Learn With Less

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:

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

Joanne: Website / Facebook / Instagram

Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest

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 Less® program is I have come to this realization that whether we’re in the clinic, or whether we’re going in the homes, we are spending one or maybe 30 minutes, like one hour, maybe 30 minutes, or maybe sometimes two hours, right? If the kid needs more support, we’re spending like one to two hours that might be very generous, but one to two hours a week with the child, whereas the child is spending 80 or more hours in the week with their family.

And we already know that parents are you know, their child’s first teachers so why wouldn’t we equip that person to be able to carry over and to be able to so many opportunities to do what we’re, what we’re doing the natural opportunities versus… you went to clinic for 30 minutes and then you’re out the door and then the parents kind of feel like they’re leaving with nothing, or they feel like they have to get Potatohead just because you have it, or they have to get this toy just because you have it, but it’s not necessarily about those objects. It’s about ways to implement some of those strategies to use during routines. So I love that link.

Yeah, Yeah, I was gonna ask you what is one of the biggest misconceptions about toyless learning? Kind of what, what freaks people out? What do families, and even providers not understand about toyless learning?

Ayelet: Well, first of all, I think it’s funny because I get a lot of like, oh, do I… Like do I, from professionals, people are like, Oh, can I join this program, can I be a Learn With Less® facilitator if I use toys or if I like, like preparing the environment? It’s like, yes of course! I’m not anti toy, right? Yeah, this program is not being about anti toy, the whole thing, right?

We just deeply resent the baby industry’s notion that there is such a thing as an educational toy, right? Like, did you know that anybody can put those words on a box! I could, and probably should, packge a spatula, and write, “educational toy for toddlers” on it. I mean, it’s ridiculous. So, and also, I have plenty of toys for my kids. But I also have a deep pride in the fact that my five year old still won’t let me throw away an empty box without playing with it, and the salad spinner is his, and when he was three, and we went to a garage sale, I started scrounging through the kitchen items, and his eyes lit up and he screamed, “TOYS!”

Yes, marketing at its finest. And yeah, we’ve had to make that disclaimer so often, it’s not about being anti toy. And it’s totally about, you know, I think the point is, the big misconception about toys is that they’re for kids. Really, toys are for the adults. Kids are going to make anything into a toy. And they’re going to use objects imitatively, often, or we can encourage that more, right, by letting them play with objects, right. And these are fun things, right.

So it’s really, it’s more about helping the adults in the room see that there’s so much creativity there, if we allow it. And if we can create space for it. One thing that is very interesting is that I always tried to also, of course, integrate any toys or objects that a family has, or that parents come to learn with us class with. Like, we often will say, like, especially if it’s a virtual class, like you know, have next to, you know, something with print on it, something that’s soft and maybe like a pillow that’s fluffy or whatever, like those kinds of things, but they’re always things that they have with them and they can access.

And so it’s all about creating that shift and showing families that anything can be a play object and also in the way that we use it, it can support development, whether it’s an envelope with pictures in it, whether it’s a greeting card, whether it, you know, a shiny empty box, this is a new favorite of mine – look at that, look at all the fine motor skills, the drumming, you can use it as reverberation, mouthing and you know, “shiny!” so much vocabulary in this ridiculous, once nut container!

Joanne: Plenty of things just lying around the house and we aren’t thinking of it as toys. And I also just think from like a financial standpoint, also, how some families don’t have access to… toys are marketed… Toy makers and marketers of toys, they are brilliant people! They almost like generate a guilt families to provide these items for their children, where it might not be accessible, accessible to the family. So when you can grab the nut container, right, which does the same thing as this other actual toy, the family feels they can provide that interaction for their child, without it also generating guilt.

Ayelet: It’s all about the guilt. Yeah, I brought a few fun things to share with y’all. But yeah, it’s all about the guilt. So when we can show a family that actually, the developmental value of this object is exactly the same. Or we can look at that toy subscription box that shares this, like I said earlier, like the beautiful wooden box with the gorgeous pieces of fabric it’s like it’s called a tissue box, tissue paper, a mask, a handkerchief, toilet paper, come on people! I like to… I have this phrase, which I like to say which is the emperor has no choice, right? Like, hello!

Joanne: Yeah, yeah, no, but it’s true. Yeah, I wanted to ask you what the biggest challenge have been either for yourself or some of your facilitators or for families, about toyless learning.

Ayelet: Yeah, well, I will. And maybe like – Wordy Child is here, Ronesha, and she’s a Learn With Less® facilitator. I know we have a couple of people actually in there who are there. So feel free to chime in also because we want to hear from you because you can speak better to your own experience. But for me, I will say for me as things, as time has gone on, I will say that I am challenged not to see everyday objects as toys. And I tend to drive my partner a little wild because he’s constantly throwing away my treasures. I’ve created these little monsters who get very upset about him throwing out their things, right.

I guess part of it is like knowing when to call it quits with a cardboard box. Though like the same thing is true for actual toys, when all they want is that thing that they find in the box that’s going to Goodwill that they haven’t seen or played with for a year. But I think really, it’s just that shift. I mean, I think it’s a huge shift for people to see it in action of like, what can we do with hair rollers, right? Oh, my goodness, what an amazing, like, at first, you know, you see these things and you’re like, uh, okay, well, everybody starts with ok, well, they’re blue. Right? Okay, well, let’s What else can we talk about? They fit on our fingers, their finger puppets? Oh my god.

Joanne: Brilliant.

Ayelet: Look at that, right? We count them if we really want to, but we can do all kinds of things. So really starting to, they have kind of this nice sound.

Joanne: Yeah, right.

Ayelet: I mean, there’s so much we can talk about like, this is an SLP’s dream, right? But really, starting to shift. And oh, so I’ll say that it’s really giving people a framework for how to think about what it means to support a child’s development is really the key. So the challenge, I think, is not having a place to start from as far as the thinking goes. So what we’ve done at Learn With Less® is we have our four pillars that we integrate into every class, and that we talked about in all of our work, which is, they’re play, talk, sing, and move. So what could you do with this object? Or how can we organize activities around this kind of thing, or this kind of developmental concept to share, so that we can we can think about it right? So like, I mean, we can practice this right now, if we want.

I’ll ask everybody who’s here. How can we play? How can we use these little they’re like silicone baking cupcake things? How can we use these in play? How could we add more language to it? Or vocabulary? How could we add more music for sing, or rhythm or whatever? Like, POP! How could we add more movement? Right, sorry, what was that? I was gonna say, I didn’t even think about popping them. Yeah! That’s what my fingers want to do. But there’s so much there.

And when we add those, when we think about it through a lens, right, then we are given the tools to be like, oh, right, right, if I add that, and I’ll share that, like one of my, one of our facilitators recently had a, she shared a sort of realization and in our group, about like, “pre-Learn With Less® certification,” she’s like, Oh, well, this child like she’s very quickly wants to change activities has a short attention span. Maybe she’s bored. So we’ll change the materials… Post-Learn With Less® certification, she’s like, well, maybe she needs to move, how can we add more movement? Blah, blah, blah, right?

Just giving people a framework can be a big mindset shift to address that, that challenge. And then of course, for families, seeing it in action, seeing how, let’s sing about these objects, let’s make up the words to it. Let’s do that thing, even if I don’t feel confident singing, in general, and would never do that, how can we add some rhythm to it? How can we, like those kinds of things, that’s what like, makes a huge difference for families. And they see that it doesn’t have to be so complicated. It’s all about keeping it simple, right? And literally, if they say something, you can just add that exact word or set of words into a song, right? And that’s it. So a lot of times we find that our Learn With Less® facilitators tend to move in the direction of more bagless therapy and parent coaching models in their therapy practice, in addition to leading more community based groups or classes, as well.

Joanne: Yeah, yeah. And I find that the consultative model of therapy is just so foreign, compared to a direct clinical, because we’ve got to give the parents the strategy so that they can use it in the home. And I love the fact that the Learn With Less® program teaches us a way like so important. Especially coming from like a clinical model. Like we think about, alright, we have these toys we know what to do. Whereas when we don’t have a blueprint of what to do with something, we get creative really quickly.

Ayelet: Yeah. We get stuck very easily. Yeah.

Joanne: Exactly. I wanted to ask you what, I know, when people create something, it’s usually because there was a problem, right, and then seek to, to find the solution to that problem. So what problem is Learn With Less® a solution for?

Ayelet: Yeah, great question. I love this. Yeah. So really, for families, we help, really what we do in the end of the day, is we help families, new families feel confident that they can support and connect with their babies and toddlers, without having to buy a single toy. Because we know that parenthood is amazing, miraculous time, yada, yada, yada, right? It’s what we see here on social media all the time. And it’s also incredibly hard, and it’s ok for it to be both! It’s all about the but/and, right? I mean it’s creating that space.

So really, helping families see that they already have the resources to give their little ones the “right” stimulation, play, and interaction to thrive, and that you can do it with the materials you already have, no extra time or energy required. That’s a big key of it, right? And that there are ways to get gentle support so that you don’t want to pull your hair out, and to get that reassurance that you’re doing a really good job, and insight into how others are playing with their little ones. Like that’s huge! That’s, that’s a big part of it.

So I can share a quote from a mom who participated in a Learn With Less® class who said, and I think this is the key, right? Like, she’s like, I just don’t have the internal resources in me. She said I, of course, I have a desire to connect. But I don’t have it in me to do anything extra. This is a working mom, right? So this helps, it’s helpful, because it’s literally showing you what you’re already doing, or how to maximize that opportunity, or how to think about what you’re doing in a different way, and maybe alter it a bit so that it’s more enriching, instead of having to do a completely new separate thing to create a whole activity for your child, for instance.

Joanne: Yeah. And also, I know that we kind of like briefly touched on it yesterday, but Mecca, at @meccatheslp [on instagram], she had made a really good point, too, that a lot of the times parents feel like they have to carry out this activity, and it has to be an activity, and it has to be targeting something developmental. But really, it can just be that you’re connecting with your child. And connecting with your child, like, that is the biggest goal, is connecting with your child. And in connecting with your child, you also are doing strategies that are targeting development. So it doesn’t, you don’t have to sit here and do XY and Z to target this. But it can just be that I want to connect with my child. And I get the added benefit of, you know, like targeting some different milestones as well.

Ayelet: Yes, exactly. So really, like the problem that we solve at Learn With Less®, for families, is we help to build family capacity. And community.

Joanne: Yeah. And community.

Ayelet: And thinking, on the other side, because for facilitators, for these educators and therapist-types that we serve with our program, and so that they can then turn around and share the program with others. It’s really a big piece of it is creating lasting impact on your own life, right, that reflexive impact, as far as how it can help you support yourself, diversify your own income streams, improve or alter your own therapy practice potentially or like, again, we also have a lot of early childhood educators in the program, and other kinds of developmental therapists, and social workers, and those kinds of people – all kinds of people! It can really helped to shift gears and also create a huge impact, social impact on families in their communities, human impact in the general community of like, what does that do, to create more connected families in your community? What problem does that solve?

Man, that’s, that’s pretty amazing when we can create a more connected set of families and more confident caregivers and more connections between caregivers in your community. I don’t know about where you are in Jersey, Joanne, but like it is… So for me, the US is so fractionalized, or it’s very hard for new parents to, to find other people who they want to be in community with, and who are at a place that’s like creating a space that is built for anybody to join.

