception area or a check in person, you could have them do that, you know, hand that to the family when they get here, if there’s just certain ones you could check off. So maybe you could pick a page that that would be helpful.
Heidi Miller 4:25
But what I hoped to gain from this, changing some of the wording and sort of what they’re talking about. And the order it comes in is to see if you can get the family comfortable from the beginning. And then you can get more useful information as they are going through the rest of it. I feel like that’s I don’t know for you guys. That’s sometimes a challenge for me. We get to the end and they’re telling me everything I want to know and I’m like, gosh, how could we have gotten to this point? sooner and then as you can see on the slide here if you’re listening only we did make a Spanish for version. So if you are bilingual or working in that population, that we got it translated and hopefully that can help as well.
Heidi Miller 5:10
You know, even if you did have a translator coming in and helping you during your session, they could use that as well, to kind of make sure we’re asking the same question. Sometimes there can be that mismatch of what you’re asking in English, directly translated is not always correct. So we tried to be thoughtful in how this kind of came together. So yeah, I’m excited to be able to use it, and sort of keep tweaking it with any resources, you make it your own, but tried to put the building blocks for a little bit more of a dynamic way to get information from our families.
Bailey Womack 5:47
Yeah, this is great. Heidi, I should have before I passed it off to you, you know, describe what the resource is, but yeah, I know, I’m always looking for new ways to just like make evaluations more efficient. And we’ll talk more about that later with our research article for this month. But yeah, I mean, I always struggled at the clinic I worked at most recently, we wouldn’t get a lot of information upfront, you know, it just you kind of go in blind sometimes, which maybe that’s common. At most clinics, I’m not really sure. But I like that this is kind of like you said, the building blocks, you can kind of like, add more to it and kind of make it your own or kind of individualize it. And just making the evaluation just more efficient, because you’re trying to like maximize your time and use your time wisely. So that’s always challenging.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 6:35
I love that you offer this in Spanish as well.
Heidi Miller 6:41
Yeah, that was sort of a- I’m trying to be better. It’s- I don’t speak Spanish at all. I mean, I put together pieces, but I’m trying to sort of shift my mindset to always, and we work with quite a lot of where I work. Now, those families and you, once you see the barriers, it becomes really obvious. And you’re like, This is something we can just do better at and maybe I can’t do it. But it’s good to advocate for, you know, through our through Therapy Insights, were able to make sure this is translated. I didn’t personally do it, obviously. But you know, how what other things could be helpful to have for those in Spanish is obviously just a subset. But starting somewhere can be helpful, I think, hopefully, definitely.
Bailey Womack 7:25
Alright, let’s move on to our next resource. So Tasanyia, you wrote this, it’s called Tips to Help Your Child with Joint Attention. It’s a only one page resource and just chock full of information. So tell us more about this piece.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 7:43
So joint attention is a skill that we as communicators have to have for a lifetime. So when we’re communicating with other people, we need to be able to understand what they’re referring to. And many times this includes, or it requires that we are looking at an object or item together. And many of the children that we work with have difficulty with this, whether it’s because they have a diagnosis of autism, or if they just have language delays, or difficulty with attention concentration. This is- this is a piece that is helpful for children who experience difficulties like this. So I just begin with explaining what the terminology is. Sometimes parents may not understand what it is what it is. So you can use this in those instances that say if you have a little one that you’re working with, who seems to be ignoring what you’re saying, when you’re communicating with them, or their parents say that they feel like their child is always ignoring them, or they are not understanding what I’m saying or they’re not looking at me when I’m talking they’re not looking to what I’m talking at or about this is a good activity or a good resource for that.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 9:07
And I would use this I will give it to parents, I will provide it in the schools as well. And you can also use it within your sessions because there is activity that I included at the end of it with some tips on how you can use this in the home setting or how you can use it in other social communication based settings with your little ones.
Bailey Womack 9:38
Such a, such a crucial prelinguistic skill that I feel like you know, we do have to provide a lot of education on for most families. And you know, even like as a new parent myself, like I didn’t realize how young you know, I forgot how young infants develop joint attention. You know, a child with language delays or you know, autism or whatever it may be, I just feel like this is such a crucial thing to focus on and just something we have to kind of keep, like reminding parents of and, you know, giving them activities to do at home to enhance that skill. Yeah, this is great information.
Heidi Miller 10:18
I like how you break it down, because I think I use the word or phrase joint attention very freely when I’m like talking to families or interacting with other therapists. I’m like, I don’t know that everyone understands it. And sometimes, then I’m kind of stumbling to be like, well, what how would I just, it’s like, they were paying attention to the same thing. It’s not necessarily you all the time, it’s just that they can focus on different activities. So I like that you give a lot of like, daily activities that kids and families are already engaging in. So it’s like, okay, how can I do it in that setting, I don’t actually need to necessarily have like a joint, there’s not a joint attention toy that you use just to do this. It’s sort of something like you’re saying to Billy, it happens from such a young age. And then I, in my own personal research, sometimes that I’m coming across things, these are one of the biggest markers for some of these developmental delays is when these skills are missing early on. So it’s nice to have this reminder of like, you know, taking a walk or playing in the kitchen, or at the doctor’s office, like what is your what is your child paying attention to? And this kind of would help families, I think, really understand, Oh, they’re doing that I just need to support it better, or? No, they really, you know, they’re doing something totally different the whole time. So I will definitely be using this even especially in the hospital, too. Sometimes that one’s a common one.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 11:45
I think it helps parents also to know that there’s so many, there’s so many situations that they can take advantage of, to work on joint attention. I mean, just like taking a walk in the neighborhood, there’s so much that you can do with that. And this resource provides you with some examples of how to do so.
