Learn With Less

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Maximizing Natural Learning Opportunities Without Toys, with Joanne Cazeau Jun 01, 2022

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How do we provide new families with the skills they need to support their baby or toddler’s development? This episode of the Learn With Less® podcast features an interview conducted by Joanne Cazeau, a recent guest another episode of the podcast, pediatric speech-language pathologist, owner of Koze Speech Therapy, and the brains behind the Instagram handle @thespeechpathologist. The interview originally aired on her Instagram page, and we wanted to share it more broadly, here. I want to acknowledge that the sound quality isn’t perfect, but as always, the full transcript can be found here on the Learn With Less® website, and we know you’ll get a lot of good information, even imperfectly. Toward the end of the episode, we also mention the Expand Your Impact Retreat, which is an event that already took place; however, you can access the recordings by going to learnwithless.com/expand and grabbing the workshop bundle! We discussed: Ayelet’s professional journey and how the Learn With Less® infant and toddler development curriculum was born What Learn With Less® is, what makes it so unique, and the inspiration behind the program The biggest misconceptions and challenges about toy-less learning The biggest benefits of the Learn With Less® approach from both the parent/caregiver perspective, as well as the Learn With Less® facilitator perspective The problems or challenges the Learn With Less® program seeks to alleviate and address What professionals can expect from the Expand Your Impact Workshop Bundle (originally the Expand Your Impact 2021 Retreat), who it’s for, and who can benefit Helpful Resources to Acknowledge For This Episode: Learn With Less® Facilitator Training & Certification Program, helping educators and therapists create lasting impact in their communities with a high quality, evidence-based, “plug & play” program Expand Your Impact Workshop Bundle: for early childhood educators and developmental therapists hoping to serve new families in their community and support themselves, using their existing skills Learn With Less® Bundle: our best infant and toddler development resources for families and educators alike, including our bestselling books Understanding Your Baby and Understanding Your Toddler, our acclaimed family music album, recorded Learn With Less® “caregiver & me” classes, and a caregiver handout featuring ideas for carryover in the home Free Infant/Toddler Development Blueprint: what are the four major areas of early development… and how can you use the pillars of Learn With Less® to support that learning, using the time, energy, and materials you already have?! Download our free blueprint today. Learn With Less® Stories: Testimonials from educators who’ve provided the Learn With Less® infant/toddler family enrichment curriculum and families who’ve experienced our programming. Why Is Parent Coaching Important in Early Intervention? A Learn With Less® podcast episode also featuring Joanne Cazeau of Koze Speech Therapy Connect With Us: Joanne: Website / Facebook / Instagram Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest Text Transcript of this Episode Ayelet: Hello! Joanne: Hi, how’s it going? Ayelet: Good. How are you? Joanne: Good! Ayelet: I’m excited to chat with you today. Can you hear me okay? Joanne: Yeah, I can hear you perfectly fine. I’m so glad to have you today. So is it okay if you just hop right in? Ayelet: Let’s do it. Joanne: Yeah, perfect. Hi, everybody. My name is Joanne Cazeau, I’m a speech language pathologist and I run the account at @thespeechpathologist, and I am here with Ayelet – Ayelet, can you let me know how you see your last name? Ayelet: Yes. Yeah. So i-YELL-it Marinovich. Joanne: Ayelet Marinovich? Woo! Ayelet, nice to meet you. Oh, my goodness, everybody’s here! Or not, not nice to meet you, Ayelet, we’ve talked a couple times? Nice to see you. So we’re hopping on today with Ayelet who is founder of Learn With Less®. And we’re going to learn a little bit about her program and also a little bit about a live seminar or live retreat that’s coming up on Saturday, and she’s gonna explain it. And I can’t wait for you to learn about what you can expect. So Ayelet, not everyone who’s joining us knows you. So I just was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about yourself for the people who are a little bit newer to you and your program, and a little bit about your professional journey. Yeah! Ayelet: Yeah, totally. So I’m Ayelet, she/her/hers, I came to the SLP world (I’m a speech language pathologist) because really, because I wanted to like find a profession that melded my interests in like child development and psychology and working with people. And I love that that’s the field offered flexibility to work with humans, like across the lifespan and like that it offered flexibility. At the time I was in my early mid 20s. When I came to this field, I knew that I wanted to hopefully have a family at one point, at some point. And I loved that there was like potential for flexibility for balance, balancing career and family. And, and just like my grandfather had this phrase that he used as to “repot yourself” like every, you know, few, 10 years or whatever, to be able to shift gears in your career to reduce stagnation and that, our field, absolutely has that ability. And that was always something that really drew me in and I loved that idea. So as far as I mean, I don’t know how much you want to know about like my own professional journey, but… yeah? Okay, so in grad school, I fell in love with AAC, and I did my CFY under Dr. Marilyn Buzolich who has an AAC consultancy. And I worked with preschool aged kiddos school aged kids and young adults using AAC. And that was amazing because, you know, you get to really, as the AAC specialist, and I was, right out of grad school, which was wild, and amazing, but you get to work so much with the whole team and really specialized in and bringing everybody together for the purpose of this child or person’s communication. And I mean, that was just totally amazing. Also doing it all the time, full time, I did get burned out. And so a few years later, I realized, you know, over time, how much I love supporting early communication, and really the whole family. And so I started to shift gears slowly to work, you know, part time with my AAC clients, and then part time in early intervention, and then that went towards full time. Then, in 2012, I got married, and then my partner was offered a job in London. And so when I was about 10 weeks pregnant, we moved to the UK. And then I spent really the bulk of my pregnancy waiting for my license to be approved through the Royal College of Speech Therapists for about, yeah, about nine months. And then finally, it was approved when I was 38 weeks pregnant. It Yeah, it can be… so, happy to chat with anybody who’s looking to go down that road because it’s quite an interesting set of paperwork that you get to fill out. But yeah, so you know, as that happened, and I gave birth and I had signed on to work very minimally with clients through a local practice. And I did that for a while. Really, what I wanted to focus my energy on was building a community of support for myself because we were in a very new place with new systems and then suddenly navigating new parenthood. And I am a person who very much values community and friendships and so I had this idea, you know, like, why not invite the other like new parents or pregnant people that I’ve met in a prenatal yoga class and then like local childbirth classes and such to join me each week with their babies to sort of hang out, and have some activity geared towards stimulating and playing with our babies, have been a discussion about child development, and then tea and a chat as one does! So I was, you know, very much in that stage of deeply vulnerable, extremely sleep deprived, lost and confused about a lot of things related to early parenthood, as is everybody who experiences that. And I could definitely see that we were all asking the same questions and experiencing very similar challenges. In London, in a very diverse area, you know, I had friends from like, all over the world, from Singapore and Italy, and Australia, and India and Wales, and Seattle, and Malaysia, and blah, blah, blah. But in this time of, you know, new parenthood, we were very much all there in this like, am I enough? Am I doing enough? Who am I? Sort of transition from, like, individual personhood to parenthood. So like I said, I was very much struggling with many of those, like new parent things. But the one area that I did feel confident in was, how to play with my baby, right? How to connect with my child. Since my storage locker of therapy, materials and toys, and such were halfway across the world, I improvised. And I knew that I could improvise, right, I knew that like play and talking to your baby and singing with your baby, and encouraging movement and all those things, are super important aspects of supporting development, supporting connection to your child. And so I started sharing about what that might look like, also using very simple materials. And that’s how Learn With Less® was born. Joanne: And tell us a little bit more about I love to hear the journey about how you got to Learn With Less®, tell us a little bit more about learning with less, and you know, what you do through that program? And what makes it especially unique? Ayelet: Yeah, so what is now the brand Learn With Less®, obviously, very much came out of that time, right, that need for like, new families to feel confident and capable and competent. Like that was obviously a huge part of it. And then for me, sharing information, creating community around me, being in community with others… that was so needed. So you know, I think basically, over time, I started writing down the questions that people had, and the challenges that we all faced, and I gained confidence myself, in understanding what my fellow new parents and caregivers needed, because it takes some time to like navigate how to put that kind of stuff into words to, especially when you’re sleep deprived. And then over a period of a few years, I had created a curriculum of sorts. That really was born and grew up alongside my first child, and those children and families around me. And each element became very purposeful. So I knew that I wanted to take it with me, because we were leaving London and moved, we moved to Berlin for a year. And then we moved back to California. And so I was just experimenting with form, I started a podcast in February of 2016. Been a long time podcasting! And then, over time, published the books that are now the sort of DIY version of sorts of the Learn With Less® curriculum, and continued to deliver these classes, both in my various communities all over the world, and also virtually since 2017. So then, in February 2020, just in time for the pandemic, I launched the Learn With Less® Facilitator Training and Certification Program, which I’m happy to talk more about. But really the brand the philosophy and the whole idea is that it’s not about using any specific material. It’s not about following any particular parenting philosophy, right? Instead, it’s about identifying the value in the materials around you, those everyday and ordinary objects, and tweaking the routines and interactions that you have with your tiny human, whether that’s a diaper change, waking up, eating, putting a jacket to go outside, right, whatever you’re present for as the caregiver, regardless if you are a full time working parent or a full time stay at home caregiver, or somewhere in between, tweaking those things that you are present for, so that you’re just adding a little bit more joy, a little bit of play, maybe a little bit of rhythm or movement, and then using those moments to guide your family time and build that connection while supporting development. And that’s the key, right? I think a lot of parents and caregivers feel like well, I might be doing this but that’s not child development, right? So it’s about like demystifying what it means to support a child. Because as we both know, Joanne, and everyone pretty much here listening, nobody needs to go out and buy a wooden box with a hole in it to support object permanence, right? We get tissue boxes right here, or shoe boxes or whatever it is lying around in plain sight. So… Joanne: Yeah. Ayelet: I think one thing that makes Learn With Less® unique is that it as opposed to like many programs for families out there that are like deeply locked into like a specific culture or some kind of specific material or set of materials that you have to go out and buy or some parenting philosophy, whether whether you’re buying something like musical instruments, or wooden climbing objects, or, you know, curated toys, subscription learning with lesson is literally just handing the parents the tools, the knowledge about the underlying developmental concepts that may be emerging, whether those are communicative milestones, or cognitive, or motor and sensory, or social and emotional, and then demystifying what that looks like, right? You don’t need an organically stained wooden drum when you have a laundry basket or empty cardboard box like, the developmental value is exactly the same. And it’s about the interaction and not the object. And there’s a second… sorry, I feel like… Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Clearly a speech pathologist, love to talk. The second piece is that it’s about bringing people together. Learning and sharing and playing together, often letting your guard down as an adult, whether that’s by participating in singing and making up the words to a song or sharing some personal like high or low that’s going on in your life. And it’s about including anyone in the community who wants to be involved. Yes, Mecca, yes. Joanne: Nope! Go! Mecca’s agreeing. Ayelet: It’s about the interaction, not the object. Yeah. So and then obviously doing our best to center those at the margins. So like, for instance, you see that in our language, right? We don’t refer to our classes as “mommy and me,” instead, we call them “caregiver & me” or “caregiver and child” or “Baby and Me” or “toddler & me” or whatever classes. Because we would like to prepare the space and make it clear that like, this is for you, not just for this kind of mom. Joanne: Right. Yeah. Because like parent and family models also look really different. So I liked that you’re being attentive to that, I’m sure families are very appreciative of that as well. And I like, and I liked how you talked about making it about the interaction and not the object. And I think that we had, I understand, like your mindset, I think that also we talked about the mindset shift that I had coming from a private practice in the homes where there was a clinical model of therapy that I was observing and following versus a more consultative model, where I’m getting the parents the tools to do what we’re doing in therapy, not necessarily focus on the activity, the billions of billions of toys that we bring and families might not have access to – by giving them the strategies to be able, to be able to target those developmental milestones that we’re targeting. But it’s within… it’s centered within a routine. It’s centered within the natural environment. And it’s not necessarily looking for you to have specific materials, but the materials can be what you already have home. Ayelet: Yeah, whatever it is, right? Whether it is a toy, or something else. Joanne: Yeah. And I like everything is a toy. Anything is a toy, really. So I like that idea that you’re kind of guiding professionals to be able to kind of broaden their, their horizon and their outlook on what therapy looks like, and also what parent education looks like. Oh, I wanted to say one more thing. Oh, the thing that I wanted to highlight, which I love about the Learn With Le…