It’s very hard and early parenthood can be a very divisive time for families as well. Right? Like, Well, I’m a breastfeeding mom and I’m a co-sleeper and I’m a cry-it-out mom or you know, whatever, like parent, caregiver. And it’s very, it can be very difficult to navigate and it can be very ugly. So creating a space that is specifically especially during the pandemic and doing that virtually is freaking amazing. And there’s I will say, there has always been a need, like I said, I’ve been leading virtual classes since 2017. And that’s… there’s always been a need, there always will be a need. But my goodness, did the pandemic clarify that need to be even bigger and rip it wide open, like it has done with so many pieces of our society.

People need connection. And it is quite amazing that you can create that in a virtual space. And it’s about setting the stage, it’s about creating a space, you know, creating that in your marketing, in your – in your whole message. And that’s what we’ve done in my own brand, and to share it with other facilitators as well. And that that’s very powerful. And, of course, that not having to reinvent the wheel piece is huge!

Joanne: Exactly. And Claire brings up such a good point. And I had just written down “pandemic” in my notes just now while you were talking. Not only is it a benefit to parents, because they get feel like they’re part of a community without having to step outside of their house, which is pretty darn hard there are restrictions on everything, restrictions on being in groups, how big the group can be, etcetera, etcetera. And we’re like, in the middle of a very big wave. But they still get to feel like they’re part of a community, they can do it virtually and be safe.

But also from the provider standpoint, we aren’t going out to houses where you have to worry about toys, and then you have to worry about what is their chance of transmission, that it’s you know, it’s based on the fact that you can be effective in the work that you’re meant to do, and the need to do parent education. But you can do it virtually! That’s really helpful. And just, for people who are going into the homes, inside the homes and for providers who are doing EI, they’re still going into the homes, it just teaches them because we’re not supposed to be bringing toys anyway. Right.

Especially with the pandemic, we’re definitely not supposed to be bringing in our toy bags. So it just teaches them a new way of thinking about how they’re going to do their therapy. And it forces them to involve the parents a little bit more. Because it’s like, we’re going to switch gears, we’re going to play with what you have. And that doesn’t have to be a toy, which… it makes parents feel really good. A lot of times when I walk into homes for the first time, parents are expecting me to be walking up with like a huge, backpack full of things. And I’m just walking in with my coat and my cell phone. I’m like, Hey, I’m here. I’m ready to play.

Ayelet: Yeah! And by the way, everybody go check out Mecca’s… was it a reel? I think she made she was like, you don’t think I’m gonna bring toys? Yeah.

Joanne: Yeah, exactly, everybody, definitely check out meccatheslp’s post from yesterday, that was really awesome. But yeah, families think we’re gonna come in with, you know, a whole bunch of toys. And it’s like, we’re coming in, just ourselves. We’re gonna empower you to be with your child. But also a lot of parents feel guilty because they don’t have anything. And we’re not bringing anything. But they feel like they have to have more… If they’re like, we don’t have much. And it’s like, okay, but what do you have? What can we… also, oh, you’re gonna go make a sandwich? Or some some parents have time poverty, right? In addition to, you know, like poverty in terms of finances, they have time poverty, there might be multiple children in the house that they need to attend to during that time where, you know, you’re sitting down, and they’re expected to sit down and play.

They could be making sandwiches for like, you know, their other child who it’s lunchtime for, and neither, like the two of them don’t have to be separate, right, we can still go into the kitchen, we can still make that sandwich, we can still target so many skills. While you’re getting what you need to get to do done it’s part of a routine and you can focus on learning, obviously.

Ayelet: Absolutely. Another thing that I love to do, especially in our like virtual classes, when if there is a sibling, like an older sibling who’s, I don’t know four or five, and you have a parent with, or a caregiver with an infant or young toddler… Getting that sibling involved and modeling for – showing the caregiver how to get the sibling involved, and how to model language, or model, you know, developmental concepts for the younger child, is so valuable and so powerful for that caregiver to see – like, oh, yeah, gosh, this is great, because all we need is a colander and a spoon and look, everybody’s going to be involved. Because, you know, my bigger kid is going to be showing the little one what they might do, and then providing the language, and all that, you know, just it’s this continued approach. And it just, it’s great.

Joanne: Yeah, it’s great. I hope that everybody was able to get a lot of information about what the Learn With Less® program looks like. And this was just a sneak peek. We’re giving people an idea of what to expect because the retreat is on Saturday! Yeah. So what should we expect from the Expand Your Impact retreat?

Ayelet: So really, the whole point of this day is to bring people together, share ways and get ideas and sort of vision, ways to you know serve your community, support yourself, using your existing skills. So whether you are an early childhood educator, a speech pathologist, an occupational therapist, physical therapist, somebody with a sort of a background in early child development-related stuff – SLPA! If you have an interest in, you’re in a helping profession, yeah.

And if you have an interest in building other ways to guide and support families, and really facilitating that connection between caregiver and child, finding new ways to do that. And so we have four workshops that we’re going to be hosting. One is all about new ways to serve new families. So really thinking outside of the box about service delivery. We’ll be helping you to sort of refine your own inspired goal or vision. And then consider the role of like community and connection. Discover the importance of being able to identify that smallest next step to help you actually move forward into that goal.

The second workshop we’ll be hosting is entitled Community Impact Begins With You, which is all about really how to become that person that your community needs. So really, considering what role community plays for you and for your ideal clients, defining the various ways that you want to create lasting impact. And then, of course, combating things like perfectionism and impostor syndrome, which tend to come up for people when they want to start or create something new that’s like outside of their box, right?

Then the third workshop will be about how to put magic in the mundane. So really sharing more about that four pillar framework that I shared about today a little bit, what that looks like, and why it works for both like parenting and supporting families, and also starting or creating something new, whether that’s a small business, or a side, hustle, or a whatever. And we’ll sort of outline all the ways that busy and tired families can still support their little ones via everyday tasks and everyday items, and you’ll get to experience our curriculum, surprise! That will be really fun.

The last one is about time hacking, because I know we are all busy professional, and how on earth do we fit even the time in to do those things and work towards those goals that we have, in terms of expanding the impact that we want to have on our communities. So really helping you envision and shift your sort of perspective, and reframe what’s possible for you, and sharing just simple, practical, and very powerful tools that can really keep you moving forward without feeling like you’re doing it wrong, or really not doing it at all.

And then the best part of this whole four workshops is that we have a ton of amazing speakers. They are early childhood providers, they are physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, all kinds of amazing, amazing people who are doing these kinds of things in their communities. And so they will be sharing their own experiences and their own takeaways. I don’t like saying the word “advice,” but their thoughts, really, their thoughts about, and just their experiences about how they came to do the work that they’re doing. I just think that’s so powerful to hear from people who are doing the things that you want to be doing.

So if you want to do things like serve families in your communities in different kinds of ways, with what you already know. And to provide parent education, and support that connection between caregiver and child. Learn to or discover how to believe that you can become a trusted authority in your area and finding that confidence to try or start something new. Whether you are a totally brand new baby business owner or a seasoned small business owner, or you don’t even consider yourself wanting to have a business, right? Yeah, trying something new. And then just discovering ways to serve families, where they’re at. And how to, I like the phrase “time hack,” your way towards making the impact that you want to have.

So it’s a one day live virtual retreat, you do get access with your ticket to a replay period, as well as an invitation to apply for our free bonus day the following day, should you want to learn more about you know, creating lasting impact using an evidence based on high quality program that can have families lining up and wanting to come back again and again. And then of course, a ton of Q&A opportunities within the day itself to really… our whole goal is to really make this very interactive and very fun and, and to really model the things that we, that our company values, uphold! Things like community and playfulness and education and inclusivity and simplicity. So you’re welcome to learn more about the retreat, and I know with a great affiliate link, which means that she gets a cut of anybody who signs up through that link, but it’s no cost to you. Yeah. And I just really appreciate your support.

Joanne: Yeah. So everyone can get their tickets and register. The thing that I do love about this retreat, which I think I told you, is that not only is it virtual, but it’s on a Saturday and I think lots of PD’s and retreats are usually in the middle of the week. And they’re usually like in the middle of your day, it’s kind of like hard to take the time off to be able to attend.

So the nice thing about this is it’s only one day, and it’s on a weekend, and it’s virtual, so you don’t even have to leave your house. It’s going to be a really awesome retreat. I’m really excited. I’m gonna be there. And I do have an affiliate link. So you guys can go ahead and register through there. And hopefully, we can see you guys there.

Ayelet: Yeah! Joanne, thank you so much for having me. This was fun. I love talking talking nerd talk about all this stuff.

Joanne: Yeah. And we’re SLPs, that’s what we do! Ayelet, thank you so much for joining me. I’m super excited about the retreat.

Ayelet: If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to DM me. I love chatting with y’all. So yeah, happy to chat.

Joanne: Thank you so much for joining, Ayelet. Bye, thanks for chatting!

Ayelet: Are you inspired to Learn With Less®? You can grab the Expand Your Impact workshop bundle by heading over to learnwithless.com/expand!

Or, if you’re ready to learn more about the Learn With Less® Facilitator Training & Certification Program, head over to learnwithless.com/certification now!

Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions. You can find me over at @learnwithless over on Instagram!

The post Maximizing Natural Learning Opportunities Without Toys, with Joanne Cazeau appeared first on Learn With Less.

As an educator or therapist, you recognize that empowering parents and caregivers is the key to supporting the families you serve. They’re the ones that are “doing it” everyday.

Maybe you work primarily with children, and you want to expand to serve the family more holistically.

Maybe you’re a therapist who believes in the parent coaching model and routines-based intervention. You’re curious to expand into serving families in a resource and support role.

The idea of serving families in a new way in a parent education or parent support role can be daunting! To make a whole curriculum, to teach parents language (and other) strategies, to work with the whole family unit, outside of a classroom or therapy setting.

You know this work is needed, and is an amazing expansion of your own skill set and knowledge. In my work both delivering caregiver/baby classes and training other professionals to create these programs in their own communities using the Learn With Less® Curriculum, I see 3 myths that tend to get people stuck, holding them back – often before they even get started.

Now, before I get into these 3 myths and why they’re just false assumptions, I want to encourage you to fill out the short application form over at learnwithless.com/certification right now. You’ll gain access to my private training, which will teach you all about the ways to create lasting impact leading “caregiver & me” classes with a high quality, evidence-based, plug & play program that will have families coming back again and again. When you do, I’ll review your application, then I’ll send you limited time access to this training! In addition, I’ll be gifting you free Caregiver/Baby Classes Roadmap, wherein you’ll discover all the pieces to help you become successful with a family enrichment program that every infant/toddler family can access.

I find that many people believe you have to have children of your own or be an “ideal caregiver” yourself to lead Caregiver/Baby Classes in your community…

First of all, I personally would pack up my baby and things, and leave the room if I walked into a group where the facilitator claimed to be the best parent ever or to know everything there is about early child development. Of course parents and caregivers want to be led in community by a facilitator who has knowledge, someone who has experience…

But let’s stop for a second and think. Do you like learning from a perfectionist? Especially in one of your most vulnerable states (i.e., early parenthood)??

When parents and care givers come together in a group setting like this to gain support, education, and ideas about how to help their child thrive… they’re often not looking for a rigid parenting philosophy. They’re looking for a place where they can feel heard. Where they can connect with each other, with their babies, with a community that understands what they’re going through.

So it doesn’t matter whether you have kids of your own, or whether you regularly fall short of being an ideal caregiver yourself.