Bailey Womack 12:08
I was just gonna say that Tasanyia It doesn’t have to be like a specific toy with this, like, nice little setup, you know, in the playroom, it can be like, in any environment, literally. Yeah, yeah.
Heidi Miller 12:21
I think too, when you’re in the age of screen time, this is a helpful one to use and be like it has to be an object or something you’re doing, there is an action to this, you should encourage that not. I think I have a lot of families, like well cook them all and sings about, you know, all the things and you’re like, Yeah, but they can’t keep up because there’s nobody there sharing the experience with them talking about it. So that’s another piece of it. But it’s helpful.
Bailey Womack 12:50
That whole idea of like, and this is a whole other conversation, but like the like co-viewing with the screen, the screen time is kind of like what you’re talking about there. Right?
Heidi Miller 12:59
Yeah.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 13:00
Yeah. Funny.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 13:03
It’s so funny, Heidi, because I’ve done some home therapy sessions, and I walk in, and the family has like Cocomelon on. And, um, they’re like, oh, yeah, look at the little monkey with the wool pads on and look at the car, it’s going so fast. Let’s look together. And the parents will be like, Oh, he knows it. He knows that already into his favorite show. And it goes until Yeah, I’m just trying to as an example of, you know, like, trying to explain to them what joint attention is and showing them how they can take opportunities to work on it. So I’m like, Yeah, you know, we’re just working on our ability to attend to the same thing at the same time, you know, so it’s funny, it’s so funny that you brought up the vocal melody.
Heidi Miller 13:47
My daughter just discovered it. And I get I had never watched it before. And I understand because it’s definitely those videos series, because there’s now this other one she has found. And it’s very easy for a lot of families into thinking you’re doing something like, like joint attention is with Cocomelon, or the character. And it’s like, that’s really it’s not interactive, because you’re not name, you know, this resource talks about naming the objects they’re seeing and seeing them for a long enough period of you point that out, like they have to see them for more than like, half a second to make the connection at their little brains. They can’t jump, you know, sure. I could learn a lot of guests from Cocomelon fields on something I didn’t know about. But I’m an adult learner, not a developing mind. So this would be a great, maybe this is one I’ll just give out to everybody. Just like hey, by the way.
Bailey Womack 14:40
Yes. Agreed. Agreed. All right. Let’s move on to our next resource.
Bailey Womack 14:50
All right, awesome. So we have a four page resource. This is a Summer Sorting and Categorizing Activity. And Heidi, you wrote this. so we have beautiful pictures real pictures with different categories of summer themed items, foods, etc activities. So Heidi, tell us more about this piece.
Heidi Miller 15:10
Um, so this one is, you know, it’s finally summer at least where I live, it feels like summer now. So I knew that one of the strengths of a lot of our resources are or an issue in our field is a lot of the, the pictures are old or stale and not that interesting. So I really just knew our team could pull together a pretty neat resource. And then I was like, categories or, you know, that’s what the theme of this particular activity is that I’ve given ideas on how to use the cards, but these cards, you would cut them up and laminate or whatever you wanted to do with them. And they could be used for all kinds of things, you know, you could do narrative storytelling as well with them. And even just conversation pieces were, you know, tell me about what you’ve, you know, what did you do this summer.
Heidi Miller 16:02
But there are three main categories that they’re set up into summer foods, places and activities. And so they, you can also ask them to, you know, you can have them just sort them, that might be a lot of stimuli for certain kids. So you could break it down and just have foods or just have the activities or the places and then sort them by color, or people you know, there’s a lot of different ways you could sort them. The other thing, you know, again, how versatile they are, I’m sure you could find some articulation activities with certain ones, like I was saying the storytelling or relating themselves to something else having those kind of back and forth conversations, or you could even have them make up their own stories.
Heidi Miller 16:50
So again, the whole goal is to sort between these three activities. But you, I think you might find that, and I do I say I point this out in the directions, I think kids might sort things differently than my adult brain would sort these. And so how do you ask them like, Well, why did you put those things together? Or what makes those similar what, what is the same thing, and they could come up with something really original and say, like, that’s all stuff I do with my grandparents or with my cousins.
Heidi Miller 17:19
So definitely not looking at this as like a stagnant resource where it’s like, here’s a box, and everything has to only go in the ones I tell you, it’s sort of saying, here’s some really realistic pictures, and things you should encounter, you know, or know about, and like, let’s talk about them. I think.