Full show notes at the publisher

The Ultimate Guide to Supporting Infant & Toddler Families Apr 27, 2022

Show notes

Families already have all the “right” tools to support their babies: they just need to know how to use them. In today’s episode, I’m going to be sharing with you the ultimate guide to supporting infant and toddler families through parent education. Because here’s the thing: The single most important thing your families need to realize about supporting their young child’s development is that they already have all the “right” tools to support their babies: they just need to know how to use them. All around the world, educators and therapists working with families with infants and toddlers are moving to a “routines-based intervention” approach. Essentially what that means is that the research is finally catching up with what professionals in early childhood education have known for a long time: tiny humans must be supported by responsive caregivers, and do this best in their natural environment. In the first few years of life, children learn through a process of observation (observing others), imitation (starting to imitate others) and interaction (interacting with objects in the environment and with other people in the environment). And everyday routines are those common threads that help children make sense of the world, and help them learn about basic concepts, about vocabulary for things around them, about how their bodies move and how the world feels, and about how to engage socially with others. Apply now to receive access to my private training! So when parents and caregivers can learn to maximize the everyday routines and everyday objects that they’re often already participating in and using, they can unlock their potential and boost development… and this, in turn, gives them the peace of mind they crave: it empowers them to do the big job of parenting tiny humans. They get to combat the overwhelm of early parenthood. Parenting is that great equalizer, and no matter where your families come from, what language(s) they speak, what socio-economic bracket under which they fall, or whether a child is developing along a typical progression or whether she falls outside the norm, there’s one single thing we all need to realize: When you can help families learn to recognize the tools they already have to boost their young child’s development, you’re able to help them maximize the time they have with their babies, you help them feel empowered to “get it right,” and you’re able to help them unlock the power of everyday routines (diaper) and everyday objects (paper roll) to figure out how to support their tiny human and boost all areas of development. Play, Talk, Sing, Move So what are the kinds of things we as educators and therapists can do to support young children and their families? What are the things we can show parents and caregivers that can help them infuse every single interaction with more connection, more opportunities for interaction, more vocabulary, more modeling? I see these as play, talk, sing, and move. I refer to these as the 4-pillars of Learn With Less®. I come back to these in each one of my therapeutic sessions as a pediatric speech-language pathologist, in everything I model and discuss with client families, and in all my parent education work with Learn With Less®. Now, the ultimate goal both with direct therapy and with any kind of parent education or enrichment class, is to build family capacity, competence, and confidence. THEREFORE, this means that your job as a parent educator or a therapist of any kind is to help parents and caregivers believe they can make a difference with their child… and you can do that using very simple strategies and very simple materials! As a pediatric speech-language pathologist, parent educator, and imperfect mother of two young children, I see so often that parents and caregivers often get caught up with the idea of finding the “best route” to follow, and then, instead of thinking things through or thinking about why they believe something is the best or why a certain material holds specific developmental value, they become a “blind follower” to the tool they’re using or philosophy they’re following. Your job as a parent educator or therapist, in many ways, is to help them think for themselves. It’s to show them that the materials you’re using don’t matter. Because – they ARE going to get fixated on the materials! I kid you not, I’ve literally had a mom say out loud without even thinking about it as her baby was reaching and grasping for an empty toilet paper roll, “We’re going to have to go and get one of these!” We had a good laugh about that when she realized what she had just said. But we are conditioned to want to go out and get the best for our babies! And because the baby industry is so strong, we believe we have to go out and buy things to support development. So it’s not about the materials. It’s what you infuse the experience with that matters. In the Learn With Less® curriculum, I encourage families to use four basic pillars to connect with their little ones. These are the pillars of play, talk, sing, and move, and these pillars allow us to connect as a group, and allow me to facilitate and model to other caregivers. Today, I’m going to break those down for you. As a facilitator of caregiver/baby groups, a parent educator, or a therapist of any kind, these four pillars will help you provide families with the foundation for learning and connection, and will help you break down early development so parents and caregivers can think about supporting their infants and toddlers through simple, manageable steps. Pointing out these pillars allows you as an educator to set a warm and friendly tone with both caregiver and child, and allows you to use the languages of play, talk, sing, and move to connect, facilitate, and model to other caregivers. So what are the kinds of things we can do to support young children? That can infuse every single interaction with more connection, more opportunities for interaction, more vocabulary, more modeling? What does that mean for our little ones? First, we want to define PLAY with attention to the following principles: Open-ended play – meaning, we want to encourage caregivers to engage in exploration of the environment and of everyday objects, and being playful can simply mean Exploring, experimenting, and offering varied environments and varied objects Most importantly: we want to help adults see that being playful is a different way to look at what we, as we grown ups, come to define as play: many adults come into the idea of “playing with their child” as following a set of rules of a game, like, we hit the ball, we run, we score! Or, as a procedural exercise: we open the book, we read the page, we turn the page, repeat! So, encouraging caregivers to “play” with NO specific end goal in mind can really require them to reframe their entire thinking! Now, of course, in a therapeutic context, you are going to want to weave whatever skill you’re working on into the play! SO whether it’s turn-taking, eye gaze, joint attention, imitation, gesture use, first words, or building on existing verbal language… We want to create an environment where the caregiver is encouraged to be flexible and accepting of what is happening, what might happen next, and what their child is doing And finally, within that play, we want to ensure safety with a variety of materials. Next, we want to define this second pillar, TALK, with attention to the following principles: We want to help caregivers recognize that just by having discussions with their (potentially pre-verbal!) baby or toddler, just by making observations alongside their child, they are creating a language-rich environment. We want to encourage them to engage in the gold standard of early learning: repetition with variation, which we’ll talk more about in a few minutes. So helping them see the value in all those everyday experiences like the diaper change and the sitting down to a meal or the bath or the waking up or going to bed routine… all those are opportunities for repetition… and tiny variations they can make, with a change of pace, with a change in attention, with the addition of a choice-making opportunity, with a little song, and so on… that is the way to go! We also want to help them remember that the drill and kill kind of “what’s this, what’s this, what’s this” labelling that many parents get stuck in (because they want their child to show them how much they know!) is just one of maaaaaaany reasons we communicate – labeling is just one way we can talk about things, but so is asking questions, so is making requests, so is greeting, and so many other parts of joint attentional acts and socially interactive acts, and behavioral regulation acts… And we want them to recognize that we ALL communicate using a variety of means and modes – not just with words, but all those precursors to language, and all those additional ways like eye gaze, and facial expression, and gestures, and moving closer to an object… We want to help them recognize that modeling our own curiosity, talking about our own feelings, imitating their vocalizations and verbalizations and movements… are all supporting various areas of communication… And finally, we want them to realize that they are the primary language models. They are the ones modeling what they want their child to then imitate. So not only do we want to help them model a wonderful variation of vocabulary, and the formation of sentences, etc., but we also want them to model positive behavior, positive communication styles, and we want them to talk to their children and around their children in the ways we want them to eventually do the same to us. And now we come to SING, the one people often have the most trouble gathering resources and just doing. But we want to give families the chance to realize that this pillar of “sing” doesn’t necessarily mean singing everyday and in every way with their child. There are soooo many ways to be musical with young children. But because music is so powerful, I really encourage you to give them ways to just feel at ease trying things out (by modeling your imperfection, as well!), and using music to add a silly element to a simple routine like the diaper change – “stiiiiiiiinky diaper, it’s tiiiiiime for a new one!” or “is there a poopoo in there, is there a poopoo in there? Was it only air or is there poopoo in there?” We want to help them see that simply by adding “you pooped, you pooped, you really really pooped” is adding joy into a routine! And just by using a melody or a change in pace or rhythm, we can distract a child or engage a child… using musicality! We also want to encourage them to remember that rhythms ARE everywhere – that nearly everything can become a percussive instrument (and their child playing with a bowl and wooden spoon IS a musical experience!) … because they can make music with what they already have. They might have a few lovely instruments, a wooden drum, a few maracas… but they might also have a poster tube full of dried beans or an upside down laundry basket. And you’re here to show them how to make use of those! Finally, we want to define this last pillar, MOVE, with attention to the following principles: Movement. IS. Life. Their child learns about… everything… by learning how his body moves, where it is in space, by solving the problem of how to balance and lift and figuring out elements of force, of gravity, and of becoming the scientists that they are… through movement. So, we want them to remember that even with a tiny baby or a child with motor challenges, they can consider various movement planes – whether it’s during tummy time or a dance party or a lullaby, whether it’s to stimulate or regulate. And exploration, which is learning, cannot be contained. So we might have some movement in and out of the location where the session started. We might be sitting up or laying on the floor. We might be mouthing something or exploring how one surface is different from the next. The Way Forward Now, I want to finish by, again, reminding you that the way forward in early intervention, in routines-based intervention, or in any family enrichment workshop or class… is not about you getting to show off all your cute therapy toys, or getting to use your laminator. For EVERY single material you use (if you bring it into the home, if you provide materials within a group, or if you use what’s already there), try to think of the most basic version. In our use of everyday items, we are educating caregivers that they don’t need what you have: they can use what they already have in their own home, regardless of how “much” or how “little” they have! Your clients are a diverse set of caregivers and children who may or may not be accustomed to playing with a variety of materials. They may have started your session already having spent the morning in a cardboard box or the kitchen cabinets… or the caregiver may be completely opposed to their child using their kitchen as a play space. And the latter? THAT’S OK! That is their right. So if they’re just not comfortable, find another way, another material, another space. Remember, we’re building family capacity, family confidence, and family competence. You’re making attempts at creating an environment for exploration, you’re providing examples for ways they can engage with their own children. You’re giving them ideas about how they might generalize at home or when you’re not there. You’re showing examples – you’re not giving them the “right” way to parent. Your model and your structure provides them with a new set of eyes, a new way to see what they already have and what they can use and do… should they wish to implement that without you. They may start to see, over time, that “controlled chaos” is maybe sometimes ok. That mess is not always terrible, or that they can create “mess” in ways that are more comfortable than others. And they may start to see that the value of those little moments in between… are actually incredibly powerful. Parents and caregivers often define “learning” and “play” in more adult terms – this is often something that manifests itself in activities like book reading. Clients often express to me that the “problem,” for instance, when they sit down with a book with their young child is that their toddler just wants to “remove all the books out of the book stand” or “just wants to turn the page for no other reason than just to turn the page.” When I dig a little bit deeper with them about what about this “irks” them, they often explain that they simply want their child to attend to something interesting or special in the book, or they know that book-reading and early literacy is important. So that means that there are a lot of levels of parent education that we as clinicians have to do about how all young children learn. So here we are. Families need a guide. They want to know how “best” to help their children. That guide can be you. Remember where they are. Often overwhelmed, sleep-deprived, anxious, and needing to be reassured they are doing all the things “right.” Apply now to receive access to my private training! They all want to do enough for their children. Every single parent wants this. The strategies we’ve discussed today focus on empowering the family, creating confidence, helping them feel competent, and and building their own capacity: helping them see what they’re capable of, and giving them the eyes to see the value of what they’re already doing – adding just a few tweaks to their mundane everyday moments. I believe that a very powerful way to do that is through community based caregiver/baby classes. And I’d love to share the knowledge that I’ve gained over the last 6 or so years, creating my own curriculum and sharing it with families all over the world, both virtually and in-person. I’d love to share with you our community of facilitators who are also leading classes using the Learn With Less®…