What matters is: do you love being around kids? Do you interact well with kids? Do you love empowering and coaching parents? Because when it comes to wearing your teacher hat or therapist hat OR a family enrichment facilitator hat… what you’re doing matters… but it doesn’t matter as much as how the parent feels their child is doing. The goal is to help the parent or caregiver feel supported, empowered, and curious about discovering something new about themselves or their child.

What matters is whether you have empathy, whether you can learn to create community so that you can help parents and caregivers feel empowered to try new strategies or new ways of playing with their kids.

I find that many people considering leading parent education and support classes believe that you have to perform for the parents and caregivers or spend a lot of energy to get them to participate and engage with your classes.

Professionals with whom I’ve spoken often share with me that getting adults to participate can be difficult, or that they seem conditioned to approach the class as if you’re doing a service or performance for them.

Now, I have certainly seen this happen.

And I think a lot of it comes down to a few things. First, the primary objective is to lead with trust building. Parents are often confronted with divisive topics and opinions on every single topic, whether it’s how they choose to feed their babies, hold their babies, or put their babies to sleep… The primary objective when building community for parents and caregivers is to ensure that you are creating a place where everyone – regardless of the social identities they hold – can feel included and heard.

Now, that’s no small order.

That’s why I highly recommend that you ensure you are in a practice of understanding more about the systems that uphold certain social identities over others, and where you fall in terms of the identities you hold. I also recommend that you stop looking at these groups with a “therapy” or “teacher” hat on. You’re not leading them. You’re not telling them how to parent. You’re not telling them what to do. You are facilitating.

That means that you need to be modeling, you need to be sharing, you need to be asking them what they need, you need to be setting the tone. You don’t need to solve their problems. You don’t need to give them “one-size-fits-all” solutions.

I also think there is a lot here to do with the fact that often, when leading a group of parents and young children, the greatest challenge for you as the facilitator is actually meeting the needs of the group versus the needs of the curriculum. This is why ensuring that the content you share needs to be flexible. It needs to allow for and accommodate the needs of the group.

As a facilitator, you may not know how to address everyones’ questions. Please know: you don’t have to. The knowledge of other families in the room may be useful, and when you are the person in the room with access to more resources, there’s nothing wrong with saying, “let me look into that and share some information with you later.”

I hear from many, many professionals who believe they’ll have to spend lots of money and time on marketing, ads, logistics, etc. that may or may not work.

While this absolutely CAN be true, it doesn’t have to be.

When you have a plan, when you know how to address the challenges your families are sharing – within your marketing…

When you make time to create systems around logistics like finding spaces, communicating with your potential audience through things like email and social media, building relationships in your community, and build self-reflection measures into your entire process…

It all becomes much simpler.

When you know the value of your program, know what you’re presenting, have a plan for promotion, create partnerships with existing organizations and businesses in your community… you have a roadmap.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

You can create a system that works.

You can be intentional about where you put your energy. You can do more of what you enjoy – which, of course, is the actual service to families.

So if you want to discover how to show parents and caregivers what play is all about: helping them learn to let their infants and toddlers explore, experiment, fail, and persist.

If you want to find out how to get parents to try new things – even if they haven’t been willing in the past.

If you’re looking for ways to establish a relationship quickly and get buy in for your families.

If you want to logistically enroll for economic diversity in a fiscally responsible way – even if you’ve considered various avenues before.

If you want to discover new ways to offer your knowledge to young parents in your community – even if you don’t have a clear plan!

If you want to figure out what to present, how much to charge, how to promote, and how long to make your workshops…

Start by registering for my FREE on-demand training,

Then head over to learnwithless.com/certification and fill out the short application so I can share with you the private training helping you create that lasting impact on new families in your community.

Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

The post 3 Myths Holding You Back From Leading Caregiver/Baby Classes appeared first on Learn With Less.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.”

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® curriculum with families, diversifying their income streams, and creating social impact on families in their communities.

I invite you to apply now to the Learn With Less® Facilitator Training & Certification Program. When you do, I’ll be reviewing your application. If you’re a good fit, I’ll share with you my private training all about how to create lasting impact on families in your community, using a high quality, evidence-based, “plug & play” program that’ll have families coming back again and again.

In addition, I’ll be gifting you my “caregiver & child classes roadmap,” which will help you discover how to promote parent education about play and development, facilitate opportunities for early parent support, establish yourself as a resource and leader, earn an income, and create a steady stream of clients for your other services. This roadmap will show you the six areas you’ll need to consider so the overwhelm of starting your own thing doesn’t stop you in your tracks before you even begin, and so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to leading caregiver/baby classes in your local community.

I can’t wait to hear what you think!

The post The Ultimate Guide to Supporting Infant & Toddler Families appeared first on Learn With Less.

We’ve used the term “Mommy & Me” here because it’s a searchable term, but we refer to our Learn With Less® classes as “caregiver & me” classes. Not familiar with this term? We use it as one way to reflect our commitment to inclusivity.

Our classes are open – 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 playing the “search term” game, here (so that you can find this great content more easily!), and we’re committed to helping 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.

As an educator or a therapist of any kind, you know that parents and caregivers need to feel confident that they can support and connect with their new baby or toddler.

As a professional working with families, the single most important thing that allows you to do your job effectively… is to support that CONNECTION between caregiver and child.

You know that all parents and caregivers – regardless of where they come from, what language(s) they speak, or what socio-economic bracket under which they fall, ALL want the same thing for their child: to raise a great human and to have peace of mind they’re doing what they need to do to support their child.

You also know that not all parents and caregivers come into parenthood knowing about how to support their children’s development, and many of them have a LOT of questions. They may rely on you as an educator or therapist to “fix their child” or “educate their child” for them, but many of them want to know more, want to “do it right” and “do it better.”

You know that not all kids who need a bit of help are going to qualify for early intervention services.

And finally, you know that ALL parents/caregivers – whether their children are developing within “normal” limits or whether they fall outside of the typical trajectory. They could use the support and education involved in seeing how the magic in those mundane, everyday moments is the key to connection, the key to supporting their child’s development, and the key to raising a great human being – from day one.

Ready to apply now to the Learn With Less® Facilitator Training & Certification Program? Head here!

Within the therapy room, you can support parents and caregivers alongside their children if you’re serving a child with delays, and if you can manage to get buy-in and engagement from the family. Within an early childcare setting, you can support the children by creating a language-rich, movement-rich, child-led environment to support open ended play…

But still, you know you could be doing more to support the family unit as a whole.

There’s still that niggling feeling that, with your knowledge about early child development and how to support the bond between caregiver and child… you could create truly enriching opportunities to help families from all backgrounds in your local area…

And… you know could probably get paid to do it! You may have already started checking out the other offerings in your area. You may already be the person many of your friends and neighbors confide in or ask questions about development or behavior problems…

The idea of leading “mommy and me” (caregiver & me) groups or “sign language” classes or “early language development” workshops… may crossed your mind.

You may be tempted to put yourself out there and try something new…

So I want to give you 5 reasons why leading “mommy & me” (caregiver & me) style family enrichment classes is in your best interest as a professional working with families.

Whether you work with children who are developing along a typical progression, or who are experiencing developmental delays, you may be looking for additional tools to encourage parents and caregivers to understand their children and the stages they go through.

As professionals working with families, I know many of us feel we’re often repeating suggestions and are often looking for more concrete suggestions for parents, as well as multiple ways or activities that they can do to address early learning.

Leading caregiver/baby workshops allows you to establish a relationship quickly, gives all families access to fun and simple activity ideas they can learn to do to help their infants or toddlers thrive. These family enrichment classes can provide caregivers with suggestions they can take home and apply more generally . This is true, even if they’ve seen your examples in a therapy room or classroom setting as the only way to do things.

You can help them see where their child’s development is, what their child is looking for, what their child is showing them, how they can respond to that to get their child to the next step – you can create a space that says, “this is a place where we can explore together.”

Early parenthood can be incredibly isolating for families. Parents and caregivers don’t often have the opportunity to observe and reflect about their own challenges, or about their children in an organized, uplifting space.

A group scenario that allows families to benefit from quality, developmentally enriching opportunities, adds a whole other layer of enrichment – as families can learn together and from one another.

Often, bringing families together provides them with additional opportunities to build their own confidence and parental competence, and allows the facilitator to convey to parents that THEY are the agents of change in their household.

It doesn’t matter where you come from or what economic level you’re at, everyone wants the best for their child – that’s universal! If you build authentic relationships with various populations within your community so that you can serve them in the ways they express a need to be served, you become a wonderful conduit of knowledge.

When you get groups of parents together that are of different backgrounds, it can be quite miraculous. Everyone gets to learn together and from each other, and everyone gets their assumptions blown out of the water.

That said, it’s also beneficial to create identity-aligned groups, especially for families holding marginalized identities. This is one of the biggest reasons why I started this program: as a white, cis-gendered, heterosexual, able-bodied, neuro-typical/allistic woman, I’m not the “right” person to serve every community. But the next licensed Learn With Less® facilitator just might be the right one for their community!

As a therapist or educator, I’ll bet one of your biggest thrills or pleasures is giving families resources for other high quality supports that are community-based.

What if you could create a natural transition for families to engage with you – and with other families – what if you could partner with other local organizations, and support families in new ways?

As a therapist, you know that you can only do so much in your role as “expert” – or as an educator, you can create that learning environment for the child… but to be able to truly empower the whole family unit is a gift that keeps on giving.

When we’re in a therapeutic or educational context, you’re often focusing on one specific skill that you’re trying to do. But in so doing, you’re also supporting all kinds of different things, we just don’t talk about that. The family enrichment class context provides the context for learning, exploring, observing, and scaffolding – for both the child and the adult! And you get to facilitate that!

You can earn or supplement an income, diversify your current offerings and practice, and supplement a maternity/paternity leave!

You may have gone into the field you’re in because you’re passionate about working with children, dedicated to helping families, committed to the work of early childhood education, maternal mental health, or strengthening family relationships.

You have a knowledge base that is valuable to others.

In this climate where we aren’t quite sure what’s coming around the corner, how we’re going to be serving our communities, or whether our industries or companies will survive a global pandemic…

The ability to diversify one’s income streams and the ways in which we serve our families by sharing knowledge, imparting information, providing enriching experiences is a gift like nothing else. The ability to introduce families to developmental concepts (supporting their babies with what they already have) is what creates freedom and true job satisfaction. And we can do that not only in our primary functions as therapists or educators, but as a parent educator, “mommy & me” (caregiver & me”) class facilitator!

Give families virtual and local, in-person ways to connect with each other, with their tiny humans, with you (a knowledgeable practitioner!) and with themselves in this new identity as caregiver.

When you help families bring more joy into their homes, create community by bringing families together, foster early development and early parent support… you also build your own authority in your community. You can promote your other services through your classes! You can create and build a system that allows you to build your reputation in your community as a provider in the realm of early childhood and early parenthood. Again, this is true regardless of whether you’re wearing a “therapist” or “teacher” or “parent educator” or “facilitator” hat.

My grandfather believed in the idea of “repotting” yourself – the idea of moving between industries or roles in life and in business, to remain inspired, and to keep oneself fresh. To never stagnate.

When we repot ourselves by taking on new roles, we get to support families in different ways, towards the same end goal: connection. Because everyone wants the same thing: to connect and support their child and do the best that they can.

So whether you’re a new parent yourself, looking for extra income and a way to share your professional knowledge (as I was)…

Whether you’re considering dipping your foot in the water and starting your own thing (private practice, your own small business)…

Or whether you’re looking to expand your offerings within an existing practice…

You can become a wonderful resource, expanding your impact on your community and serving families while supporting yourself.