Heidi Miller 17:39
The other I don’t know if you guys two things I run into with card, like activities like this, where there’s just this card bank or picture bank, is the assumption that kids have been to the beach or know what like a couple of them, the pictures in the places they’re at a fair or carnival. So having that awareness as the therapist that you can’t, you wouldn’t want to look at this as like a right and wrong activity only, you always want to extend it and see what they’re going to tell you because maybe they don’t understand a picture or they have no idea what it is. And that’s why they put it there. And so how can you make those teaching moments as well and not get stuck in this sort of like rigid category, type of activity. So hold up, these are super again, they’re really versatile, and they’re summer themed. When I was an outpatient, I’m not currently an outpatient therapist, but when I was, that’s what kind of got me through the year is like having themes and like, okay, this is one of the activities I’m going to use for all of my kids in some way, during July, you know, I’ll find a way to make it work for different goals. So that’s kind of what I was hoping this resource could be for myself and others as well, sort of a starting point to have that. It’s so versatile and kind of open ended. There’s a lot of ways you can use it. And I tried to give you some of those ideas, but I think others might even find more creative things to do with it. So
Bailey Womack 19:03
Yeah, I wanted to like really emphasize the versatility piece. Because I think like that’s something that we- it’s important to us when we make these resources. Like we’re all busy therapists, no matter what setting that we’re in. And we’re sometimes I mean, at least I struggle with, like scrambling for last minute material. So when I buy something, or I subscribe to something I want to like I want it to be a multiple use thing that I can, you know, use across clients, like you said, with either articulation and also I always like a good sorting activity. I just feel like a lot of the kids with language disorders, you know, that’s an area that a lot of them struggle with. So it’s nice to just be able to grab something like this and then use it in different ways. Yeah, and the images are beautiful, too.
Heidi Miller 19:48
Yeah, definitely. If you had a group, you could just give this activity to one of the kids to work on, you know, they could be on this side doing that while you’re doing targeting a different skill with somebody else but you could also come to gather and have like a conversation about the pictures or how people relate to them. Each child might have a different story or experience. So…
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 20:11
I like the teachable moments concept that you mentioned, because it’s so true, I can think about some clinical experiences I’ve had with children who were like, like the beach with the beach, because they’ve just never been there. So it’s a perfect, this is a good activity for teaching that as well. But I would also use it in the whole sticking to the whole concept of sorting. So what are some of the foods that you would eat at the beach? What are some of the foods that you have eaten at the beach? or what have you eaten? What do you eat? Kind of Fourth of July? What do you eat at the picnic? So I would like interchange these and use them with each other because this is a really good, really good piece. I like it.
Bailey Womack 20:59
Awesome. Alright, let’s move on to our next one. Okay, so this is a two page resource. It’s titled Delayed vs Age Expected: When to Get Your Child Evaluated for Speech Services– something we all love to talk about. I feel like it’s such an important parent education opportunity. Tasanyia you wrote this. Tell us more about this.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 21:24
Yeah, so I can’t tell you how many times I’ve met families who either said they wished that they either looked into services earlier, or they wish or they want what their gut feeling of pursuing services, but their provider to their physician told them, you know, to give it more time, or they compared one child to their sibling, and they were like, well, you know, well, maybe, you know, she was a little bit more advanced than her and things of this nature. So I was really thinking about these types of situations when creating this. And what I did with it was just provide kind of like a kind of like a little definition of what the terms are that we as SLPs know, and that we use routinely. But that families may not be too familiar with this, where they understand that there’s a whole realm of things that SLPs would be able to work with their children with if they did get evaluated and possibly receive services.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 22:34
So it is a checklist of sorts. And what parents can do with this is they can go through it. And if there’s concerns, or if there’s not, they just want to do it, they can go through the list and basically just check off if Yes. And for No whether or not it’s a skill or behavior that they’re seeing their child exhibit. And if not, there’s several things you can do. They’re not- you’re not evaluating your child with this, it’s just a little parent screener, I guess you can call it. And if you go through the list, and you realize that there are several of these skills that your child is not exhibiting, you can go to your provider. And you can express concerns and say, you know, this is what I noticed. It’s just another tool to help support any concerns that you may be seeing as a caregiver or as a parent, as a teacher, possibly as a clinician, maybe physical therapists might use it, OT might use it, SLPs may use it was just a guide on some of the skills that are expected within certain age ranges. And I would even bow out beat maybe people might say, this is kind of bold of me. But I would provide it to if I had any colleagues that were pediatricians or because many times what happens is I’ve met many children who are like, Well, my pediatrician said, Just wait, you know, or my pediatrician told me not to worry about it, I can always by the time he gets to school, he will be fine.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 24:18
So this is something that I would give, I would say I would recommend sharing with other disciplines as well who are involved in making decisions that could possibly help with referring your child or or your student or your client or patient to receiving services.
Bailey Womack 24:41
Yeah, I like just the it’s so easy to use, like a checklist is always super nice. You know, if a parent is filling this out, they don’t have to like write you know, sentences out like from like an open ended question. I just I like how you can quickly check off yes or no, and it’s laid out nicely and it has the ages is very nicely organized.