Full show notes at the publisher

Creating Inclusive Spaces For Families, with Lindsay Teitelbaum Apr 04, 2022

Show notes

Bringing Together New Families to Build Community On this episode of the Learn With Less® podcast, Ayelet sits down with Lindsay Teitelbaum, a pediatric speech-language pathologist, mother, parent educator, Learn With Less® facilitator, and the owner of the inclusive community play space, Spirited Play Labs. Lindsay’s physical community play space for new families is in San Ramon, California. She supports new families with neurodiverse children, as well as parents and caregivers with children of all developmental levels, from birth to three. Lindsay has doubled down on building community by bringing groups of families together with “caregiver & me” groups. Not familiar with the term, “caregiver & me” classes? We use it as a more inclusive term instead of “mommy & me” classes. Our classes are open to – and meant for – ALL parents and caregivers: not just moms… but also dads, non-binary folks, grandparents, foster parents, babysitters, nannies, and other amazing grownups who care for tiny humans. We’re going to play the “search term” game here (so you can find this great content more easily!) and help shift the conversation from “mommy & me” classes to “caregiver & me” classes… to do our part to shape the more inclusive world we’d like to live in. In this episode, we discuss: Lindsay’s background and how she placed her values front and center in terms of how she wanted to practice speech-language therapyWhat drew her to the Learn With Less® philosophy, and the value of prioritizing parents and caregivers and parent educationPerception changes she’s experienced that allowed her to create a space for familiesWhat it means to be creating an inclusive space, what Lindsay has considered, and who ends up being centered How it feels to serve families as a facilitator, instead of coming in as the “expert” Helpful Resources Related to This Episode Learn With Less® Stories: Additional podcast episodes and other interviews from educators who’ve provided the Learn With Less® infant/toddler family enrichment curriculum and families who’ve experienced our programming. FREE Infant/Toddler Development Blueprint: Discover the four major areas of infant and toddler development, what’s involved in each one in the first three years of life, and what you can do to support that learning (using what you already have in your home). Maisie Soetantyo’s Better Community certification and Autism Career Pathways (you can follow Maisie Soetantyo on Instagram, here) Independent Clinician Podcast, with Jena Castro-Casbon Affect Autism Podcast Two Sides of the Spectrum with Meg Proctor Learn With Less® Bundle: get our favorite infant and toddler development resources (save 70%)! Discover how to support & connect with your tiny human, without having to buy a single toy. Learn With Less® Facilitator Training & Certification Program: Use your existing skills as an educator or therapist to serve families holistically with a high quality program that will provide lasting impact! Apply now to become a licensed facilitator Learn With Less®. Learn With Less® “Caregiver & Me” Classes: the magic of Learn With Less® lies in the communal aspect of coming together with our resources, in community with other families. Join us for a virtual or in-person class led by a licensed facilitator near you! Connect With Us Lindsay: Website / Instagram / Facebook Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest Text Transcript of The Podcast Episode Ayelet: Lindsay Teitelbaum! I’m so happy to have you here recording for the Learn With Less® podcast will you go ahead and just share a little bit about you, how you got into this work, your educational background, and how that led you to what you’re doing now! Big question, but you know, that’s where we’ll start. And if you could share your pronouns and where you are in the world and all that. Lindsay: Yeah, so my name is Lindsay Teitelbaum, pronouns she/her. I live currently in San Leandro, California, which is the San Francisco East Bay. And I have a business in San Ramon, California called Spirited Play Labs. I am a speech therapist. And I’ve been doing speech therapy for about eight years or so. And I’ve worked in a lot of different organizations and systems in which I just took issue with a lot of the ways in which we treat kids, you know, using speech therapy. I discovered Learn With Less® during COVID, so 2020. And at the same time was sort of envisioning something larger where I could practice the principles of therapy, but also parent coaching and community building that I felt like I wasn’t able to practice elsewhere. So that was in school districts, private practice, clinic work, I’ve done all of those things throughout my career. And there was always those couple pieces that I was like, Oh, you seem like you want to do this, but then you’re not really doing it, or you just don’t want to change things or whatever, you know, that whole thing about if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, you know? And so, during COVID, I was working for a public school, you know, we weren’t doing anything in person, and then also virtual, they wouldn’t let us do anything virtual. And so I just said, Oh, okay, I’m going to stop, then, I’m going to leave this district, and I’m going to go into private practice. And that’s where I started seeing kids and building the vision of what Spirited Play Labs is, and I did your Learn With Less® training during that time, which really significantly influenced what I did with Spirited Play Labs. A Community Center For Families, Featuring a Multisensory Play Space The business that I have currently is a community center, I run an open play space, inclusive, multi sensory space. It’s interesting, because it’s bringing in neurodivergent, kids, neurotypical kids, it’s a big old mix. And I love that, and it’s birth to six. And then in addition, I’m doing parent and child facilitated play groups. To me, the parent and child piece is like the most important because a lot of people are doing facilitated social groups or play groups or what we call like social skills and all this, but the most important piece is that the parent is present in the groups that we’re running. And it’s play, and it’s with your community. And I’m doing lots of different versions of that with other local providers in the area. Okay, that’s everything. Ayelet: That’s everything, yeah. Okay, so where to go from here? I mean there’s so much… so much there! So okay, let’s take it back, and I would love to hear a little bit if you could tell the good listeners… So you said before you started the Learn With Less® program, you were working in a few different kinds of environments like private practice and in the school district, right, before I started. Initially, what was it that drew you to this whole Learn With Less® philosophy? What was it that brought you in and made you want to take a move? Lindsay: One piece was I felt like a lot of the people that I worked with didn’t seem like they cared about parents, or they saw parents as an obstacle. It was always this sort of negative thing around parent. And then I became a parent in 2017. And especially because most of us are, you know, white women in this field, serving a diverse group of families. And I always just felt like we stepped in, and we were like, this kind of boss lady being like, Oh, I don’t like the way you do this, parent! The style that we approached parents was very, like, authoritative from above talking down. And I always was just like, this is weird, like, what’s the point of this? And so Learn With Less® really spoke to me because it was directly addressing the parents. You and like one other sort of giant program is sort of addressing parents, I don’t know of many other programs that directly say, parents are part of the experience of development. We want parents to be given the tools, and we want parents to be the main sort of supporter and teacher of their children… and that we are the conduit, we are the vessel for that information; we are not the information. Ayelet: Us as educators and therapists, right or yeah, I love that. The Parent Piece: Working With Young Children Means Working With The Whole Family Lindsay: I would work with a kid for an hour, and I would walk away and I would be like, so what? What did I do for an hour? I put on a little show, I did a little song and dance for the kids. I got them… and people would say to me, Oh, you get my kid to do things that I can’t do. And I was like, Oh, I’m failing, actually, if that’s what they’re telling me! Because, who cares if their kid can use certain skills or certain strategies when I’m present but as soon as my presence is gone, they’re no longer able to do those things. I’m like, what’s… what is that then that’s no point, no point. So Learn With Less® spoke to me because of that parent piece. And then, the other piece that I really liked was… I’m also just, my own parenting style is giving my kid like… Like, I remember when he was little I used to just get paper towel rolls. And I’d just put them on his hands and see what he did. Just silly stuff in the house, and I almost never bought toys. And I would go to Target. They have now an entire V-Tech aisle, and it keeps expanding! And I’m like, What is going on here. So I was also really inspired, I worked at the public preschool, and all of those people would give me their hand-me-downs, and they were all just sort of, quote unquote, old school toys were really simple. They have no lights and flashing and all of this. I just felt like, oh, yeah, like this is so accessible. And this is meaningful. It doesn’t have to have lights and sounds, and blah blah blah, to make it an environmentally enriching toy. On top of that, I actually saw a lot of the kids that I served in speech therapy, playing with those toys. The relationships go away when those toys are activated, because they’re like, woosh! Right into that toy. You would try as a therapist to engage sometimes. And it was like… get away, this is my private experience with this toy. So I always just felt like some of those toys made it so that you didn’t need to be in relationship, which sometimes that’s fine. But sometimes it’s like, I want to build relationship with you, or I want you to build relationship with your parents. So what items can we think about to do that if it’s not going to have like lights and sounds and stuff? Ayelet: So you found as a parent yourself, as a caregiver yourself that you gravitated to that and you could see the benefit of these everyday items, and simple, simple toy-like substances that were hugely beneficial. And like you said, I love that they could help to build the relationship, because that’s what we’re talking about, right? I mean, we’re talking about helping families to feel confident that they can both support their child’s development and also the connection between caregiver and child. That’s huge, right? Yeah, that’s the whole point. So tell us a little bit about this journey into and through Learn With Less®, because you started the program. Tell me a little bit about your own perception of yourself, too, as far as how you felt you were going to achieve this shift. And then now, how that changed after participating in the training program. Parent Education Means Getting on Equal Footing With Families Lindsay: I remember the content all immediately spoke to me. And I was like, yes, yes, yes. And I took it in, and it felt in alignment with what I believe or what I was already practicing. And the area in which I think I had the most growth was in understanding how to, because even though I love working with parents, I still have a lot of work to do in really understanding how to coach parents and support parents versus that direct, “I’m going to tell you” thing. And so the module that you did around adult learning really spoke to me because I feel like I did graduate school. I learned all about kids, like, I got that part. It’s really the part around the parents thinking about the diverse backgrounds they come from the identities they have the style of learner that they are… thinking about that is like a whole new paradigm that is really scary, but also will make the most meaningfulness for the children that I say I’m serving. And so I think stepping into that role, I just, I want to be able to just talk to parents in a way where they feel like they’re understood and they’re being talked to at a matched level. I’m not at this authoritative hierarchy level. And so that was what I think the modules really helped me to do. And then once it came time to doing our demos, yeah, continuing to remember that it’s not about me putting on… it’s so hard to not, like, the show. It’s all about for speech therapists. And I don’t know about other disciplines, but it’s all about the show, right? You know, the big… Ayelet: Can you define that further for our listeners who maybe are not quite familiar Lindsay: Yeah, you show up and you’re really happy, and you have… And you’re constantly moving and talking, and you’re bringing out all the best items, and you’re like putting it in the kid’s face and you’re like going, going, going, going and not stopping talking and not making space for anybody else. Because you feel as if you’re being put on the spot to like, be amazing. That, to me, is the show. And I used to walk away from that super tired and just feeling like it was not authentic. Even though you know, I’m an East Coast Jewish woman, I’m very talkative by nature, but showing up to someone’s home and becoming a chameleon into their own experience… that takes a lot of self restraint and a lot of patience. And it’s definitely worth working on that, ongoing. So that was I think, the most impactful piece just continuing to try that out and feel that out. Especially in a group dynamic, allowing for whatever families bring, allowing that to exist and not trying to fix fix, fix, manage, manage, manage, you know. Ayelet: Yeah, it’s a huge paradigm shift for so many. I mean, I think for pretty much every single facilitator that’s gone through the program has commented on that shift from wearing the teacher hat or the educator hat or the therapist hat, into this facilitator hat. Can you talk just a little bit more about what that feels like or what that looks like for you? Building Relationships with Parents to Address Their Needs Lindsay: It’s like so much observing. And not doing a lot of talking, and I have not been doing as much direct work while I build the business, but before I took a pause on direct work, it felt like becoming friends with the parents. It felt like building relationship with the parents and addressing their direct needs in the moment and not coming in with a prepared… Like, topics are good, but like ultimately dropping the topic to a degree if it doesn’t suit these specific parents or trying to address the topic in very individualized ways. So it feels actually like more thinking and less talking. Yeah, right. So sort of watching what’s happening and trying to meet that moment, instead of concocting all these grand plans and trying to make those happen. Ayelet: I think that is a big, big shift. And for so many of us therapists types, especially those who I think are the majority comprising this field of like Type A, very planned out, you know, very highly structured, this is how the session will go. And, and being able to sit back and say, Okay, I do have a structure, I have a lesson plan, an activity plan. But being able to sit and say, Okay, here’s what I want you to try, here’s what we’re going to look at today, or in this session. Here’s the purpose of what we’re going to try to do. And then I’m going to see what happens if you follow my lead. And then we’re going to look at what words come up, what movements come up. What things that the child is exploring what kind of play comes up and what we can say about that. Or how…