You’re in the right place.

I’d love to invite you to apply now to become a Learn With Less® facilitator. When you submit your application, we’ll take the time to review it. If you’re a good fit, I’ll gift to you a private training I’ve created, which will help you discover how to create lasting impact on your community by leading “caregiver & child” classes using a high quality, evidence-based program that’ll have families coming back again and again.

I would love to be a guide on your journey to expand your impact, helping you discover how to promote parent education about play and development, facilitate opportunities for early parent support, establish yourself as a resource and leader, earn an income, and create a steady stream of clients for your other services.

I’ll also share with you a free resource, my caregiver & child classes roadmap, which will show you the six areas you’ll need to consider so the overwhelm of starting your own thing doesn’t stop you in your tracks before you even begin, and so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to leading caregiver/baby classes in your local community.

You can download that and gain access to my private training now, over at: https://learnwithless.com/certification

I can’t wait to see your application come through!

The post 5 Reasons Why You Should Lead “Mommy & Me” Style Enrichment Classes appeared first on Learn With Less.

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 therapy
• What drew her to the Learn With Less® philosophy, and the value of prioritizing parents and caregivers and parent education
• Perception changes she’s experienced that allowed her to create a space for families
• What 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”

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!

Lindsay: Website / Instagram / Facebook 

Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest

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.

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.

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.

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?

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 we can put it into a song or a rhythm or whatever that is what the Learn With Less® curriculum is right? Yeah. And that’s that we have, it’s within a structure, but highly unstructured.

Lindsay: I’ve been thinking of the word structured chaos a lot. Because when I see the groups happening at Spirited Play Labs, like there’s this moment of a little terror, you know, you’re watching it, you’re like, Oh, my God, you know, you have this, like, whatever you have, you have some people bring cardboard boxes, or pools of water, or whatever kind of random items. And you have this group of toddlers, pre K kids, whatever coming in, and you’re like, Ooh, let’s see what happens.

That takes a lot of confidence and openness on the part of the provider. To be like, I’m going to show up with what I have, I’m going to directly teach important information. And then I’m just going to let it flow and see what happens. And try to like embed that into what the parents are coming in with. And sometimes if the parents are coming in with, I don’t know, something unrelated or something that’s distracting the group we’re coming in with, that’s a whole other thing.

But meeting parents where they’re at and give them the information. Sometimes it’s not even the sometimes it’s forming the relationship and giving them the information later down the road or something because sometimes they come in and they want the information, but maybe there’s a lot going on, the kids actually access it.

Ayelet: I love what… you keep using the words “building relationship.” And that is such a key piece of this work, right, of the work of parent coaching. The work of helping to, as a provider of any kind of practitioner create a space, both physical and emotional for building family capacity. And it starts with relationship. So tell me a little bit about, to you, what the importance of building community, especially within small groups is all about? To you, what is the value of that? How does that play out in your business, and in your life?

Lindsay: I’m sort of serving two very different populations in the space, and building community among all of them. The one that was first on my radar was the neurodivergent kids who are in private therapy and whose parents are shuttling them from appointment to appointment. And they may not have anyone else in their sphere who has any kids in therapy or with disabilities. And then to me, it was like a no brainer of they need to be together! I see them on Facebook talking to each other. I know there’s a deep, for a lot of them have shared with me, a deep loneliness or isolation or fear of going out into spaces they don’t know are welcoming.

For me, that group was like, of course, I’m going to form groups and bring them together so they can talk about resources. Compare therapists, sort of being able to talk about the day to day experience of bringing their kid to all these things and experiencing early intervention and all this. And then the other group I’m bringing together is just families of kids birth to three, which was on my radar, but wasn’t because I was like, oh, there’s so many “moms groups” and certain areas in the Bay Area there’s a lot of coming together of families and meeting up at parks and they’re sort of creating their own connections.

But I made the physical space, and they’re all coming and joining together as well in the space, and they’re all showing up! A lot of them are utilizing the space to ask questions about development. And what I knew but didn’t know for sure was who’s giving them the information about development just as their kids are developing? And I talked to a lot of them and they’re like, Yeah, my pediatrician gives me five minutes, or all the other parents just tell me, Oh, don’t worry about it and move on. Or there’s just people have expressed to me regardless of whether their kid needs any private services or is typical developing at this point, they want access to the information.

That community is being formed, as well, in the space at the same time, which is a lot. But essentially, the community is being formed around parents gaining access to information and parents coming together, because they care about their children, and they’re nervous, and they want to know more. And that’s just bringing them together. And the people who are joining are all these, like, really nice people, too. I tell everybody, because I ran the space as a membership. And then the groups are a weekly thing you commit to for a period of time. And most people who join groups are like really nice people, like they want connection.

Ayelet: Other people who want community and connection.

Lindsay: Yes, It’s a really lovely thing to see them come together and chat and they look at each other’s kids and kind of go hmmm, what does another kid’s parents kids look like? And how do they parent and they kind of like see each other. And so I think I’m really gonna keep building into sort of that Birth to Three, these developmental play groups and doing catch all developmental groups, because people don’t have access, and they just want to be among their peers talking about their daily experience of parenting.

Ayelet: I’m curious, what do you think? Or do you know, what would you or your clients describe as the value of the space to your business? What problem does it solve? What challenges does it help them to solve?

Lindsay: Well, groups, for whatever reason, feel out of reach for a lot of people, I don’t know, in this area, some of the groups that are provided are like once a week at a very specific time only, and people can’t access it. Or it’s through a clinic that you have to already be a member of this kind of thing. So I’m having my hands out with lots of groups. And it’s like, Okay, here’s all these groups, try out the ones that speak to you that support you as a parent. So that’s one thing.

Then a lot of people describe, I’ve heard things about it being an oasis, and it being this really safe space. Because most of the space is enclosed. So sometimes with big open parks and families feel like they can’t, they don’t feel safe with their kids running around. And then this items that I’ve picked in the space are all, to me, really enriching and developmentally exciting, because I put in there a lot of open ended toys and have this one item that’s it’s like a bucket, plastic bucket.

Parents will be like, What do I do with this? And I’m like, Oh, give it to your kid, see what they do with it? Because there is no answer to that question. What do you do with a plastic bucket? Put it on your head, sit on it, pretend like you’re a turtle.

Ayelet: Roll it around. Yeah, yeah.

Lindsay: And there’s 500 things you can do with it. And I’m sure if that item was in a department store, they would walk right past it, because it doesn’t seem like it does anything. So a lot of the toys people are blown away by seeing what their kids do just with the items themselves. And then I think the space is also just Yeah, creating this ongoing connection to other nice people who… yeah people are so nice, who just want to stay connected to other nice parent people.

Because we all know that making mom or dad friends with kids is really hard, so this space is really fostering that relationship. And then I just made everybody a Facebook group because they were wanting to talk to each other. And if they’re too nervous to exchange phone numbers, I was like, Okay, here’s a group for you, go talk to each other so that you can make playdates with each other and talk to each other.

Ayelet: I’m curious to hear what measures have you taken… other than, of course, making a space available for group therapy for kiddos who are maybe neurodivergent, for instance, but like what measures have you taken to make this space inclusive, accessible to lots of different groups of people?

Lindsay: It is blowing my mind calling something inclusive, sometimes it just draws neurodivergent kids, because to find a space that is accommodating of your child, if they have any special needs, it is impossible to find. But then also, I’m drawing in all of these neurotypical kids too. And I think why it’s working… It’s because one, I made it really beautiful, like the space is pretty and aesthetically pleasing. And I do feel like there’s something to that around everybody feeling like their kid is cared for and given something beautiful. I don’t know. That’s kind of a weird thing.

I thought about all my experience of working with kids and my own son who is a highly sensitive kid and thinking about in a large space, how can I think up every possible accommodation, whether it’s communication, or sensory processing, or wayfinding. Or I’ve thought about all of these things and talk to other OTs especially, and tried to figure out, how do I make the space feel really clear so that kids and parents know what to expect, but also exciting to them?

And I will say the one thing that I think makes it inclusive is that I really focused on the parents when I was building the space and I feel like that’s, most places, eh… do they care? Like, they try a little bit but they give parents benches that are like far away from where the kids are playing and stuff. And because I made it beautiful and comfortable for parents, I’ve heard a lot of things around them feeling like they’re enjoying it themselves, which I think then allows them to relax in the space because they also know that we’re able to be with any of their kids kind of whatever their kid shows up with.

Ayelet: You’ve mentioned this thing about how your space is beautiful, feels good. Why is that important to you, specifically?

Lindsay: I really enjoyed the idea that the space is for parents as well. Yeah. So when we think of typical children’s spaces, they got like really bright primary colors. And they have this sort of like hyper whimsy to it. And I don’t even know if kids actually even like that, that much> I want raising a child to feel like you don’t have to go to these like really dingy, overly bright places, you know? I want it to be a positive sensory experience for all people.

So like keeping it minimal, keeping the lights at a certain brightness, thinking about the music that’s being played. I had an employee that was putting on Kidz Bop, and I was like, friend, the music is for the adults, the music is not for the children. We’re putting on cool indie rock here, or like jazz or soul. Because I want the parents to feel like… if I could relax parents and make parents feel comfortable, we’ve all done our job.

Ayelet: All the other things that you have created about the space are for the kids, but this part is actually for the adults.

Lindsay: Yeah, and the space used to be a tech office. So it was like this open air and had these really high ceilings, beautiful lights. And I was like… this is for children. And my landlord was like, What are you talking about? Like we made this for tech workers. And I was like, No, this… I have a room that was a phone booth for them. And I turned it into like my sensory lightroom, my quiet room.

So I put in, you know, lights and beanbags. And a basket of fidgets and squish mellows and stuff, and people lose their minds over that room and then go replicate it in their own homes. And it’s just… my own home doesn’t look like that. But like let me create a space in which you come into it, and you feel like Ah, wow, this is so lovely to be here.

Ayelet: Yeah, I also feel like and I don’t want to put words into your mouth. But I feel like there’s a thing around a space that is for kids with special needs, kids who are neurodivergent. And that many of those spaces are not thought about. There’s not a lot of thought that goes into it other – than other than they’re doing about, we are – right, we are doing a job here. We need to fix this child, but you are thinking about so much more than that! And that’s so important. And that is quite unique about what you do.

Lindsay: Yes, I hate most clinics.

Ayelet:  It doesn’t feel clinical That’s what it is. Right? Like that’s a big… it feels like a space you want to be in, like you said.

Lindsay: I’m aware of the experience, these people are my customers, too. So it’s like, I’m aware of the experience they’re having. And I want it to feel positive for them, and relaxing for them. So if I make a clinic in which the hallways are bare, there’s fluorescent lighting, there’s no signage anywhere. The toys are all hidden way up on a shelf, and you can’t access them, and you’ve got this tiny table and chairs, a kid looks at that and is like, Get me out of here immediately! Being in that space is like a soul crusher. I’ve been in those, I’ve worked in those. They are hard to motivate and feel good in.

It gives the parents a feeling to have, they’re given a little children’s chairs to sit in. They’re not given like a regular sized chair, or they’re not given a space at all. They’re in the waiting room. But just the thought that we put towards parents enjoying the space and feeling comfortable, to me says a lot, and lets them know that they are part of the experience.

And that it’s not just about the kids getting therapized or whatever. I haven’t fully thought through it because it’s like happening in real time. I’m three months into the business, and it is the most inclusive space I’ve ever seen, experienced so far, and still unsure how it’s happening.