Heidi Miller 25:02
Yeah, I was my second thought after like, oh, this is really great for parents too or when I’m training graduate students, it’s like, this would be nice to just give them at the beginning of the semester and be like, look at this, you know, or if I don’t work in the ed- you know, in higher ed, but you know, maybe a great tool, if you’re a clinical supervisor, for graduate students just to get you know, you can’t, it takes a couple years and or months to get yourself up and running with like the rosseti, or the standard assessments that you would use for language.
Heidi Miller 25:34
And so this is a nice one that maybe give some road, like roadblocks or sorry, road signs to say like, this is a kid that’s actually doing okay, they’re doing most of the comprehension things. They’re missing the expressive. So I think it’s got, like you’re saying almost so many uses for so many different people. Even just beyond, it’s kind of geared towards caregivers and parents in this setting. But I think there’s so many ways you can use it, because it that if you’ve never had a kid or you’re new to the field, it can feel overwhelming, because you are going to get asked right away, like, evaluate setting like, Is my kid delayed? Or like, what do you think? Should I have come? Or should they be you know, and it’s like, okay, at least I can quickly start memorizing some of these things they should be doing so I can more appropriately respond and then do the full assessment at a later point. Or like your, you know, kind of the flipside, when a person doesn’t qualify for services, you can kind of say, well, this, they’re doing all the things, you know, like, I understand you’re worried about this one, but they’re doing all these other ones and ones ahead of them. So I will definitely be when this comes in the mail, I’ll be using it a lot, I think because it will help many different people that I interface with. So…
Bailey Womack 26:55
Yeah, and also like Tasanyia, how you in the first page, like, again, you kind of laid out the areas of language, and then the areas of speech, like kind of differentiating those two, because I know that can be confusing for parents, of course, like it kind of all blends together. But I like how you laid that out and kind of like made it just easy to like, easily digestible for anyone reading this.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 27:18
Yeah, I think sometimes, um, sometimes because people think they think of speech and they think of just expressive language, they don’t, they don’t think about the other areas that we cover. And I think it’s just, it’s just good, just just good basic knowledge for parents who may either be just getting into some type of contact with speech with allergy, or who may eventually have to have more interactions with with SLPs for the little ones. So I just want to give them an idea of you know, of what these terms mean, and what they are.
Heidi Miller 28:00
I think too, would be super useful for families that have multiple kids and say, it’s their second child that they’re starting to feel that they’re delayed, and then you end up getting to know them or the situation. And actually, the first child maybe was a little ahead on their milestones. And so the gap feel I have that conversation quite frequently, like the gap feels really big. But what you’re describing to me is that your two year old is actually already doing like, two and a half, three, three year old things. And your child here is is doing six months things. They’re just, it’s okay, you know, so I think giving that reassurance and having just that the easy to understand age, you know, you mark it every three months, and then it gets more as they get older on this resource. I think that I ended up I don’t know why that just feels like something I’ve been doing a lot lately is talking with parents about how their kids are different from each other. And that that’s okay, or when is it not? Okay, you know, when is it a delay? Not just actually on time?
Bailey Womack 28:59
Yeah, that’s a great point.
Bailey Womack 29:03
All right, let’s move on to the next one.
Bailey Womack 29:07
Oh, it is time for the research article snapshot. So this snapshot, it relates to everything we’re talking about. It is about the article titled Early Identification of Children at Risk of Communication Disorders: Introducing a Novel Battery of Dynamic Assessments for Infants. This is new research written this year. And Heidi, it kind of relates to your the first piece we talked about. So I gotta be honest, like, I haven’t really heard the term dynamic assessment. Really, I don’t know if I’m just out of the loop. I know it’s not a new thing. It’s been studied in the past. But I thought this was a super interesting article, I’m going to read the takeaways from it. This was a snapshot written by Kate Hawkins, one of our writers.
Bailey Womack 29:52
So it says that early identification and intervention for children with communication disorders can greatly support the development of communications skills and prevent possible negative outcomes related to poor speech and language ability, something we all know and see often. So dynamic assessment tasks can help evaluate young children in the areas of receptive vocabulary, motor imitation, joint attention, turn taking social requests, and more. So a lot of that pre linguistic sort of development. So in contrast to static formal testing da or a dynamic assessment is more focused on the process of learning. In this study, researchers utilize a specific cueing hierarchy that provided children with increasingly explicit support to complete each task, allowing partial credit with additional cueing results show that results show preliminary favor for early da use, and very young children to improve detection of communication disorders and improve access early intervention services. Love that.
Bailey Womack 30:49
Lastly, clinicians should consider dynamic assessment as a reliable and user friendly screening tool for identifying infants at risk. So like, again, you know, getting kids in earlier, we all know the earlier the better, usually. And I just found this to be really interesting. And I talked about standardized assessment. I don’t know what you did, on the end how to use but I feel like there aren’t a ton of options out there for early language assessment. I know like there’s like the Rossetti, the REEL, the PLS, which we all have our own opinions about. And they’re not perfect, and they can be lacking or frustrating.