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How Families Can Support Gender Identity, with Mason Aid Mar 22, 2022

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Creating Inclusive Communities for Families Who May Hold LGBTQ Identities On this episode of the Learn With Less® podcast, we sat down with Mason Aid, an LGBTQ educator focused on inclusion and how to take the next step in becoming an ally. We discussed: Mason’s background, and how they got into the work they’re doing todayA few basic definitions of useful vocabulary, such as pronouns, non-binary, cisgender, and the difference between sexual identity and gender identityVarious things Mason has had to consider because of their own gender identity as a non-binary parentMason’s suggestions for families to consider when it comes to supporting their own children as they start to build awareness of their own gender identitiesTop tips for parents, caregivers, and educators who want to create an inclusive, supportive community for young childrenA few of Mason’s favorite resources to share with families or helping professionals who want to support others who are questioning or who are coming out Helpful Resources to Acknowledge For This Episode: Mason’s Compassionate Coming Out Guide: resources and tips on how to respond, and how to deal with how you might be feeling if a child or family member comes out to you about their gender or sexual identity Queer Kid Stuff YouTube Channel Pop N’ Olly YouTube Channel GLSEN, for educators and parents of school-aged children PFLAG, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays The Trevor Project, supporing LGBTQIA+ youth Everywhere Babies, by Susan Meyers Free Infant/Toddler Development Blueprint: what are the four major areas of early development… and how can you use the pillars of Learn With Less® to support that learning, using the time, energy, and materials you already have?! Download our free blueprint today. Connect With Us: Mason: Website / Facebook / Instagram / LinkedIn Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest Text Transcript of the Episode Ayelet: Welcome to Learn With Less® I am so happy to have Mason Aid, they/he. Mason is an LGBTQ educator focused on the greater Midwest, who loves to talk about inclusion and how to take the next baby step in becoming an ally. Whether you consider yourself an ally or simply want to learn more about the LGBTQ community, they share passionately and in a disarming manner. Mason lives in Columbia, Missouri with their five year old daughter, and loves going on hikes and playing with Perler Beads. Perler Beads, my very favorite thing, we all know that we buy them for our, air quotes, for our children… but those are for me. Mason: Oh no, I own it, I buy them for myself, I have a giant Batman set right now that’s like gonna make a Batman that’s like 15 inches tall. Ayelet: I love it. That’s so fun. Mason: I’m so excited. It’s like meditation, you know, it’s my self care. It’s that, you know, I can’t sit still and meditate. But I can sit still and focus only on putting the right bead in the right spot for hours. And it just is like my Zen moment. Ayelet: Yeah, and that precision and focus. It’s a beautiful, beautiful way to do it. I love it. Mason: It is! Ayelet: Mason, thank you so much for coming on today and giving us your time and energy. Obviously, I read your fancy pants bio, but I would love it if you would just sort of, in your own, words, tell us about your background, and how you got into the work that you’re doing today. Mason: Yeah, so once upon a time, in about 2002, I was a conservative Christian homophobe, who didn’t know that they were in the closet and had no idea that I belonged to the LGBT community. I just knew I didn’t fit anywhere else. Fast forward to 2008, and I came to the University of Missouri where for the first time in my life, I saw LGBT people happy, healthy, holding hands, living successful lives. And I had that Oh, expletive moment, where I knew that I had to do something about this. And that I had to address my queerness… which, queer is a word that I like to use for myself, but is one that is still being reclaimed by much of the community and is better not to use if you’re unsure that someone identifies that way. I like to give that disclaimer because if someone says, Oh yeah, Mason’s queer, I’d be like, Heck, yeah. But for some people, it would be like, that’s really offensive. So we have to be careful with that word. It is being reclaimed and is being used more and more within the community, but if you’re not in the community, it’s better just to not use it unless, you know, someone specifically identifies that way. Ayelet: That’s really helpful. Thank you for that acknowledgement. And as you said… terms, words, the way that we use vocabulary, it’s constantly changing, you know, as a speech-language pathologist, you know, like, language is an adjustment always. And so I love, I love just that distinguishing piece of like, who are the the quote, unquote, “right” people to be using certain terminology, and what… we always want to know, like the history of a word and what connotations it has. So thank you for that. That’s awesome. Accepting One’s Sexuality and Gender Identity Mason: Yeah. So I came out in 2008, and felt like I had three paths in front of me. I could either deny my sexuality and marry a man, live happily ever after, except it wouldn’t be so happy for either person in the relationship. I could deny my sexuality and be celibate, or I could meet someone and marry a wonderful woman and have the life that I always thought I would… just with a woman. And as I looked at my options, and as I pondered what would be the most in authenticity… and you know, for me at the time, what I believed God wanted me to do, I came down to the solution that these are my three choices. And if I marry a man, that wouldn’t be right, that’s not fair to him. That’s not fair to me. If I were to try to stay celibate, it would be a difficult thing to do, and would not be good for me in the long run. You know, my mental health would suffer being alone. And so I settled on, you know, okay, well, I’m going to pursue a relationship, I’m going to follow this path. It’s been great. You know, I met a wonderful woman, and we got married, we’re currently separated, but things are still good there. And I have the most amazing five year old daughter. So I got into this work in about 2013, I was asked to volunteer with Prism, which is an LGBTQ teen group here in Columbia. And through my work with Prism, I got asked to do a presentation at a local small town high school on trans issues. And I was like, sure, why not? I can do that. Whatever. And I fell in love. I fell in love with communicating with people what I had to learn, myself. Here are the specifics of the LGBT community, here’s what all the letters mean. Here’s how you navigate this world that, you know, things are changing. I’m not that old. And I am one of the oldest non-binary people I know, because language is changing and changed in the 2000s. Ayelet: Yeah, and continues to change every day. Mason: Yes, exactly. And so I just love talking to people who haven’t had exposure to the LGBT community and they don’t hate people, but they just don’t know and are unfamiliar. That’s, that’s my happy place. Because it’s talking to myself. It’s talking to my parents, it’s talking to the people I grew up with. It’s that simple. Ayelet: I just, I love how you put that because it’s, it’s a conversation, which is what you and I are doing right here. And it happens to be being recorded so that other people can hear about it, right? Mason: Exactly. Ayelet: Yeah. Awesome. Well, when you and I chatted about the topics that we wanted to focus on for today’s conversation, we kind of discussed the fact that like, we would love to talk about your experience as a non-binary parent. And since this is number one, actually a huge topic. Yeah, there is no specific question there. Right. And number two, a topic that actually many of our listeners, as we just discussed, may have quite varied degrees of knowledge, you