Ayelet: Well, I mean, I think I mean, I could give you my two cents about why I think… I think you you use the language of inclusivity. Right, you’ve created a space that is open, easy to navigate, you talked about how you created a physical space that is safe, for not only kids who don’t have sensory needs, who don’t have any additional needs, but you’ve put the more marginalized segments of your community of families at the forefront. They’re centered in your space.

So whether it’s about the physical boundaries of the space, whether it’s about the lighting, and how much stuff is available, and where. You pointed to things that you did to help people navigate through and where they could go, they know automatically this is for them.

Lindsay: Yes, I’ve heard a lot about how inclusion is for everybody, and that we often think of all of these accommodations as only serving neurodivergent kids. But actually it’s benefiting everybody, I feel like! I do this whole pitch, especially with the neurotypical families because I often get nervous about if there’s ever a situation and they get an item thrown at them or their kid gets bit. I want them to know that we don’t kick kids out. We don’t do punishment. We explain to you and we support you, but you know all the parents we support your style of parenting and where your kid is currently, like behaviorally developmentally.

And so if that stuff happens, I’m so sorry, but like, I’m not gonna “side with you,” quote unquote. Like I’m, I’m here for everybody. And so I really try to hammer that home to our neurotypical families who actually those kids sometimes end up having some delays and then they do go into therapy, right. But I, like you said, first and foremost are my neurodiverse, like that is number one. And then everybody else. Sometimes I’m like, Oh, you can hang with this? Okay, cool!

I think we sometimes assume they won’t. Sometimes I assumed that parents of… every so often I’ll have like a 15 month old come in, and there’ll be some four year olds, and there’ll be tussling, and the family will get really scared and take their kid out. And that’s totally that feels scary for you. And that parenting style wants something a little more contained, a little more, maybe consistent, and maybe no mixed ages, something like that. And I’m not really providing that. And I wish them well in finding what they’re looking for. But I’m definitely not going to… I was apologetic.

If a kid gets hurt, or if a family feels scared. I’m very sorry about that. But also, we’re mixing it up over there, where you know, all manner of kids and families are present there. And all those experiences are welcome. And I’m not going to say, “please, leave” if your kid is a thrower, that’s their style at the moment. Or if you are on the phone the whole time while you’re in the play space as a parent, like whatever, you know?

Ayelet: Well, I actually want to say something just to clarify, because actually, you are not for everybody. And that’s very important. Because you said out loud, you said, you know, I am inclusive to everybody, but actually not true. And that’s so it’s such an important point. Because I think we we talk about what inclusivity is, is well that’s it’s a space for everyone. But no, it’s actually not! Like if, you’re… if you have to have some exclusion to be inclusive.

What you’re excluding is the idea that actually, in order to center children who may have more physical needs, who may have more cognitive variances with what the quote unquote “typical” age is, or whatever… you’re, you’re not centering the kid the the quote, unquote, “typically developing” families. And that is a huge differentiator of what your space actually is. And I think, I will say out loud that I think that that’s a big part of what people are benefiting from.

Lindsay: Yeah, it just surprises me because, I just thought once you make a space quote, unquote, “inclusive,” primarily, you’re serving Autistic kids, or you’re primarily serving like one specific population of kids. And it often kind of just builds that set because there’s a lot of fear and misinformation around inclusion or around behavior or communication from parents of neurotypical children. And you’re right, I really don’t, I welcome in those people to try it out. Everyone gets a first visit. And if they walk away being upset because a child has shoes in the play space, because that child refused to take their shoes off, like, bye! That is such a minor thing. Who cares?

Every so often I’ll have those people, because I’m in a fancy area. And I’ll have those people who are like, you know, wanting manners and rules and safeness. And sure, that would be nice. But like, we talked about earlier, it’s structured chaos, we’re up for that. And I’ve worked with all the employees, I have to support structured chaos. And for those people that can’t hang with that, best of luck to you, see you later.

Ayelet:  Right. Do you have those kinds of, sort of community agreements at the forefront in your space?

Lindsay: Yes. Like a waiver is all about, we’re here to support if your kids struggling, which is, I think different than a lot of play spaces. A lot of play spaces… I ran across this place recently that was like said there Montessori and Reggio Emilia. And then they had like 500 rules of what you can’t do in the space. And I was like, I don’t think you’re actually adhering to what you think you are. No, climbing up the slide. No climbing the walls. It’s like, of course, we all want those things. But you can’t be inclusive and have 500 rules.

So yeah, when people walk in… I also just got certified with Maisie Soetantyo‘s Better Community, she does a sensory integration and neurodiversity-friendly spaces. So right now, she’s going to people and supporting their creating a physical space that’s inclusive. So I try all my languaging to be around to then… I had an Instagram post recently. It was like, here’s our play space rules, and then it was blank. And then at the bottom it was like no, no play space rules. So my hope is that people look at that. And if they go like, aaah! I don’t like that! Then like, don’t come. I mean, or come see how it goes.

Ayelet: That’s incredible. I know we’ve talked a lot about what it is for other families, what you’re creating for other families what you want it to be for other families, but what about for you? What has all of this done for you?

Lindsay: But yeah. It just… I feel like I’ll probably cry, but I feel like for my whole career as a speech therapist, I felt like I was the outlier. Like everybody on a certain day of the week would make crafts for the week ahead for their kids. They would make these like crafts things and it was all thematic and it was all around holidays. I would always be the lady twiddling my thumbs in the corner. Like what? I’m not doing that! I’m doing routines based! I’m not making crafts, and I felt like an outlier all the time.

I always wondered, am I in the right field? Am I doing the right work? And I always walked away feeling like, I wished I could do more. And I wished I could do it in the way that I believed in it. And I made the space but then I chose myself not to do the direct service. So there was this big fear of like, are there other people in this area who believe in the style of practice that I believe in from multiple disciplines? And like all these people showed up, and they’re doing it! And I’m, like, blown away, because in our fields, we’ve created communities around preschool SLPs, medical SLPs. We’re like the renegade SLPs like, we’re like the… I feel like we’re like the outlier SLPs who don’t subscribe to the regular style that most people are practicing.

Part of me feels like happy that I’m surrounded by other people who are believing and practicing the same style. But also that I can have an OT and a music therapist, and a speech therapist and an early childhood educator, all promoting parent coaching and promoting Routines Based interaction through groups.

We’re solving all the world like, I feel like we’re solving all the world’s problems, you know what I mean? Like, it just it feels so awesome. And I see so much possibility because of all these other people in different disciplines who also want to support parents. And I really hope that it then changes the dynamic of how we treat families in our fields.

Ayelet: Yeah, well, and I want to be perfectly clear to to our listeners, you, yourself, are Learn With Less® trained, certified to provide Learn With Less® groups. But what your play space is providing is not just Learn With Less® groups, it’s actually a lot of different kinds of therapy within a group setting and other play based type groups within a play space that is actually very much formulated around the concepts of Learn With Less®.

Lindsay: Yes, and I send everybody to you because I don’t know of a ton in the OT world, or in the early childhood education world, speech world, some of these, like specialized worlds. There aren’t a lot of people doing this work. So I always send people to you to get that you know that information.

Ayelet: Will you explicitly name some of the things that the program has helped you to do? Because I think it’s really interesting. Your stories, especially is, it’s not unique, actually, in that lots of people come into the program, the Learn With Less® Facilitator Training and Certification Program thinking, I’m going to do this in order to lead Learn With Less® groups. And of course, that’s the ultimate experience that most people have. But there’s also, oftentimes, it ends up opening up a much bigger vision of what’s quote unquote “possible” or what someone wants to do, for a variety of reasons that I think actually you could speak to better than I perhaps, and I’d love your perspective on that.

Lindsay: Yes, well, I want to thank you for that. Because most packaged programs, you have to be very prescriptive about how you offer them. So like I had somebody recently asked me about some other program, and I was like, no, because you have to do it, you know, A to Z, the way they told you how to do it. And that, again, creates this feeling of you can’t individualize it to the families. And so, I really appreciate your flexibility and ability to allow us to use the curriculum you created in the way that it serves our communities, you know, so for me working through the modules at the same time I was putting together my business plan.

And so as I was doing some of the modules, like around adult learning, around serving diverse family identities, around sort of clarified, like, you have the four pillars, and they feel very clean and easy to digest for parents. And all of these pieces are things that I really took with me when I thought about the business plan. And then in who I’m looking for, from other disciplines to run groups.

So like, believe me, I’ve tried all the Learn With Less® certified people. They live just far enough away from me that like I mean, and at some point, I will run Learn With Less®, that will happen. Right now. I’m not doing anything, oh my god.

Ayelet: You’re building something big here.

Lindsay: Holy moly. Yeah. But like the people who have done your training, I’m like, Please come, please come. Because I know they’ve got it too. And then those people that haven’t, I’m telling them about what you do. And I’m asking them to really boost up their, especially like parent coaching, their sort of awareness of counseling, and parent support, and group dynamics, because that’s the piece that everybody is at varying stages of comfort around. And that’s the thing I want to say is like the most, most, most, most most important.

Ayelet: I mean, is that something that you feel like you benefited from the program with?

Lindsay: Yes, 100% because there was nobody else there’s only one other lady in the field who’s talking about it, Carrie Ebert, and I’ve done your training and her training and really brought all of this stuff together because nobody taught me this in graduate school. I didn’t have a counseling class. I didn’t learn about adult learners. It was all from my own direct experience.

My own experience as being a parent and directly doing Learn With Less® gave me the confidence to, I think, one believe that within a system, we can do parent coaching, right? That because you’ve created it into a system that it feels like, Okay, I’m not like totally off base here with this parent thing, because it was always just an inkling in my mind.

You put visuals and words to a topic that I have been struggling with for all these years in my work, and I felt as if I couldn’t practice it, because nobody was talking about it. And it was like, does anyone else care about this topic and like nobody else was talking about it. So when you put together the curriculum, you’re directly talking about it, and you’re telling us how important it is. And it just gave me the feeling of I’m on the right track. And that there is value in how I want to practice

Ayelet: And it being like parent coaching, routines based intervention, everyday items. Those kinds of things, yeah.

Lindsay: Yes, yes, those things I just didn’t see it being talked about in our field. And so the way you put it together, it just buoyed my instincts around it. And it made me be like, Okay, no, I’m actively going to practice it. And you wrote it in a way that it was like, and this is how you actively practice that, you know, in a group setting.

Ayelet: Yeah, it’s very interesting to me that you’ve said a couple of times, there’s this sort of overarching theme here in this conversation about feeling like the outlier, feeling like not everybody is thinking or talking this way. But knowing deep in your bones that this feels right.

And it’s really interesting, because this is a conversation that happens over and over again, in our Learn With Less® community is like, I always felt like this. I always knew innately that this is true, but I never felt like I had the words or the framework. So I’m just curious, because we’ve talked a lot about the community you’re creating right, in your business. But looking reflexively, of what is the value of our Learn With Less facilitator community for you? What has that been? And what does that continue to be for you?

Lindsay: It’s so fun to see those people succeeding in their own areas with this practice. Whether it’s their private practice, or their Learn With Less® groups, because they show up talking about the wins, and they come bringing the challenges and questions. And of course, a lot of those questions are questions we all have… around advertising, or logistics, or things that happen in a group setting that who else would we go to, to ask these questions, you know? So it’s this ongoing relationship.