Bailey Womack 31:26
And I like how the author’s talked about just the benefits of dynamic assessment, it seems to be a little bit more individualized, if I’m understanding it correctly, since it’s about the child learning, and they’re more supported during the assessment because of the cueing that they are given. And I was, as I was reading this, I was wondering, like, you know, some of the some of these tasks they talked about, like, are we kind of naturally assessing those anyway, when we do a clinical observation during like a just a normal evaluation. We’ve talked about before, how we can’t really, always complete a formal, standardized assessment, if they’re like compliance issues, fatigue, a number of reasons, especially with very young children or babies. And then I also really liked how the author’s mentioned, a recommendation for further research to focus on this and other languages. I think that’s super important for accessibility. So I liked this article a lot.
Heidi Miller 32:24
Yeah, I definitely want to pull it up and like read the whole thing and kind of tease out parts to talk to some of the developmental pediatricians that I work with, because they’re always asking for like a standardized assessment score, like they want to do their research, which needs these really specific set of tests, but like the ones you listed, Bailey, they’re great. I mean, they serve a purpose. And but I would say, you know, years into practice, now I’m using them more in a dynamic way. But that’s from years of experience, not because that’s how the test is set up. So like, how could we, hopefully, these types of assessments can be utilized more so that younger, early clinicians earlier in their career can start assessing this way instead of like, because I can’t, you know, when you’re watching a clinician, that’s just checking boxes, I’m like, watch it. And it’s like, this kid is in a doctor’s office type of setting they have, they’re freaking out, it’s naptime. Or it’s snack time, like it’s not a, it doesn’t feel accurate to only go by a checklist. So especially for me, if any, you know, infants are like, volatile, like you can’t make them do anything at any certain time. So I like that they’re finally trying to kind of coalesce around some research about, well, what should we do? Or what could we make the new gold standard versus kind of trying to make the old things work for still work in today’s society? So yeah.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 33:53
I love to see how graduate programs implement this into into training interns, because there’s a lot of that checklist approach to teaching. And I understand like, maybe it might be a little easier for getting them to understand foundations of assessment. But this is so important. And it goes into that whole idea of not every child being fitting this cookie mold. And, you know, not just because of like, culture and race, and just because they’re all individuals, and they all, you know, diverse in the way of learning and growing. So, so, so important. So I’d like to see over the next five to say 10 years to be to be realistic, how graduate programs implement this into their academic into how they train students in their clinical portion of their learning.
Heidi Miller 34:55
I agree.
Bailey Womack 34:57
Yeah. I mean, I certainly my experience was, you know, you have your, your CELF-5, and then you, you complete it and you got to complete it, you got to find a way. And that’s no flexibility. And that just is not realistic. So yeah, that’s a great point.
Heidi Miller 35:16
I also think like a very- I’ll be interested- That’s why I want to sit and read the article, like more in depth by myself is, what are we talking about these assessments are because if you asked a bunch of clinicians of all new, new or experienced clinicians, a major barrier is like the cost of some of these assessments, like we can’t get the new stuff that’s maybe better because it costs $2,000. And my, you know, director isn’t going to approve that. And so, you know, if I’m curious, if I read more into this article, we’ll talk about like, actually, we don’t need to be doing like, those types of things only or these are accessible, or I think there’s like, I don’t know, maybe you guys have seen it, like a little bit of movement towards trying to make things accessible in our field from researchers like in the feeding world, there’s some more, I don’t want to call them free, because that makes it sound like they’re freebies.
Heidi Miller 36:11
But it’s like, if you engage with the person who created the assessment, send them an email or set up a time to talk, they’re willing to share these types of assessments they’re working on and with you, and talk and coach you through them. And then you’re able to implement them with your co workers if you’re on a team. So I’m hoping like you’re saying to sign in the next 10 years, maybe we move to like, okay, you can maybe do a standardized assessment that, you know, is from a box that the toys are from the box, and the responses have to be in this setting. But I’m hoping that there’s more things like what this article is talking about where we’re assessing the child, naturally, and it’s accessible to clinicians. And that can be the new norm, like through graduate programs as well, that’s true, that are the training ground for the next generation.
Bailey Womack 37:02
An excellent point you guys make. Start there, you know, with training.
Bailey Womack 37:08
All right, let’s move on. I think we have- Heidi, you wrote this one. So this one is titled Convergent and Divergent Thinking: Task Examples and Activities. I love this topic. I feel like I am learning so much about this with these shows. So this is a seven page resource. Yes. There it looks like there’s some different like puzzle coloring pages, some activities, some charts. So tell us more about this, Heidi.
Heidi Miller 37:36
Yeah, so sort of going on the theme. If you’ve listened to our other shows every every month I’ve been creating, it seems like there’s a need for these more cognitive type of tasks that as a therapist, it’s hard to find resources or it’s hard to understand what those tasks are. So the first page of this talk, okay, what is a convergent task? So that’s a closed set of answers or responses, I tried to keep it simple the wording like, because that works for my brain to say, okay, that’s something where there’s only one way to be doing it. And then these divergent tasks are the open ended tasks that have a variety of responses or correct answers or solutions. And you definitely if you go back in our library, there’s how do you discover if a child is good, or this is a struggle area for them between those convergent and divergent tasks.