know, their own personal experience with or understanding of, I was hoping that we could first start with a few basic definitions of terms, right. So number one, we opened up with your pronouns. So Mason, could you share? What is the value of sharing pronouns? Why Do We Share Pronouns? Mason: So that’s an entire podcast episode by itself, right? So the short version is, for me, when she her pronouns are used, it’s like a punch in the arm, like a gentle, playful punch, you know, I know the intention is not ill will I know that most people don’t mean to hurt me with it. But when you get gently punched… Ayelet: Just to clarify when she/her pronouns are used to refer to you. Mason: Correct. Ayelet: Ok, thank you. Mason: And when that gentle punch happens hundreds of times a day, it gets… it hurts, you know, it’s not, it’s not the one instance that is hurtful. It’s the repetition. I worked at Starbucks for six years and got ma’amm’ed, and she/her-ed every day, for hours a day, and it just drained me, just emotionally, wore at me, because… it’s not being seen accurately. When I was coming out and figuring out gender, I had a lot of people tell me, Oh, you’re, you’re a butch lesbian. I’m fabulous. Like, if anything, I am a feminine man. I am not the stereotype of Butch. And that language doesn’t resonate with me, it just doesn’t fit. That’s not who I am. And I, I find myself landing in this space that is both feminine and masculine. You know, I’m never going to try to masculinize my speech patterns, because I love the way I talk, you know, I’m working on speaking with a lower voice, because I’ve been on testosterone for a year. And I need to because it keeps cracking, because I’m still so used to talking in a higher register. So that’s a thing. But like, pronouns matter. And using correct pronouns is a small step of allyship that has a huge impact on people’s lives. And for me, I use they/he, because they’re both right. So if they is weird for you, and you just can’t quite wrap your mind around singular “they,” great – use “he.” And for me, both are right. But for some people, it’s only they and we need to practice getting they right, which is a struggle. I still sometimes use the wrong pronouns for myself, and I have been out for a decade and using they/them or he/him pronouns for a decade. So you have all the grace in the world. The person you’re referring to may not have capacity to give you the grace that you need. But that doesn’t mean that you’re a failure, or that you can’t do anything, rightt. It just means that that person doesn’t have capacity at that moment for you to be using the language that hurts them. It doesn’t mean that you’re intentionally hurting that, like there’s a distinction there that I feel like isn’t often made. That you know, while impact does override intention, intention still matters, intention still matters. Ayelet: There’s a huge shift, movement, transition into using pronouns within all kinds of spaces, right, whether we’re talking about professional spaces, social spaces, educational spaces, different kinds of community spaces. And that is important because it acknowledges and puts at the forefront that how I identify, how you identify, how I can help to correctly identify you. And again, language matters, yeah. Mason: Mm-hmm. And when allies give their pronouns, it opens up space for me to give mine and it not be so strange or weird. And I’m okay with being a little strange and weird, but I love it when someone comes up to me and says, Hey, my name is Marsha. I use she/her pronouns. And that gives me the space to say, Oh, hey, I’m Mason, I use they/he pronouns, nice to meet you. And it just, that’s the best way to figure out someone’s pronouns, if you don’t know, is to introduce yourself with yours. That’s my biggest tip is introduce yourself with your pronouns. Especially if you’re unsure of what someone’s pronouns are. Because then you’re not straight up asking, which can be awkward for both parties, but you’re putting it out there and giving them the opportunity to self disclose. Ayelet: Right, and assuming that someone else is going to self disclose just because you did is also not not a great idea, right? It’s, it’s up to every single human. Mason: Exactly. And sometimes, you know, it’s a way of saying, Hey, I’m a safe person if you feel safe. What Does it Mean to be Non-Binary? Ayelet: Yeah. Lovely. Okay, moving on to the next term that I think we should just sort of start with is the term non-binary. Mason: Yeah, so I am not a woman. I was born assigned female at birth. That’s another term that’s used in the community, that means that when I was born, the doctor looked at my genitals and said, It’s a girl. And I grew up and was like, You’re not wrong, but you’re not right, either. And, you know, I was the definition of a tomboy growing up and was never uncomfortable with being called a girl. But I was given space to be a different kind of girl. Then in fifth grade, I was bullied and started to grow my hair out, and moved on and tried to pretend to be what we define a woman to be. I was really bad at it. I tried so hard, and I was so bad at it. And then when I came out, I was like, Oh, well, I’m a man. Obviously, if I’m not a woman, I’m a man. And as I navigated that, I put on this mask of toxic masculinity that we are presented with and was… became a bro and was like, hey, what’s up, yeah. And that was just as wrong as pretending to be a woman for me. And where I have settled, for a long time where I settled was very much in the middle, was very much that I am neither a woman nor a man. Neither fits, not in the way we define them socially today. You know, which we can have a whole other conversation on the social construction of gender, like it’s a book, I’m working on it, I promise, we’ll get there. So I don’t fit with women, but I don’t fit with men either. Where do I fit? I fit somewhere else, I use the term gender queer to identify myself and honestly, as I become more comfortable with my gender identity, and with who I am, I am embracing my maleness at a level that I haven’t before. Thus using he/him pronouns in addition to they/them. Where I am now is that I am a feminine man, more than I am a masculine woman, I fit in masculinity, I dress masculine, but I am, I am femme, and I’m comfortable with that I am more comfortable with nail polish and makeup now that I’m presenting in a masculine manner than I ever was when I was pretending to be a woman. Because it feels accurate, it feels authentic, it feels like I’m being who I am, and not putting on a mask. And so that’s that’s what non-binary means to me. For some people, they don’t have a gender. For some people, they see themselves as both male and female. Some people see themselves as something entirely different. And it’s different for each person. I choose to call myself non-binary because I don’t fit in traditional masculinity, I could call myself a man. And that wouldn’t be a lie. But I’m not the kind of man that we see in our, in our mind’s eye, when we picture a man. I am the fabulous gay best friend who happened to be born a woman and is straight-ish. That’s where I fit. What is the Difference Between Sexual Identity and Gender Identity Ayelet: Thank you for that. So I I’d also love to just, again, start with… because you’ve you’ve also mentioned, you came into an understanding of your own sexual identity. But we’re also obviously talking about gender identity. So I would love it Mason, if you could also just give us a little bit of your own experience, your own understanding of those two very distinct sets of social identities and help listeners who are not quite sure what that means and what the difference is, and where this word called “Cis” fits in. Mason: Yeah, it’s a new word. It’s an old word, but it’s a new word. So we often talk about the LGBTQ community. But really, we’re talking about two separate and distinct communities. We’re talking about the LGB community, which ha…

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Why is Parent Coaching Important in Early Intervention, with Joanne Cazeau Mar 10, 2022