Those people, I feel as if there’s this unspoken agreement we’ve all made. That we all get it. And so I really enjoy knowing they’re out there. And then knowing that we can come together for both positive and negative, you know, sharing and that you facilitate, you know, weekly us coming together ongoing, and it just, it really, I wish they all lived near me. And they were all we all just like ran groups together. You should make like an Institute, where you like down in the, you know, down where you are, make like a Learn With Less® Institute and have like, everybody running things there.

Ayelet: There’s a there’s some eventual potential for that. That would be amazing.

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah! I mean, when you look at the landscape, it’s it’s needed. And there’s so many people that tell me like, oh, I want to do what you’re doing. I was thinking about that. And then don’t. Many – most don’t. You know, like doing groups I’ve heard most people say they’ve wanted to and then don’t.

So there’s also something about the cohort that that are really brave people who are like, not fearless, but like willing to step out and try things, that there’s so many people in our fields who might also feel this way and just let that live. And don’t speak to that and just continue in these systems and not, not practice the way they believe, that it you know, would be effective.

Ayelet: How to practice the way you know is right. Renegade SLP, Lindsay.

Lindsay: I know seriously. I wish – I’ve heard every so often of people who were like, I wanted to do a group. So I talked to my so and so and they let me do a group. And every so often, I’ll hear that. But for the most part, you got to step out on your own and do it. And I see the success.

And it just keeps me going, seeing like, seeing Carly and her popularity, and Allie, and Rachel, and seeing how they’re building community in their specific areas, and continually trying out new things, and developing it and configuring it. And it’s just this wonderful, ongoing thing. We’re all trying out. Like there’s nobody around to like so we’re just comparing to each other because there’s nobody else doing what we’re doing.

Ayelet:  Yeah. Well, it is so interesting, too Lindsay because I think, you know, there’s… you could take Learn With Less® and use it as like a business in a box, if you want to. There are people doing that. And also you can take Learn With Less® and then make it fit into whatever you want it to.

Whatever you want it to be, and then you have this consistent support, framework group, cohort, community, and sounding board of others who are doing similarly, like you said, brave things. I want to know” do you feel like you’ve always been this confident? And what help like imposter syndrome that you inevitably have experienced to some degree? What’s been helpful?

Lindsay: Well, I will say I spent all of 2021 sitting in my house, talking to business coaches and mentors, doing your training, doing all this stuff to build up my confidence. Because one thing that I always value is having mentors or people who have already done certain pieces of what I’ve done and can support the ongoingness. Have I always had this confidence? I have my husband’s, my husband’s in tech. So I definitely was able to, like have the resources to be like, I want to do this, you know? Yeah, without the fear of… but I did a big thing. Yeah. Not everybody has to do that.

But even just step out and say like, I have something of value. And I think you would all really love it. And from what I’ve seen from myself, and everybody that’s done Learn With Less®, sometimes it’s an immediate response, like yes, and sometimes it’s like a slow build. But either way, the need is there. And I think we’re all being shown that the work we’re doing is valuable and is successful.

No, I haven’t always had this confidence, though. I think I just… 2020 just… I got real tired. Being in your house. And like sitting on Zoom, being told that the school districts are building an airplane while it’s flying, and you have to just sit there while they figure it out. All that kind of stuff. I was like, I’m outta here Best of luck to you.

Ayelet: Like you said, you had certain privileges that allowed you to do that, for sure. Yes. And and also, you went for it.

Lindsay: Yeah. And I think I just got tired of it. I think I just got I felt like I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, where it was, okay, this feels like a turning point where I can make a choice for myself of what I want to do. And so I started first with private practice. I went from district to private practice work. And then I did a couple groups just like informal like playdate things. And those all went really well. And then I just decided to go for it.

Some people have asked me like, oh, did you get like, did you know that this was a need in your community? Or like, did you talk to people? And I was like, a little bit but I just had an instinct that this was a thing that was needed. And I just like went did it, and all the people who had done those playdates with us, like a year ago, are now members in the space doing groups. They’re there with us. Which is so cool.

And then of course, like lots of podcasts, listening to lots of podcasts of people and getting that feeling of Yeah, I’m gonna trust my instincts. Yeah, I’m gonna do this thing. You know. Having those people that kind of support that little voice of like, I want to try this thing. What do you think, you know.

Ayelet: What are some podcasts that you would recommend to others who are looking for that?

Lindsay: For a second, I was listening to Independent Clinician, with Jena Castro-Casbon. They were all talking about stepping out and doing something big.

Ayelet: Absolutely. Yeah.

Lindsay: I have yours, first. I have yours right there, right on the top there. And then I had done during 2021, I also did my DIR Floortime 201 course. So I started listening a lot to Affect Autism, Two Sides of the Spectrum with Meg Proctor, just listening to other people’s voices who also were stepping out and, and trusting their gut on how they wanted to change the system. And then seeing their popularity grow and the interest in what they were doing grow. And so I think seeing you all building these communities and this interest, I think that was also very helpful.

Ayelet: Like you said, it’s so important to have mentors who have gone before you in some way. There’s nothing else like the value of that, for sure. Yeah. That’s awesome. Lindsay, this has been awesome, first of all, and second of all, what would you say to someone who is considering Learn With Less®, considering becoming a Learn With Less® facilitator?

Someone who may or may not be ready to step out and take a giant risk, right? It doesn’t have to look like it does with you, as we have all kinds of other examples of other licensed Learn With Less® facilitators on the Learn With Less® podcast, but what would you say to somebody who’s thinking about it?

Lindsay: Well, I love that idea that like you are, you are open to having people use the curriculum in the way that it supports them. So I feel like paying the money, getting access to the curriculum, and the modules, not only boosted my confidence in that my intuition was right about how I wanted to support families. But then also giving me a visual and being able to see your demos, and then connecting to the other people. I feel like because we’re able to use it in the way that we’d like and it’s flexible, it’s another really big toolbox that is added, that helps me feel like I don’t have to make it from scratch.

Because making something from scratch… it’s really hard. And if it doesn’t have to be that way. No, I really feel like if the idea… because initially my idea was I am going to directly run Learn With Less® classes. That was my… but then as I was going through the modules, I was like, Oh, I’m still going to run them. And also… like, holy moly, this is, this is everything that’s – when I would listen to it or hear it. It would just like ping ping! It was like a right connection in the beliefs I had internally.

That just felt so great, because there aren’t many systems that I went through in graduate school or that any other big box stuff that I’d walk away being like, yes! I’d walk away with a lot of questions and feeling like oh, I’ll have to take some of it and leave the other parts of it, which meant I couldn’t practice it.

So while I’m not yet running the groups, I think having access to the curriculum and having access to the community has really supported my ongoing… clarifying what I’m doing over at Spirited Play Labs! Because you gave it words, and you gave it visuals that really helped me a lot.

Ayelet: I need to know what visuals helped you, so that I can make more of them!

Lindsay: I remember, you always include a lot of photos. And that really helps me as a learner. And I’m just remembering some of the slides in which you had the picture, and then you were talking. And then it was always like these really clear bullet points.

I don’t know, because because listening to your podcast also was impactful for me, but like seeing the slides and having the images, and having the demo videos and then having other people’s demo videos. And then Oh, my God, and then you brought in like other people who could speak to, like pieces of it? Yes. I’m a very visual person. So having all of those, yeah, I just like loved them.

Ayelet: That’s great. That’s super helpful. Lindsay, thank you, for your time and energy today, and for being brave and confident and amazing.

Lindsay: Yes. Thank you for doing what you do, as well. And building all of this. Man, you built a big thing. And it’s really impactful and meaningful. And I’m so glad that you’re sharing it with everybody. Because also, I know we’re ending, but I have met a lot of people who are running playgroups that like don’t talk about it and don’t offer what they’re doing to anybody. So it’s very quiet. They’re not on social media.

I’ve met a lot of parent coaching people who are way behind the scenes, to the point that you cannot access what they’re doing. And they’re so busy, and they’re so involved in their communities directly, which is great, but then they aren’t making any large scale changes, because they’re only solely focused on their day to day work. Yeah, which I understand it. But I really appreciate the system you made and the curriculum you made because it allows us access to it, which I felt like I couldn’t find elsewhere. So, thank you.

Ayelet: Awesome. Thank you! It’s, I mean, that is why! That’s the why, for me, you have your why, I have my why, which is make a big impact make a big splash. All right. Well, thank you so much, Lindsay. This was such a pleasure to chat with you. And where can people find you who are looking to learn more about you and your business?

Lindsay: Yeah, social media. All of our handles are Spirited Play Labs, the website is spiritedplaylabs.com.

Ayelet: Lindsay, thank you so much. What a pleasure.

Lindsay: Thank you!

Ayelet: How about you, dear listener? Does this work call to you? Are you curious about expanding the impact you can have on new families in your community with a high quality, evidence-based program that will have them coming back again and again? You can discover more about the Learn With Less® facilitator training and certification program by heading to learnwithless.com/certification today.

The post Creating Inclusive Spaces For Families, with Lindsay Teitelbaum appeared first on Learn With Less.

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 today
• A few basic definitions of useful vocabulary, such as pronouns, non-binary, cisgender, and the difference between sexual identity and gender identity
• Various things Mason has had to consider because of their own gender identity as a non-binary parent
• Mason’s suggestions for families to consider when it comes to supporting their own children as they start to build awareness of their own gender identities
• Top tips for parents, caregivers, and educators who want to create an inclusive, supportive community for young children
• A 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

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.

Mason: Website / Facebook / Instagram / LinkedIn

Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest

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.

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?

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.

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.

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 has to do with sexual orientation, AND we’re talking about the T community.

And Q kind of goes in both, because L is lesbian, G is gay, B bisexual, so people who are attracted to either both genders or the opposite gender, and I use gender intentionally because there are transgender men who identify as men and the women who date and marry them are straight, because they’re marrying someone of the opposite gender, and that doesn’t negate their identity at all.

Then you have gender identity, which is what’s in your heart, not what’s in your pants, you know, so often we reduce sex to biology. And when you look at it, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Intersex people exist, that’s yet another podcast episode. And, you know, we have these biological variances in what sex looks like in humans. And that’s beautiful.

We also have variations in what gender looks like for humans. And that’s just as beautiful. I was born and told I was a girl and tried to be a girl, and it never fit. I came into my own and I figured out that different words aligned better for me, and different words fit me better. So I started using them. And my mental health went from really horrible to really good. In a matter of two or three years after I came out, I went from being in a really bad place to being in a really good place, because I was honoring and being authentic to who I am.

And the word cisgender is a little complicated, actually. I’ve had conversations with a friend who is a staunch ally, who I know will go to bat for me any day and she is cisgender and has had the word Cis used against her as a “you don’t understand what my life is, like you’re just cis.” And most of the time, that’s not how cisgender is used.

Most of the time, it is simply if you’re not transgender, you’re cisgender… because you don’t want to use the word normal instead of transgender because that, you know, super others trans people, right? So we needed a different word for people who are not transgender, and that word is cisgender. But it’s one that is being used by someone in the trans community as a slur, which is interesting to me.

Ayelet: Very interesting. Yeah. Just this idea that for people who have never had to question their gender identity, it can be a whole new world opening up for like, oh, wait, that’s, that’s something that people… that actually many people question, or do not feel comfortable with. And so the idea that, as you said, it’s not about saying normal and abnormal, right? That’s, that’s not what we’re talking about.