Heidi Miller 38:23
And so there, it’s mostly to target cognition and this is sort of geared towards like a TBI population but you definitely could use it in a variety of ways depending on your where you work. And then there’s a list just a written list of activity ideas, like listing items and which one doesn’t be long or identifying like more set categories that would be like animals or food you know, the summer sorting one there’s some fluidity to that but there’s certain things that are definitely one category or another. Anything that’s like a multiple choice question true false fill in the blank. So again, you wouldn’t have to necessarily recreate the wheel you could find that activity in some other capacity maybe it’s on another website or it’s on you know, in the textbook you have from that the kids using for their science or math class am puzzles, facts and opinions describing without naming that’s a fun kind of game you can play of like here let’s and you could use those cards that we had earlier for that like pull a card out and you describe this thing or activity to me without using the word and then a fun when I found when I was looking for more ideas with like advertisements. I was like print advertisement it seems so far in the past now, but that would be a fun thing to pull something up from, you know, you could Google an image of an advertisement from even probably the early 2000s. Send, like talk about what were they advertising or what did they want to sell you sequencing activities and then the one that we have the most on.
Heidi Miller 40:00
We have three color by number activities that our graphic designer made that are ones easy ones, medium difficulty, and one’s a little bit harder. So again, those might be great homework activities, or again, if you’re working in a group or you need some downtime, you know, your, the patient you’re working with, can’t take 60 minutes straight of like direct one on one, like drill activities. It’s like, okay, let’s take five minutes. And you can do this color by number. So those are the convergent ones, the divergent tasks are getting those open ended things like planning a vacation or listing items and an in a category.
Heidi Miller 40:39
So that’s where you’ve identified the category, but they’re filling it in. Then open ended prompts. I mean, I think being creative I was I was watching one of our CEUs for the adult therapist, I was it was about how to be creative as a as an adult therapists. And I was like, sometimes I need that reminder, as a pediatric therapist, how to just be a little more creative and see where kids will lead us versus me always feeling like I’ve got to take them down the road of the activities all the time, telling open ended stories playing I mean, playing is a divergent task where the child can make up their own narrative about what’s going on. And, you know, filling out a planning tool together again, we have samples of these. So the three samples we have are, one of them is a travel itinerary. So it’s just a cute little, it’s got a couple sections, where it’s like, what would Where do you want to go? You know, what, what would you do on the different days? What would you have to pack? Or what are the other pieces to planning a trip? You know, I think that you could also double that as like an executive functioning activity. You know, like, if you actually had a vacation, you were planning, but sometimes, I find these types of activities help us get to know kids better as well, because we don’t ask them those questions all the time. Like, where would you go? If you could go anywhere?
Heidi Miller 41:55
And then like, where could that lead us in other activities that might help find motivation for them and buy into therapy, if they’re really like, my dream is to go to the moon? That’s like, alright, well, what would you pack, you know, just kind of work through that activity. There’s a little weekly meal planner here. So obviously, that might be for some of the older kids, but maybe they’ll get a deeper appreciation as well for like their mom or dad, whoever cooks at their family, you know, whoever’s in charge of that, how can I help or engage in that, and here’s how to think through that activity. And be creative. Or maybe, you know, even I’ve actually had a run lately of older picky eaters that I have gotten that there’s a variety of reasons. So I’m planning to use this with some of them kind of saying like, well, what if you could plan a meal, you know, your week out in food, what are things you would want to try or planning ahead. And then a little story map that it’s just pretty, it’s pretty straightforward. It’s pretty how it looks. And it’s very straightforward just has, you know, the characters, the plot and things like that. So, again, these are things you can just use as activities to work with together or any of these would work as little homework tasks. And, again, they’re super versatile. They’re not just divergent or convergent thinking tasks. There’s a lot of directions you could take them within the session. So…
Bailey Womack 43:13
This is so fun. Heidi, oh my gosh.
Heidi Miller 43:16
I was like, I’m going to do color by number. Just to relax.
Bailey Womack 43:21
I love it. Kids love it too.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 43:23
This is so functional.I love it. This is great.
Bailey Womack 43:25
And I like the last three pages.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 43:28
Really functional.
Bailey Womack 43:33
Yeah, very different ideas with like the travel.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 43:35
The travel itinerary is so good.
Bailey Womack 43:37
I’m thinking reminds me of like, almost- I was just gonna say the story map reminds me of like, using like assistive technology with kids in school, like graphic organizers and kind of getting their thoughts organized. And on paper. I think that’s so important to work on. Yeah, this is great.
Bailey Womack 43:37
Well, y’all, let’s move on to the case study just for sake of time.
Bailey Womack 44:12
So, the case study, I’m going to read it aloud and we can talk about it. So we have a 10 year old male who has a diagnosis of autism, attention deficit disorder, and anxiety disorder. He has been receiving school and clinic, clinic based therapy, his parents have noticed an increase in his stress level and reluctance to attend therapy in the past month. I personally have had a lot of these cases. They feel that this may be due to his therapist focusing on goals such as increasing eye contact and maintaining conversation with X number of exchanges with a non preferred topic, so maybe not the best goals. His parents are interested in working with a neurodiversity affirming therapist potentially in a group setting instead of individual therapy.