Show notes

Just what is parent coaching in early intervention? On this episode of the Learn With Less® podcast, we sat down with Joanne Cazeau, of Koze Speech Therapy and @thespeechpathologist (Instagram). Joanne is a licensed pediatric speech-language pathologist and private practice owner who believes strongly in the power of parent coaching – working with caregivers directly to support their young children when providing early intervention services. We discussed: Joanne’s professional and personal background that brought her to the work she’s doing todayDisparities in clinical service, culturally responsive care, and the implications of biases held by practitioners providing speech therapy and other servicesHow Joanne’s therapeutic approach has shifted from when she was working in a private practice to her work in early intervention working for herselfThe impacts of the pandemic on her outlook and therapeutic approachesSome of Joanne’s favorite therapy “hacks” when it comes to being creative now that she’s following more of a parent coaching / bagless style of therapyJoanne’s favorite resources to share with families or other professionals who are hoping to approach early intervention in this way Helpful Resources to Acknowledge For This Episode: More Is Better: Maximizing Natural Language Opportunities, by Lee Ann Jung, Ph.D. Anita Zucker Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Studies at the University of Florida Teach Speech Services, with Kacy Wickerson, M.A., CCC-SLP Transplaining, with A.C. Goldberg, Ph.D., CCC-SLP and Chris Rehs-Dupin Learn With Less® Bundle: get our favorite infant and toddler development resources (and save 70%)! Discover how to support and connect with your tiny human, without having to buy a single toy. Free Infant/Toddler Development Blueprint: what are the four major areas of early development… and how can you use the pillars of Learn With Less® to support that learning, using the time, energy, and materials you already have?! Download our free blueprint today. Learn With Less® Caregiver & Me Classes a developmentally based family enrichment curriculum for caregiver and infant/toddler learning. Classes available both virtually and in-person. Learn With Less® Facilitator Training & Certification Program: create lasting impact leading ‘Caregiver & Me’ classes with a high quality, evidence-based, “plug & play” program that’ll have families coming back again & again Learn With Less® Stories: Testimonials from educators who’ve provided the Learn With Less® infant/toddler family enrichment curriculum and families who’ve experienced our programming. Black Rockette: Perspectives of a black female speech language pathologist in academia, by Dr. Ianessa Humbert, Ph.D. Things I Wish White Moms Knew About Black Motherhood, an episode of the First Name Basis podcast Seeing White, Season Two of the Scene On Radio podcast Diversity & Equity Toolkit for Coaches & Entrepreneurs by Trudi LeBron Episode 68: The basics: justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, That’s Not How That Works Podcast Examining Our Relationship to Language and Implicit Bias, Pause On The Play Podcast Instagram Feeds to follow: @Jrc_theslp @phuonglienpalafox @aaefortheslp @decolonizeslp @slp.meets.psyd @pediatricspeechsister @respectthedialect @dionna.hearn Connect With Us: Joanne: Website / Facebook / Instagram Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest Text Transcript of this Episode Ayelet: Welcome to the Learn With Less® Podcast. Today I’m joined by Joanne Cazeau. Joanne is a multilingual, New Jersey-licensed pediatric speech-language pathologist and early interventionist who specializes in identifying and therapeutically supporting young children with speech-language disorders. She is also the owner of Koze Speech Therapy, a pediatric private practice based in Bergen County, New Jersey. In her earliest days as an undergraduate student, Joanne knew that her life’s work was to help children and their families improve their communication skills, Joanne believes in making speech therapy fun and functional. She knows that optimal learning occurs during positive experiences and that rapport is a critical component of a successful therapeutic relationship. Joanne sees all children as having strengths to build on to improve their weaknesses, and to help them achieve their speech and language goals. She is passionate about empowering families, especially those from the diaspora, to support their children in achieving their full communicative potential through education, training and counseling. Joanne, welcome. Thank you so much for being here today on Learn With Less®! Joanne: Thank you, Ayelet. Thank you for letting me come on! Ayelet: I’m so happy to have you. Well, I just wanted to say first of all, I looked on your website. And I love how your tagline is communication is… communication for everyone, actually, not just communication is for everyone. But what you provide is communication for everyone. And I just love that. And I want you to sort of get into you know more about that, in general. But first, you know, I read your bio, but I’d love for you to just tell us more about your own professional background, how you got into the work that you’re doing today. Becoming a pediatric speech-language pathologist Joanne: Yeah, and thank you, I’m glad that you like that tagline. It took me so long to come up with something that I was comfortable with, and that represented what my practice was doing, and my practice values. So I guess I’ll jump into a little bit about myself. So I actually got into speech-language pathology in the roundabout, most confusing way. And we talked about that a little bit before. So I actually was very interested in being a pediatrician… which I feel like there are so many similarities with what we do, especially if you’re working with pediatric populations with having that interest to work with younger population. So I really just had it written in my mind that I was going to become a pediatrician, and I was looking at pre med programs at all my colleges. But an experience that actually put me on the path to engaging with a speech-language pathologist was when I moved to the US, I was evaluated by the district. And when I was evaluated, I was evaluated in English, and I spoke no English at that time. The only word that I knew was rabbit. And that was from watching Bugs Bunny! Sometimes we would play that, and then I knew what a rabbit was. And I could say it perfectly, but that’s the only thing I knew. So I remember the person who was doing the assessment was just flipping through pages and giving me directions. And I had no idea what they were saying throughout the entire assessment. And I was crying, and I was in distress. And a few months later, we had this big old meeting downtown. It was in the Department of Ed and my mom was there and they were just chatting away, I had no clue what was going on. Parents as A Child’s First Advocate My mom was just very furious. And I still had no clue what they were talking about until we got home. And my mom said that they were trying to diagnose me with a language disorder and that she had advocated for me and said, Well, she doesn’t speak English. And she was assessed in English. So of course, she’s not going to meet any of your criteria. And so my mom was my first advocate. And actually speech-language pathologists were like enemy number one in my mind, because I was like, this person did a very terrible thing to me. And they tried to take advantage of me. And so when I went into undergrad, I was still pre-med and I was a bio major… until one day I took a foundations to human communication course I loved it, still not realizing that this is the thing that I hated so much way back in the day. Then, I took another course in that same department. That department was called something else. It was like communications something something something so it didn’t click to me that like this was the Speech and Hearing Science Center and that I was taking some of their courses. Finding The Field of Speech-Language Pathology When I realized what was happening, I was like, Oh, wow, okay, I really do like this. And I feel like, you know, if the thing that happened to me, if it happened to me, and I had my advocate, you know, my mom, then this could potentially happen to other children. And so that’s when I kind of took up an interest. And I said, well, maybe I could be the person that makes a difference, especially given the demographic of our field, that maybe what happened to me actually happens a lot more often than I thought. And maybe I could be the person that makes a difference in another child’s life. So that’s how I ended up pursuing the academic portion of speech language pathology. And so, I did my undergrad at GW. I have Haitian parents, so it was not an option to… even though I was halfway through my four years. It was not an option to do five or six years of undergrad. And so I was taking 18 plus credits from junior to senior year just to try to finish my speech and hearing degree since I picked it up so late. And I was also a public health minor, so I was just like taking credits, taking credits. And by the time I was done, I was exhausted. And then I did my graduate studies at Howard University, I specialized… we had like a medical speech language pathology track. And that’s what I did. I did my CF [clinical fellowship] in Baltimore at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. And I learned so, so much there, but I worked with populations, children who had complex medical diagnoses for medically fragile, and cognitive disorders, and then I moved back home because I was homesick, I really missed New Jersey. And so I moved back home and I did some private practice work. And I really realized that the work that I was doing, because of the demands that were placed on us, I really felt like I wasn’t doing my best, clinically. And so I dove into my own private practice, which has been working out great. And I have time to do things like this, with you! Ayelet: Yeah, right! Yes, yes. Okay. First of all, I would love it if we could just specifically name what you, what you touched upon, about the demographics of our field, number one, which I am assuming, and I’m pretty sure I’m right, that you’re talking about the fact that our field is… I don’t have the actual statistics in front of me but… Joanne: Right, 92%! Ayelet: And I believe it’s 92. Yes, 92% white women. So, I did not bring you on to talk specifically about this topic. Nor do I think that you need to be the person to talk all about this topic. Joanne: Well, let’s talk about it, though. Speech-Language Pathologists are 92% White Women: We Need to Discuss Bias, Race, and Identity Ayelet: But I’d love to talk. I mean, I’m happy to… tell us a little bit more if you can explain from your own experiences, some of the things that you feel like we’re at play, knowing what you know, now, as a grown woman with an education in a field now, yourself, as one of the 8% humans who holds a marginalized identity within this field, what do you feel like were some of the factors that contributed to the identification of you, as a child, having a language disorder versus the fact that you probably should have just been evaluated in a language other than English. Joanne: Another language, yeah. So I feel like there are multiple things at play. And I will give credit to some things and kind of dismiss other things. So I know that discussing bias and race is not something that occurs at the graduate level, and definitely not at the undergraduate level. So I think that clinicians aren’t prepared to be able to make sound decisions when they are presented with a child that doesn’t speak English, or maybe speaks multiple languages. And they’re not really sure how to do differential diagnosis. I think that’s something that’s not discussed. I think there are also clear biases that are not kind of brought to the forefront at the academic level, like, these are the biases that you might hold as a white woman… they like these are the biases that you might hold, like, with these different identities, and just being able to have open discussion about it. Because when I was at Howard, we talked about it a lot. And I’m not necessarily sure that it’s just because it’s a Historically Black College, I just think that our educators were invested enough in the work that we did, and invested enough in our clients to be able to say, look, when you go out into the field, you’re going to encounter different people, these are the biases that you should take into account. And then let’s figure out clinically what you’re going to do to make sure that you’re recognizing these biases, I think that conversation just doesn’t happen. And I can tell you just being at GW, so I had both experiences, right, I went PWI [Predominantly White Institution]. And then I also went to a predominantly Black University, a historically Black university. And some of the things that I experienced from people who had PhD’s… some of the things that they were telling us… one, I was thoroughly offended by, and two, wasn’t true. And three, like there was just no discussion beyond what was said, no one had the ability to challenge anything. And I felt like in my PWI experience, I was the challenging Black student, I was the only I was the only Speech and Hearing science major who was Black and female, black and female, ooh, double, like double whammy, and my entire class. A Clinician’s Biases and Assumptions And so a lot of things that were said to me, I would challenge them. Like I had one professor, very esteemed in our field, who said that Jamaicans and Jamaican natives do not speak English, and that, like threw me all the way back. And I said, well, if they don’t speak English, what do they speak? And she said, Well, they speak Patois. And I was like, okay, but like, if you were handing out, you know, like a survey to like all Jamaica, and you said, circle all the languages that you speak, they would circle English, because Patois is based off English, and they were colonized by Britain. And then they would say, and I also speak Patois. And so that became a whole conversation of contention. And I was like, labeled as the difficult student in that class. And I had that experience throughout my PWI journey. And it’s alarming to me that someone, you know, who holds such an advanced degree… if that person can make that statement, I can only imagine what’s happening everywhere else in the field. So I think it’s like, one, these conversations aren’t had, but two, these are just these people’s biases like these are these clinicians’ biases and assumptions and throw in a little hint of racism in there, and you got a good ol’ pot. So yep, yeah. It’s a lot of things look at a lot. Ayelet: A lot of things. And we will also be sure to link to a ton of great resources [see above], because we brought up some pretty important discussion topic. And if you are someone who’s listening and would like some more resources on this topic, we’ll be linking to things like that in the show notes. So Joanne and I will have a conversation about what those might be. Obviously, this topic is ingrained into all of the other things that we’re supposed to “supposed to,” quote unquote, supposed to talk about today. But I want to, you know, revert back and ask you about your own therapeutic approach, because you mentioned about how, number one, you worked in a private practice, you wanted a little bit more flexibility, you wanted more control over your own life and lifestyle. So I want to hear a little bit about specifically your therapeutic approach and how that has shifted, if has shifted from when you worked in a private practice to working more in early intervention for yourself in your own practice. Shifting into Private Practice as a Clinician: Toy-Heavy Therapy to Bagless Therapy i…

Full show notes at the publisher

**Why Pausing Works: An Early Communication Tool** Feb 28, 2022
Show notes

**What’s in a pause? Take a moment to think about it. (#punintended)**

It’s the simple little tricks we love the most – pausing is such a simple strategy to use with young children, and works for many different reasons. Join Ayelet in this episode of *Learn With Less* as she discusses the power of the pause.