We’re talking about a centered identity, an identity that is the “default,” at least in this culture in western American culture, as you and I both exist in. And that is not the only identity, right? And so now we’re starting with using language as a tool to help foster inclusivity and help foster identity building of lots of different kinds of people utilizing certain words that can help to distinguish instead of just center one…

Mason: Experience.

Ayelet: One kind of human. Yeah. Thank you, experience. Yeah.

Mason: Exactly. So one question that I get asked, is, why do I make my gender identity such a big part of my life? Why do I center that so much? Why do I advocate for my pronouns so much? And the honest answer is, if I were to relocate to New York City, today, I would advocate for my Midwestern status just as staunchly as I do my my gender identity, because that is just as core and just as influential and just as powerful to me as the fact that I am genderqueer.

And in a society, in a space where I am not given space to be who I am, or I’m assumed to be different from who I am, I’m going to advocate for myself. And in Columbia, Missouri, most people read me as female. And so I advocate for myself when it is safe and logical to do so, just as if I were in New York City, and someone were to say something offensive about the Midwest, I would call them out on it and say, No, that’s not actually what Midwesterners are like, it’s, it’s the same – for me.

Ayelet: Yeah, thank you for that, Mason, there’s so much there. And I hope that that was helpful to people who are listening in, and who are maybe newer to this language and trying to start educating themselves. For those of you who are already in this work and in the work of allyship, or who do identify within different experiences. I feel like that’s not even great language right there!

Mason: There’s some spaces where the language just isn’t there yet. Like, there is no gender neutral, sir or ma’am. Right? It doesn’t exist. Yeah. So what do you say when you’re a polite Midwestern person? Right? I don’t know. Like, that’s an honest question!

Ayelet: Yeah, there is no answer!

Mason: I have googled and googled and talked to all of my friends. And everybody’s like, there just isn’t one. I don’t know that one will be created, which is the interesting part to me, you know, there is Mx in replacement of Mr. or Miss. Hmm. And the x is my formality. But there isn’t a gender neutral sir or ma’am.

Ayelet: Yeah, so many so many pieces to think about! I mean, these things are changing in languages, for instance, that are gendered inherently. Like Spanish for instance, right? There are things like Latine, Latinx… There are even, I recently realized that people are utilizing the singular they in Spanish now. And that’s really, really wonderful to see. And fascinating.

Mason: And Swedish has a new there’s Han, Hon, and Hen are the gendered words, to denote gender. So I believe hen is non-binary. I don’t know. It’s been a while since I was learning Swedish, so… don’t quote me on that.

Ayelet: All right. Well, let’s move into the topic at hand today, a little bit more of the topic at hand today. As far as you know, at the time of this recording, you and I both have preschool-aged kids, right. And the first time we spoke, we chatted at length about how this sort of tends to be a time developmentally when kids are starting to verbalize the way that they understand gender identity.

But of course, we know that the ways that we are socialized to understand these concepts or constructs start so much earlier than that. So Mason, can you tell me about some of the things that you’ve had to consider because of your gender identity over the years as a parent that stand out to you?

Mason: I mean, it starts before conception. Do you want a boy or a girl? I want a baby. Right. And it’s so engrained and there are parents who choose to raise their kids in an un-gendered manner, which is great and not what works for my family. You know, we decided to raise our daughter as a daughter with her knowledge that she can be whomever she wants to be.

And she has space to be whomever she wants to be. She is solidly cis at this point, she solidly identifies as a girl, a “gir,” she doesn’t quite have her R’s down, so it’s adorable. But I had to navigate when she was two, when we were taking a walk and almost back home and she went, “Baba, you boy or girl?” and like… she didn’t even have full sentences yet, but she knew that I didn’t fit in either male or female. And she didn’t know what to do with that.

So she asked, and I was not prepared for that question yet. I was like, I know, I’m gonna have to answer it eventually. But I didn’t think it would happen at two. And, I replied with, well, Bob’s both while I was a girl, boy, and she was like, oh, okay, and we’ve finished our walk, and things moved on. And you know, as big of a part of my life as it is, it’s also not. I am a parent, just like anyone else.

As a parent, I worry about my kiddo. I worry about her safety. I worry about all the things I have fun, you know, we play with Barbies, and watch Encanto on repeat. And, you know, we don’t talk about Bruno, that’s for sure. You know, I feel like talking about being a non-binary parent is just talking about being a parent.

You know, we had an issue with our childcare center, where there was a book about a trans parent on the shelves of their preschool classroom. It wasn’t being used in curriculum, it was just there available for kids. And I believe five to seven families left the school because that book was there. That broke my heart.

But what really empowered me was the school’s response. They didn’t pull the book, they didn’t try to placate the families, they said, okay, then this isn’t the school for you. And they took the potential financial hit. And for the next… her teachers are still wearing Pride shirts, every chance they get. And there was, this is this is my example of excellent, awkward allyship.

So while this was going down, and we were not in the middle of it, but kind of like, I’m the Trans parent of the of the school.

Ayelet: Accidental mascot, right.

Mason: And here I am. So I went to pick my daughter up. And one of the other parents from my daughter’s class came up to me and was like, I just want you to know that we are so glad that you all are here and that we’ve got your back, we’re here for you.

It was just so awkward, because it was like the first time we’d ever talked. But it was also so sweet. Right? And then afterwards, we were at our cars. And she was like, I’m sorry, that was really awkward. I just needed to say something, but didn’t know how. So I just said something. And I was like, it’s all good. You know, was it the perfect way to approach it? No, but she said something.

She said, I see you. I support you. I’m here for you. You have allies in this community. That’s huge. Yeah. Did she do it perfectly? No. You know, but she did it. And she did it well, and that’s what matters is that we take those little steps that are kind of scary. Yeah, she was nervous about having that conversation with me because she didn’t know how to, but she did it.

And that’s my message: it’s that you don’t have to know what you’re doing. And you don’t have to do it perfectly. And if someone gets upset with you for not doing it perfectly, that’s their problem, not yours. And that’s okay. It’s ok for trans people to be upset when someone does something wrong. But it’s not, in my mind, it’s not okay to hate people for learning and for trying to do better.

Ayelet: I mean, there’s space for all of it. Right? There’s space for restoring justice. There’s space for reparing harm. And I think… it’s so interesting, Mason, because the more deeply my own personal relationship is with allyship, with work to uphold and support and be a presence for any marginalized identity that is not my own, you know, you realize so I realized so much more deeply about how this is really about acknowledging when we don’t get it right, and getting better at that. And we live in a society that reveres and upholds perfectionism. And just that harms all of us because it cannot… we get stuck in our own stuff.

Mason: Yeah, we get in our heads about it.

Ayelet: We get in our heads, we suffer from imposter syndrome we have so much it hurts us all within any kind of arena of our lives. Whether it’s our professional lives, whether it’s our personal lives. But the more that we can get prepared to sit in that discomfort, whether it’s about our own selves, or about supporting others and being there for our community and members of our community, however imperfectly, that’s the whole point. Right?

Mason: One of the biggest things that I teach and advocate for is how to mess up. It’s not, you’re not going to get it perfect. I don’t get it perfect. I have friends whose pronouns I’m still working on zhe/zher is really hard for me. I’m learning, I’m doing better. I do better every day.

When I mess up, I correct myself, move forward, don’t make a big deal out of it. And I repeat it in my head three sentences using pronouns correctly, to help embed that in my brain. And when I mess up in my head talking to myself about this person, I correct myself. Because I’m doing the work to do better. And, you know, that’s all we can do is work to do a little bit better every day.

Ayelet: So on that note, what are some of the things that you feel like are important for families to start to consider when it comes to supporting their own children or their own selves as they start to build awareness about their own gender identities?

Mason: As we well know, as parents, gender is so ingrained in everything, there’s a boy section and a girl section in the toy aisle. There’s boys clothes and girls clothes. And while I understand that, in some instances, styles are different for the general boy category or the general girl category, why, why are Batman toys for boys? Yeah, you know, I was very lucky in how I was raised in that my parents encouraged me to play with whatever I wanted to play with, which was generally a large stick or Legos.

When I did play with dolls, it was with my sisters, and we were on the Oregon Trail, and I was the adventure guide. I was given space to play with what I wanted to play with how I wanted to play with it. And that is huge. In regards to a child who is who is figuring out their gender identity, which all kids are, whether their gender identity aligns with their sex assigned at birth or not.

So giving that kid space to play with what they want to play with, and not say that’s a girl toy, or that’s a boy toy, and working to negate the voices that your child will hear outside of the home that say that’s not appropriate for your gender. And I believe just having those conversations and being open to those conversations. And if your kid asks a question that you don’t know the answer to, even if they’re like two or three, which is when gender identity is typically starting to be formed, say, You know what, I don’t know! Let’s look it up together.

And that teaches good research skills, that teaches that, you know, I’m not perfect, I don’t know everything. Or, you know, my friend, Mason might have the answer for that. Let’s ask Mason. And that’s a great space to start. Yeah, you know, I want to… I want to be a resource, because I am constantly learning and I love learning about this. And I have to learn about this, because it’s my lived experience.

It’s easy as a person who doesn’t live this experience to never think about it. And that’s where potential harm comes in. Because according to recent Pew Research, seven point something percent of the United States population identifies as LGBTQ. Now, that might seem small, but think about 8% of your community. If you have 100 people in your community, that’s eight people.

So in my community that I grew up in, which has a population of 5000, where we know everyone, that’s a lot of people, I’m not going to try the math on that, because I’m not going to try the math on that. But, you know, that’s a lot of people!

Ayelet: Right, that’s more people than actually feel safe, or acknowledged or…

Mason: Exactly, that’s just people who are willing to put on a form that that’s how they identify. Statistically, estimates have been, given that, the guess is that 10% identify as LGBTQ. We’ll see in the future, if that statistic gets blown out of the water or not, it’s higher than it was even a year ago. You know, we look at Gen Z, and whatever the generation after that is, and wow!

There was a marketing research brief done in Great Britain a while ago, that less than half… Okay, so there’s the Kinsey scale, which zero is exclusively heterosexual, like, I am not attracted to the same gender ever at all, in the least, what? No. And then there’s a six, which is I am only attracted to the same gender, never any other gender, ew. And so the numbers between fall, you know, 12345 are kind of in the middle.

And this research brief, marketing research brief showed that less than half of British Millennials identified as a zero, as exclusively heterosexual. Now, most of them identified as a one or a two, which is mostly heterosexual, but they didn’t identify as a zero. They were open to the concept of being attracted to someone of the same gender. That’s a huge mindset shift that has happened in the last 15 to 20 years.

You know, that has happened in my lifetime. It’s been 20 years since I graduated from high school, which is super weird to say. And what has changed since I was in high school is ridiculous. I mean, the internet has brought information to everywhere that wasn’t there before. You know, I didn’t know that transgender men existed when I was growing up. I didn’t know that it was an option, right? And now due to the internet, like Yeah, kids know, right. And kids know who they are.

Ayelet: And they have the language for it!

Mason: Exactly. I didn’t have the language to say no, I don’t… I knew I didn’t fit, but I didn’t know what didn’t fit. I didn’t have the space to create space for myself to be who I am until I went away to the “big city” of Columbia. There’s like 100,000 people here, but it’s, you know, it’s huge in comparison to where I grew up. And you know, as I work on my business, and as I work on wanting to reach Midwesterners, who don’t know anything, but know they don’t want kids to die.