Bailey Womack 44:54
So I have a little bit of like, well an off the cuff question. So before we talk about resources. I know we have only a few minutes left. So I’m seeing this like kind of movement on Instagram of therapist, maybe young therapist talking about how it’s okay to question your supervisor and the setting that you’re working in. I don’t know what experiences you guys have. But I think there have been times in my clinical experience where I kind of just was using old outdated goals, such as these, you know, eye contact, I’m going to do this many conversational exchanges. So a lot of like, rigid goals, I guess. And I look back, and I’m regretful that I, you know, if I’ve potentially cause stress in some of the individuals that I worked with, especially, you know, the older kind of teenager or, or this age to middle school. So I guess, you know, there were just times where I had supervisors at my clinic that just did the same thing over and over and nothing was ever really like, updated or thought about like, is this really working for this child? Is this really the best way to approach this case? Are these the best goals for them? And now, of course, we know, as we talked about before, making go for eye contact is just completely, it should just be obsolete. It shouldn’t even be a thing anymore. So have you all had experiences with that where you maybe wanted to question a supervisor, and you didn’t or challenge a supervisor?
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 46:26
I did, can you hear me? I did, I am. So I don’t have an I don’t have an issue with questioning as long as it’s done professionally. Because I feel like it’s a part of your learning. And it’s just a matter of when you do it, and how you do it. So I wouldn’t necessarily question them while I’m with the patient or client, but I have I can think about something that pertained to voice that was very repetitive, the same task over and over. And, you know, after doing it for like, five weeks, and not seeing any progress, I didn’t question it. You know, and I don’t think that all clinical supervisors are open to it. And I think it’s a part of like, the school that you’re from and generational variations to how you approach learning to, but um, I personally, if I’ve ever had a question about goals that were being done, I’ve always asked, it’s just just how I asked it all, when I asked, that’s just my experience.
Heidi Miller 47:28
I think you’re right. I mean, it’s, I see it, I’m not, I’m not seeing that trend, necessarily on the Instagram, the social media accounts I’m following, but I see it in my work like, there, there doesn’t seem to be a good way right now to have those conversations because you’re up against, maybe the younger, being trained, the training therapists are kind of like, trying to come up with new ideas. But instead, they’re, they’re not having that lens of will the person that might be have worked in the field for 20 years, they’ve been doing that for 20 years. So there’s got to be some tact and how you approach that with them, versus just being like that’s wrong. Like, how could they be doing that you kind of have you’re not, in my opinion, and professional, light work life, I haven’t made a lot of progress, if I come at it that way. Like why are we doing this? Like this is obscene, we’re not neurodiverse here. And it’s like, yes, that is very true. And it is so insightful of you to see that. But the way you’re bringing it up to these, the higher up therapists or your supervisors is not going to make the message land the right way.
Heidi Miller 48:40
So it’s feel like our field is in a rock and a hard place. Like there’s a lot of people wanting to do these things and agreeing with, you know, changing the narrative, but also, the way in which maybe they’re going about trying to do that is is a struggle, or is rubbing people the wrong way and not making them want to be a neurodiverse? Therapist? It’s kind of like, have you explained it to them? Have you asked what the point of the eye contact goal is or provided a different example of a goal that might be targeting a kind of similar activity? Or are you just sort of writing them off as an old therapist? Like that’s not gonna. I’ve seen that go real poorly, the past couple of years, so not sure the solution, but I agree.
Bailey Womack 49:29
Yeah, yeah.You have all the different personalities and experiences. Yeah. I thought that was an interesting, kind of sidebar. But so we all pulled resources from our library. Let’s go to the first resource, and they just relate to this case study. So we like to do the case study just because it allows us to talk about some other resources in our library and it gives us a way to talk about like a potential clinical scenario that we all might encounter at some point.
Bailey Womack 49:56
So I chose this one. This is a five page sort of a packet. It’s Emotional Vocabulary Expansion Activities. And there are five different activities. And we talked about this one episode, just the importance of emotional vocabulary. And just I feel like, like I’ve said this sentence before, like, I feel like it’s our job to give the individuals that we work with, you know, even just labels of emotions, you know, just talking about that, and like helping them have a wider vocabulary of, you know, how to identify their emotion, and then what word they could use to describe how they’re feeling, just helping with general communication. So I like this resource a lot, because it has just some really nice laid off activities. And it gives you some target words, which is really nice, so angry, happy, afraid, etc. And then just a few different activity ideas, you could easily use this with an individual or in a group, I think it would be useful for both of those sessions. But yeah, and I like the, again, real images, there’s a lot of opportunity to talk about what’s going on in the pictures and definitely some different ways to use every activity.