Within this podcast episode, we model ways to play, talk, sing, and move in order to support learning and development, using the things you already have laying around your home.

To learn more about these four pillars of the Learn With Less® curriculum, you can download my free infant/toddler development blueprint.

*Below is the transcript of this week’s “Developmental Thought,” an excerpt from the full episode.*

*For additional information, music, play ideas and the complete interactive family experience, please listen to the entire episode.*

**Related Links to This Episode to Support Early Development**

**How to create your own “Lift The Flap” Book to support language development**, using items you already have in your home – our corresponding blog post.

**Download our free Infant/Toddler Development Blueprint**, outlining major areas of learning and development in the first three years of life, and how you can support them using our four pillars of play, talk, sing, & move

**How Routines & Rituals Support Infant & Toddler Development**, a Learn With Less® podcast episode

**Learn With Less® Bundle:** get our favorite infant and toddler development resources (save 70%)! Discover how to support & connect with your tiny human, without having to buy a single toy. Includes our bestselling books, our family music album, a full Learn With Less® “caregiver & me” class, and a caregiver handout outlining everything we covered so you can do it again and again at home!

**Learn With Less® Expand Your Impact Workshop Bundle:** If you’re an **educator or therapist type** who’s interested in providing family enrichment services to families in your community, but you’re not sure where to start, grab our bundle of 4 value-packed workshops & discover how you can serve your community & support yourself, using your existing skills.

**Learn With Less® Facilitator Training & Certification Program:** Use your existing skills as an educator or therapist to serve families holistically with a high quality program that will provide lasting impact! Apply now to become a licensed facilitator Learn With Less®.

**Learn With Less® “Caregiver & Me” Classes:** the magic of Learn With Less® lies in the communal aspect of coming together with our resources, in community with other families. Join us for a virtual or in-person class led by a licensed facilitator near you!

**Connect With Us: Instagram / Facebook**

**Pause For A Powerful Tool**

Today, I want to talk about why pausing with your young child is one of my single most powerful tools in parenting and in my role as a pediatric speech-language pathologist. There are many reasons why pausing during any conversation can be useful… first, we pause to highlight grammatical structures – to mark the end of a sentence, or a shift to a new idea.

We pause for social reasons – to build anticipation, to clarify that we have expectations, to simply gather our thoughts, or to emphasize a point we’re trying to make. Pausing is also a useful strategy for us as parents and caregivers to allow our young children to process what we’ve said.

We know that infants and toddlers are often processing multiple pieces of information (what they hear, what they see, what they’re touching, the way their bodies feel in motion) simultaneously – it’s no wonder that it often takes our little ones more time to attend to what we’ve said or asked of them.

*Want to support families in community, helping them feel confident they can support their tiny humans?*

**Communication Strategy**

And finally, using a pause as a strategy to entice your little one to communicate can be very useful. Think about phrases that you use all the time – we all use them – those you just automatically know the way to finish them. For grown-ups, these are often successful advertising slogans like, *“Just do ___”,* or familiar idioms “*When it rains, it ___.”* These are unmistakably obvious to most of us socialized in the Western World, because we’ve heard them over and over again – they’re simply phrases that our brains automatically fill in.

Our brains automatically do this when we’re listening to familiar songs, as well – either with the melody and rhythm or with the words. For our children, these are the phrases we use day in, day out. When we pause expectantly before saying part of the phrase, we’re using a particular strategy – and the technical term for this is called using a “cloze procedure.” You may already be doing this without thinking about it, either in daily caregiving routines like washing, dressing, etc., or in musical activities when singing familiar songs or nursery rhymes.

For little ones who are just learning to use gestures, such as pointing, or even touching, using images to communicate thoughts and words is a wonderful first step towards verbal language. As we know, in the progression towards verbal language, we see babbling and gesture *before* actual words. Honor that gestural communication – when we model language and acknowledge that our children are communicating, we give them incentive to continue in their journey to express themselves.

With children who are non-speaking, using a set of specific images to represent ideas, actions, objects, descriptive words, social words, or people, is a form of symbolic language, known as augmentative and alternative communication.

**Social Routines**

Modeling both gesture and words simultaneously is a wonderful way to enhance your little one’s learning, and creates a multi-sensory experience involving visual, auditory and movement elements in your interactive play.

Our four-pillar framework of *play, talk, sing* and *move* here at Learn With Less® is also a wonderful way to think about how to incorporate developmentally enriching elements into our daily lives. You can learn more about that by downloading my free infant/toddler development blueprint, over at learnwithless.com/blueprint.

Now, there are lots of ways to incorporate pausing and the cloze procedure strategy in our lives with our little ones. Think of all the things you already say each day or each time you complete a caregiving routine. We’ve spoken in the past, in my episode *Routines and Rituals* about the idea that caregiving routines are not only opportunities for repetition, allowing your child to anticipate what’s coming next, but they are also opportunities to introduce the idea of ritual to an infant or toddler.

Even if this is simply something you say each time in a silly voice, or a song you sing on your way to the bathtub, or a favorite book or poem… these moments become special bonding and interaction time, as well as predictable opportunities that offer comfort and security. I encourage you to take an inventory of the types of rituals you might already be doing (sometimes you have to ask a caregiving partner or really pay attention to these moments, as you may be largely unaware that you’re even doing them!) and think about other simple little ways to add little phrases to your daily care routines.

For instance, when you sit down to set up meal-time, you might say, “*Ok, what do we need? A bib and a plate*!” If you start saying this at every meal-time, your little one may surprise you by pointing to the objects they see in their vicinity *before* you even say your phrase, or may respond when you pause – “*What do we need? A bib and a ___*” by gesturing, vocalizing, or verbalizing. Whatever they do, you can say, “*That’s right! A plate*!” making sure to provide a verbal model or reinforce the adult pronunciation, and validating their response, at whatever level they were able to give it to you.

*Use the Learn With Less® infant and toddler curriculum in a “caregiver + baby” class setting in your community to build family capacity.*

**Pausing in Books**

Book-reading activities are also wonderful opportunities to utilize a pause. I’m particularly in favor of using books with repetitive phrases (I have a whole collection of them on a Pinterest board, as these naturally lend themselves to use of the cloze procedure, if we leave out the final word or other familiar words in the repetitive line, pausing to wait for either a gesture or sign, or the word, before stating or modeling it ourselves.

**Ritual, Play and Pausing**

I might simply use the same phrase when I get into the car and put on my little one’s seat belt (something like, “arm in, arm in, ____ click!”), or when we are heading down the slide (counting “one, two, ___ three!” or “ready, set, ___ go!”)… and here’s another reason why talking to our little ones is so important – even from infancy!

Everything we say becomes part of their world, whether we’re just bathing them in language, or whether we’re using particular ritual-like language to help them identify patterns and transitions. When we shift the focus slightly and use strategies like pausing, we’re not only giving them opportunities to respond, but also giving them something different to attend to, or to anticipate.

This is part of language play. And you know I *always* encourage you to play with your little one. Please see below for a link to my YouTube video, which I reference in this week’s episode, and model one of the songs/rhymes we sang. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Learn With Less YouTube channel!

The post Why Pausing Works: An Early Communication Tool appeared first on Learn With Less.

How This Bilingual Parent Supports Bilingualism in Early Childhood, with Diandra Morse, LCSW Feb 02, 2022

Show notes

How do you support a bilingual child? How can you support bilingualism from day one? On this episode of the Learn With Less® podcast, we sat down with Diandra Morse, of Bilingual Playdate and Daring Hearts Counseling. Diandra is a licensed clinical social worker in New York State and a mother of two bilingual children. She supports families exploring bilingual parenting, and shares activities, resources, fun ideas, and methods for raising a bilingual child. We discussed: Diandra’s professional and personal background that brought her to the work she’s doing todayThe values Diandra feels she is instilling when she thinks about why she’s raising her children to be bilingualWhat parts of Diandra’s identity are important for her to share with her children through languageHow Diandra’s work as a social worker plays a role in her ability to be culturally responsive in supporting families in multiple ways (both in Spanish and English)What’s working well in Diandra’s own journey of raising bilingual children, and what parts are more challengingA few of Diandra’s favorite resources for families hoping to share bilingualism or multilingualism with their families Helpful Resources to Acknowledge For This Episode: Rebeca Imberg of BiliKids Kayla Diaz of Bilinguitos Klaudia Johnson of Laleo Therapy Diandra Morse of Bilingual Playdate Mikaela Martinez of Raising Little Goose Learn With Less® Bundle: get our favorite infant and toddler development resources (and save 70%)! Discover how to support and connect with your tiny human, without having to buy a single toy. Learn With Less® Caregiver & Me Classes in both Spanish and English – a developmentally based family enrichment curriculum for caregiver and infant/toddler learning. Classes available both virtually and in-person. Learn With Less® Stories: Testimonials from educators who’ve provided the Learn With Less® infant/toddler family enrichment curriculum and families who’ve experienced our programming. Connect With Us: Diandra Instagram Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest Text Transcript for This Episode Ayelet: Today I have the pleasure of sitting down with Diandra Morse. Diandra is a licensed clinical social worker in New York State. Her clinical background includes experiences in school advocacy, sexual abuse prevention, healthy relationship building, and supporting bilingual families in Spanish. She is the face behind Bilingual Playdate, which is currently a social media page dedicated to celebrate and encourage bilingualism advocate on behalf of parents for better resources, explore bilingual parenting mental health, and provide intentional target language play ideas that can be easily implemented at home. Bilingual Playdate was born in May 2020 when Diandra was 22 weeks pregnant with a 15 month old toddler at home, and playing was how she and her little ones passed their days. She was reminded quickly that play has always been at the core of her therapeutic work with young children the best way to engage and teach children anything. Playing has been the venue to further develop the language goals of her bilingual home Indian does bilingual home they follow the strategy known as “minority language at home” or MLAH, using Spanish as the primary language in the home. Diandra describes raising bilingual children as an eye-opening experience, even though she herself grew up bilingual so through her work, creating Bilingual Playdate, she’s found it helpful to connect with other families who are in the similar trenches. And she has found it incredibly special to see her love for play bilingual parenting and her professional experiences in mental health combined. So Diandra, thank you so much for joining us here at Learn With Less®. That was a wonderful, you know, bio that you supplied me, but I just want to say number one, welcome. And number two, it’s nice to have that more formal bio reading, but I would love it if you could just, in your own words, tell us about your background, and just really how you got into doing this work that you’re doing today. Being Raised in a Bilingual Environment Diandra: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me here. So I grew up in the Dominican Republic. I was born in New York, but my parents, after I was 27 days old, moved us to the Dominican Republic, their home country. Both of my parents are Dominican, and I grew up for the majority of my life in the Dominican Republic. I went to school there, my school was bilingual. And so I was able to learn all day, my classes were not… it wasn’t like half the day in Spanish half today in English, it was more like every other class was in Spanish or every other class was in English. So it was a really interesting dynamic where me and my classmates were constantly switching back and forth in the languages, which was a really cool experience. And then when I was home, my parents do not speak English, and so we spoke in Spanish. And then in the community, it was whatever, you know, whatever language we wanted, whether Spanish or English, depending on who we’re speaking to, and what they were doing. But I really, I was truly raised just switching back and forth between the languages, which I really appreciated. And so I was in the Dominican Republic until I was 16 years old. And then we decided to move to the States. So we moved to New York City so that me and my siblings could finish off our high school careers in the States. We wanted to go to college here. And so I was then I guess, for the second time in my life immersed in one language only because my high school was only in English and New York City. I did interact with a lot of other kids who, like me, were bilingual. That was really neat to see how even in that environment, many of us were still managing and navigating both languages. Following high school, I ended up in upstate New York, attending a college in Buffalo, New York, Hilbrook college is very small, so not a lot of people know it. But I found myself loving everything related to working with people. And I ended up getting a Bachelors of Science degree in Human Services, which then led me to going after graduate school. I went to Fordham University and got a Masters of Social Work degree from Fordham in social work that focused on community problem solving, which was something that I really felt passionate about, I love finding a challenge and finding a solution or, you know, kind of thinking about creatively, how can we figure a problem that someone is experiencing or a community is experiencing and what can we do about it? And so a lot of my work was around that. And so my first job after graduate school was actually working for an agency in New York City that’s called Advocates for Children in New York, and there was an immigrant students rights project that I was able to be the parent advocate. I advocated on behalf of parents who had English language learners in the school system, which was very interesting to me because I had a parent at home, both parents at home, didn’t speak English. And so for me, I was my advocate. I was the one that was doing all the advocacy in school, so it was very cool to be able to do what I wish my parents had when I was navigating high school and then college, like financial aid, like all that information that you just don’t know, if you didn’t go to school here, like that wasn’t a thing in Dominican Republic. Ayelet: Right – well, and which requires a whole other set of vocabulary, even that you’re somewhat familiar with the dominant language, trying to master a whole other set of not only navigating the language system, but all the other systems related to… the educational system, for instance, yeah. Diandra: It was very, very, very rewarding to be able to do that. I felt like I was able to give back something so special that I wish had been something that someone had given our family. But so that was beautiful work. I love doing that I learned so much about the school system. So much about bilingualism, how students are supported or not supported in the school system, how parents are supported or not supported in the school system, and kind of noticed a lot of the gaps. So my time there was very, very, very educational. And I appreciated that that was my first experience right after graduate school as a first time social worker. So then I ended up moving, actually, to upstate New York, because I met my husband in college. So he’s my college sweetheart. And we ended up moving to upstate New York to his hometown. And this is where I live now. And I ended up getting into sexual abuse trauma. And so I started working as a social worker for a not for profit here. And during my time there, that’s really when I was able to really get into not only trauma work, but also Play work, because the population that I was now working with wasn’t able to do one on one therapy in the way that you see in a movie where like someone comes in and they sit down, and they have a conversation with you. It was more three year olds and four year olds and five year olds, that I was having to engage in conversations regarding trauma, boundaries, safety, you know, what does it mean if someone’s being unsafe? How do you ask for help? Like, these concepts, that sure we talk about it with our kids, but are really, really hard for a young child to then be able to really put into practice. And so, I was able to kind of learn how to do that, how to navigate that, and what is the vocabulary of small children, because I wasn’t as familiar with that. And so it was very interesting to be able to have the advocacy lens that I had already. I feel like this is the kind of stuff that a child needs to be able to have a positive, productive life. And how do I then adopt that to communicate that to that child so that that child can advocate for themselves. So I did that for six years, and really, really, really loved it. And I was able to even work with some Spanish speaking families that did come through our program, not many, I wish more, I wish I was able to interact with more. But it was very helpful for me because I also, when I was working with the Spanish speaking families, was able to start learning how to then I talk about this English vocabulary to this family where their culture, this might be so taboo, and we can’t talk about that. How do we even navigate that cultural barrier, so that it can be a positive experience. So I created resources while I was there, that were able to help those family members navigate those conversations with their child. And so that was very, very, very cool. Then I started thinking, well, I want to work with maybe the potential parents of children in this same line of work. Like I really enjoy talking about healthy boundaries, healthy relationships, the world needs more of that. So I ended up finding myself as a violence prevention educator in a college setting. And that was also very fun. Being able to talk to college students about their understanding of what a healthy relationship is, how to set boundaries, what is consent, how do we ask for consent, it felt very rewarding to be able to do that kind of work, because who talks about healthy relationships when you’re young? That’s not a typical, I guess, not normal, normal to me, but not a typical conversation that we’re often engaged in. And so I found myself doing that in a college setting, but still kind of missing…. So that was more educational, so I was missing that mental health piece where I was able to do one on one therapy. So I opened up my own private practice here in upstate New York. It’s called Daring Hearts Counseling. So I was doing kind of both. And at the same time, I was a mom. I was a mom of a six month old boy. And so it was a very busy time and very, very fun to be able to do all the things that I love – being a mom, educating the future generation of adults about healthy relationships and then also being able to tap into that mental health piece that will always be a part of me, but it was starting to feel a little bit more busy than I guess I wanted it to be when I started considering my own child, and my own bilingual parenting goals for him. And so that was where I started being like, wait, I am at working, and I’m doing work that I love. But, my child is being cared for by family we love and caregivers we love, but they’re speaking to him predominantly in English. And if I want him to have any sort of Spanish fluency, he needs to hear Spanish from somewhere. But… that’s just how language works! It’s input and output, like if he doesn’t listen, not going to speak. And I was finding that the hours of the day that I was at home, were starting to feel not enough for me. And so I had to kind of come to a decision that we can like all the things in the world, we can love doing all the things in the world, but maybe we can’t do them all at the same time. And so I decided… Ayelet: Ah, the eternal struggle of early parenthood. Diandra: I wish you could clone, I don’t know, I wish there was a way that you could do all the things that you love, and all the things that you’re interested in, but there’s just no way. And so I had to think about that really, really, really big part of me that I really wanted to pass down and all the things that make me, “me” to my child. And I took a step back from doing the violence prevention education at the college setting and ended up just doing my private practice part time and being able to come home at somewhat what felt like the perfect timing, because I found out I was actually pregnant. And the pandemic that we’re all living through right now, started. And so I guess it was a perfect time for me to be home. That’s kind of how I then found myself at home with my child who was 15 months at that time, and I was 22 weeks pregnant. And I found myself just constantly playing, trying to provide him with as much Spanish vocabulary in a creative way. Because yes, we can have conversations with our kids. But there’s just some vocabulary that they’re never going to hear unless we’re playing with them or we’re doing something specific because no one’s talking about scooping. And you know, there’s just words that you don’t use on a regular basis when you’re interacting with your kids. So to me, play, was the way to maximize that Spanish input that I wanted to provide him that he wasn’t getting previously. Yeah. And so that’s how Bilingual Playdate was born. I wanted to share my play ideas. And I also wanted to find community because the world was on lockdown. So the only community to be found was really online. And in our community, there aren’t many Spanish speaking families. So it wasn’t like, Oh, if there wasn’t a pandemic, then I would be able to have access to this community – I wouldn’t have. So it really was kind of like my safe space, our safe haven that we tapped into when the day started feeling like you know, Groundhog Day where everything’s kind of the same. Bilingualism and Play Development Ayelet: Yes. Diandra, there’s so much there to talk about. And there’s a couple of directions that we could go in right now. But one thing I just want to emphasize is this idea that it all comes back to play, right? And not only is play the framework and the avenue that you used in your work with families and children who’d experienced trauma, for instance, and what you were talking about earlier about how working with families who hold different value systems, for whom maybe certain discussion topics or ways of talking about certain, like you said, taboo subjects… that play was often the way in which you were able to make your point and communicate. And I would actually just love to hear – we didn’t talk about talking about this, but I would love to hear (if you’re comfortable sharing) a little bit more about what that looked like, and how it also just relates to the work that you do now, because you are working, I mean,…

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