Bailey Womack 51:02
So let’s move on. I think Tasanyia- yeah, you chose a few. Yeah. So you’re the first one you chose is Management of Caregiver Burnout, if you want to talk about that two page resource.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 51:15
Um, yes. So, management of caregiver burnout is important because as caregivers, whether you’re working with little ones who are diagnosed with autism, or other diagnoses, you as a caretaker need to be able to care for yourself so that you can give them the most optimal care that you can, in whatever way that you are. So this resource provides several ways that you can do so it mentions mental emotional well being physical well being and social wellbeing, and there are some tips and strategies that are offered for caregivers to do so. And as well as some strategies that can be used to help manage stress levels when caring for their children, these parents can implement some of our they may want to consider implementing some of these strategies in taking care of the little one, next, the next slide.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 52:23
So, this resource provides some routines that can be implemented into his academic day. And even though this is specifically for children, or it’s It’s listed as being for children with ADHD diagnosis, it can be also used for children who have autism diagnosis, and it just mentions ways that he would be able to or that the parents will be able to identify his strengths and weaknesses, how they can help him to identify any challenges and create a plan to work towards addressing them, building his self esteem, taking breaks, creating incentives, and creating a bedtime routine, and ways in which management of nutrition can also help with with making a more successful academic day.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 53:18
We can go on. So this one is for Transition Strategies to Help Support a Child- Children who are Diagnosed with Autism during Outdoor Social Activities. And so for example, there’s an activity that pertains to dining out in a restaurant reading activities, and as well as some fun activities like making a date, the sequencing activities and transitional based tips that these parents can use to work with their child so that they can be the clinician outside of the therapy setting in the interim, as they’re trying to figure out if they so trying to find the award night of neurodiversity, from therapists with a child. Next.
Tasanyia Sebro-Calderon 54:29
And this is just some extracurricular activities that the parents can involve themselves in with the little one as well. Again, one of the biggest things that I like to stress with families is that intervention begins in the home and it continues in the home as well. So as they’re working towards finding a skilled clinician to work with their child, these are some activities that they can do, that they can work with, that they can use to work with their their 10 year old in the home setting with a social setting.
Bailey Womack 55:06
I like just to add, I like this, it’s just a one page resource. And it has just like a bunch of different activities on it. And maybe like the child could even sit with the parent and like go through the list and like maybe something might spark their interest or something. And they can maybe like, cross off things that don’t interest them or check off or circle things that do interest them, and then kind of like, you know, eliminate and kind of decide what they what they might like. Certainly, I love that that resource.
Heidi Miller 55:31
Yeah, I did like a organizational development program a couple of weeks ago, and it was sort of talking about like things that are in your control like that do circles of influence. And so I like how the resources you pulled are all saying like, what’s still in the parents control? Maybe they cannot find any therapists tomorrow. So what can they be doing? So I like that you pulled and highlighted those resources of okay, these are things they can be doing, whether the therapist, is it the right fit or not. And I think that’s an important thing for us. As you know, if you’re got a big caseload, or you’ve got an disgruntled family or you, You’re someone’s joining your caseload that had a bad experience, you can kind of give them this like, onto at the onset of therapy, like, here’s a bunch of different things you could work through so that you don’t feel so lost. And we feel like we’re making progress right away, even if we’re still sorting some of these background items out. So…
Bailey Womack 56:29
Definitely, let’s move on to Heidi the resources that you chose for the case study.
Bailey Womack 56:35
So this one is Self Advocacy Statement: Social Skills Worksheet for Neurodiverse Teens. Tell us about this one.
Heidi Miller 56:42
So we this is a pretty new one to the library. But it kind of really speaks to this idea of how you could help this family either before or after, or during this transition of saying, These are the kinds of things I would want to work on, if that’s going to align with what you’re thinking about. So it’s got a it’s a two page resource. And it has who, what, when, where, why, and how questions, and kind of identifying what is self advocacy? And how is that maybe what this child is needing versus maintaining conversation or eye contact, and then it’s talking about different statement types, you can teach them, like the need, I need statements, I can, I wish it’s hard for me statements, and I hope statements, so and then it gives you a worksheet on the second page to kind of write all of those out. So I think that it’s pretty interesting to, you know, or sorry, not interesting, it’s overwhelming to think about how do I make this big shift as a clinician? Or how do I understand what this child might need, or this family might need. So this is just a nice resource that anybody could use, you know, the family could even use it themselves to figure out what do they want for their child other than to be frustrated by therapy. So yeah.
Heidi Miller 58:03
And the second one I found it was called it’s a one page, just sort of check. It’s not a checklist, but a list of different activities called Strategies for Executive Function & Dysfunction. So these, it lists things like reducing their distractions, writing a to do list one task at a time working in small chunks, setting reminders, organization, little things like that. It has about 10 tips for you that, again, they’re tips for things that the child could be working on that might be more functional for them. But also, they’re definitely realistic things that this child is probably struggling with, if he’s dealing with attention deficit and anxiety on top of an autism disorder, like, okay, we can’t fix all of those in one at one session a week. But here is a set of activities we could try to be implementing for him and whether that’s the therapists working on it, or family or teachers, there’s a lot of people I think that could use this resource to kind of help this child and their family get feel more in control of what’s going on with therapy and making hopefully make more meaningful, quicker progress.
Bailey Womack 59:16
Awesome. Thank you all for sharing those and your thoughts, all the different perspectives. So we can wrap it up. If anyone else has any more comments. Let me know. So we just want to thank everyone for listening in and we can’t wait together next month for another therapy and science resource roadmap show. We want to thank all of you therapist, especially for making therapy informative, empowering, and person centered. So until next time, thank you all!