I didn’t escape from Shelby County, Missouri. I didn’t run away from home. I wasn’t exiled either. Nobody forced me to leave. I chose to leave to create space for my own self, and I choose to stay because I need that community. Do I wish I could move back home? Honestly, yes. Every time I go home, every time I set foot on the farm, I get tears in my eyes because it’s so hard to live elsewhere. And I know that ultimately, that’s not where I belong right now. Maybe someday I will, but right now it’s not.

And it’s heartbreaking for me. And I think that’s something that when we talk to people on the coasts who aren’t familiar with the Midwest and paint, you know, rural Missouri with a certain paintbrush… That’s not accurate. It’s not a bunch of backwoods homophobes who don’t know anything.

They’re a bunch of good, hardworking, honest, open, compassionate people who don’t know anything. And it’s not their fault that they don’t know anything. They haven’t been told they haven’t been exposed. I mean, some of my biggest advocates and allies are farmers in Shelby County, Missouri. That’s the fact of it.

Ayelet: Well, I mean, that again, it all comes back to creating space for education and creating space for learning.

Mason: Exactly.

Ayelet: And creating space to be uncomfortable in that process of learning.

Mason: Yeah, you know, I don’t care if people agree with my sexual orientation or gender identity. I really don’t. Yeah, I care if they treat me with respect and love and try to do better. That’s what matters to me. I don’t care what you believe or how you vote or what church you go to. That’s, that’s on you. That’s between you in the ballot box or you and God.

What matters is how you treat me as an individual. And what matters is how you treat people like me and kids like me. Having one safe adult in a kid’s life reduces suicidality by 40%. According to research from the Trevor Project: one person, one person who treats them with respect and gives them a safe place to exist, that’s massive, that’s an impact that you can have as a parent, as a provider, as a professional, you can be that safe person, and that can literally save a kid’s life. Whoa.

Ayelet: Okay, so let’s move into that. So what are some tips that you have, Mason, for parents, caregivers, and educator types who want to create an inclusive, supportive community for young children, including those who may be questioning their gender or sexual identities or who have already identified outside of the binary or cisgendered identity.

Mason: Give them the space they need to explore and figure out who they are and what they enjoy. If you have parents who are LGBTQ and your child’s caregiver and Mother’s Day is coming ask how they do Mother’s and Father’s Day. Chances are, they have a plan already. And you can ask! That was a really cool moment when my my daughter started childcare in early May. And then like Mother’s Day was like, immediately.

They just came to us and said, Hey, how do you want us to do Mother’s Day? And you know, we’d already talked about it, Hillary gets Mother’s Day, I get Father’s Day, we’ve renamed it Baba’s Day. And and that’s how we roll. And most families have a plan. And that’s okay. You can just ask, if you’re ever unsure of anything, you know, you can just go to the person in question and say, Hey, even if they’re a kid, maybe, especially if they’re a kid. Hey, does this word hurt you when I use it? Would you like me to use a different word instead? What words do you like to have used for you? Asking those questions and getting curious is great.

If you’re the parent of a child, who seems to be cisgender, and they have questions, let them ask the questions. Like legit, let’s hop on a call. And I’ll talk to them and just say, hey, yeah, this is this is who I am. Because we all dread that moment of, “why is that boy wearing a dress?” as loud as possible in the grocery store. Although that happens less because everybody gets delivery now, because COVID.

But you know, we dread that moment as parents, when is my kid gonna point out someone who is different from themselves and ask a very loud question. Most people, whether it’s in regards to ability or gender, are open to having the conversation with a kid, because a kid’s just learning and making sense of the world around themself.

So don’t be afraid of the questions. If you don’t know the answer. Just admit you don’t have it and say, You know what, let’s look it up. Let’s find someone who might know the answer. There are some really great YouTube channels that are geared for kids that cover the basics in a kid friendly way, which is awesome.

Ayelet: Yeah. Well, we’ll want some of those resources that you mentioned. That’s great. That’s great. Do you have any other thoughts or tips for how to create that inclusive or supportive community for little ones?

Mason: Ask the adults in their lives’ pronouns. Ask for their pronouns. If you see a kid who seems to be expressing their gender differently than what was assigned at birth, let them and ask them questions about… not leading questions. If a kid comes to you and says, I’m not a girl, I’m a boy… believe them. And if they change their mind, great. If they don’t, they were given permission to exist and be who they are in that space at that time.

As kids get older and want to physically transition and you know, medically transition, take hormones, have surgery, whatever. That’s when things get a little more complicated. But when they’re littles What’s it hurt to let your son wear a dress? There might be people who don’t understand and your kid might deal a little bit with that, but how much more hurtful is it for you to be the one to tell them not to.

Explaining the consequences of a decision is different from saying no, you can’t do that. Saying most boys don’t wear dresses, but it’s totally okay if you want to. I just want you to know that some people may not be nice about it. That’s an okay conversation to have with your kid. That’s informing them that you know, their decision, their comfort might be at the expense of some other people’s but they can still be who they are. Yeah.

And let them make that decision, because kids are so much more aware than we, we know. My daughter’s friends will come up to me and be like, Are you a boy or girl? And I’ll say, Well, I’m, I’m kind of both, and they’ll go, okay, and skip away and play. They don’t have these preconceived notions that we do as adults. And we need to allow them to continue to not have those preconceived notions.

Ayelet: They’re asking that question, because they are noticing something that they haven’t seen before. They’re noticing something that doesn’t fit into the categories that they’ve been taught. And again, it’s that they’ve been taught, right? It’s not “that exists,” it’s just that the idea is that we think about gender as a binary. And we know from all kinds of examples in science that it’s not.

So again, just really driving home the idea that like, that’s how, often, we talk about it, but it’s not actually that easy. Just like, like the good guys and bad guys conversation. Right? I liked to have that with my kiddos when they were both sort of starting in that I guess around three, like, Oh, is he good? He’s a good guy, or they’re a bad guy, or blah, blah, blah. Right. And and my answer would always be well, there’s actually…

Mason: They’re doing bad things!

Ayelet: Yeah, right. Exactly. They’re just a human who’s making some choices. And so it’s always about the reframe.

Mason: Exactly. It’s been really amazing, because that one experience at childcare where some families left because of a book is the only negative experience I’ve had, and it wasn’t even directly related to me.

Ayelet: Right.  It happened to be that that was, that you were…

Mason: I happened to be that I was a parent at that school as well. Yeah, they would have left whether I was there or not. And living in relatively rural Central Missouri for that to be the only negative experience I’ve had, shows that you know, people aren’t jerks. They just don’t know. And that’s okay.

Ayelet: It’s the attempt to learn is the key.

Mason: Exactly. Yeah, putting in the effort. And you know, it doesn’t have to be an overnight shift. Baby steps are allowed. If all you take away from this interview is a thought of, huh, that’s different…Then I’ve done my work. That’s my goal.

Ayelet: Starting with conversation.

Mason: Starting the conversation being an approachable entryway into the wild world of gender diversity.

Ayelet: I love that. Mason, what are some of your favorite resources to share with families or with helping professionals who want to support others who are questioning who are coming out, I know that you have an amazing resource that you’ve created. And I’d love to hear some of the others that you, at least that you enjoy sharing.

Mason: So listen, GLSEN is for educators and parents of school aged children – so elementary, middle, and high school. So they have some amazing resources, PFLAG Parents and Family of Lesbians and Gays, they have great resources, they have support groups across the country. You’re allowed to feel your feelings. If your child is transitioning, that’s totally okay.

Give yourself the space to do that in a safe, compassionate space, which is often parents groups, whether they are PFLAG, or through a local LGBTQ center or online, you know, find the support you need. And you know, I’m in a Facebook group with a bunch of parents of trans kids. And it is the most beautiful thing in the world to see these parents navigating their kids coming out at 4, 5, 6, 36, 46. And these parents are just trying to find their way through it.

They’ve got each other for support. And it’s beautiful. And goodness, there are so many. I have a compassionate coming out guide that you can get at aidedcollective.com and click on… I forget what I have it as right now. I’m redoing my website. So I think it’s under Support. It’s Masonaid.VIPmembervault.com is the direct link. It’s a little complicated.

Ayelet: But if you go to aidedcollective.com and search for the Compassionate Coming Out Guide, you can find that.

Mason: Yes, awesome. And it has resources and tips and how to respond and how to deal with how you might be feeling if a kid or family member comes out to you. You know, because that’s honestly that’s a big honor. If someone trusts you, to come out to you, that says a lot about who you are and how comfortable they are with you. Even if it’s scary for them, they did it. They spoke their truth with you.

How you respond establishes that relationship for the future. And you don’t have to throw a rainbow cake parade to be a positive response. You have to say, Okay, this is all new to me. You know, I’m going to have to learn some, but I’m going to do the work to learn and know better. How can I support you? You don’t have to know all the answers. You don’t have to know all the lingo. You’re not going to I still don’t and that’s okay.

Trevorproject.com is a great resource for mental health in the LGBT community. They have some amazing research briefs as well as they provide suicide hotlines for trans and LGBTQ teens. So they’re a phenomenal resource. And then follow me and I’ll be sharing resources as I find them. I’ve got a picture books list. I’m working on a juvenile and young adult list of you know, because books are so powerful in having those conversations with your kids.

You know, like the book Everywhere Babies doesn’t ever say a thing about LGBTQ inclusion. But there’s a pair of Mama’s in that book in a picture. And so that gives me the space to say, see, everyone’s family looks a little different. Isn’t that cool? You’ve got a mama and Baba, they’ve got a mommy and daddy. They live with their grandparents.

That’s a way to foster that conversation without it having to be a… so, kid. We’re gonna talk about sexual orientation and gender identity in America. By the way, you’re three. You know, you can just make it casual. And bring it up with a book.

Ayelet: Show that it exists!

Mason: Yeah, just let people know. Or if you have a friend with LGBTQ parents say, oh, yeah, they have two mommies. Isn’t that cool? You’re so lucky. You have a mommy and a daddy. And they’re so lucky. They have two mommies. And families all look different. But they’re all wonderful.

Ayelet: That’s awesome.

Mason:  Good stuff.

Ayelet: It’s great stuff. Awesome, Mason, thank you so, so much for being here today and chatting through these topics with us. Where can people find you if they want to give you a follow?

Mason: Instagram is at aidedcollective, Facebook is also at aidedcollective. And then my website is aidedcollective.com.

Ayelet: So on brand.

Mason: Consistent and on brand. It’s so good. I am starting to blog regularly again soon and there will be a podcast coming in May or June.

Ayelet: Okay, all right, everybody. Stay tuned.

Mason: Stay tuned. That’s… I believe I’m calling it Midwest Pride.

Ayelet: Oh, exciting. Love it.

Mason: Because it’s a little gay, a little Midwest. I’m proud of being Midwestern. I’m proud of being LGBTQ. So, I’m pretty proud of that name.

Ayelet: Amazing. Amazing. Mason. Thank you so much.

Mason: Thank you. It’s been wonderful.

The post How Families Can Support Gender Identity, with Mason Aid appeared first on Learn With Less.

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 today
• Disparities in clinical service, culturally responsive care, and the implications of biases held by practitioners providing speech therapy and other services
• How Joanne’s therapeutic approach has shifted from when she was working in a private practice to her work in early intervention working for herself
• The impacts of the pandemic on her outlook and therapeutic approaches
• Some 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 therapy
• Joanne’s favorite resources to share with families or other professionals who are hoping to approach early intervention in this way

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

Joanne: Website / Facebook / Instagram

Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Joanne: Yeah, for sure. So when I worked in private practice, I think one thing that we kind of had to recognize is the private practices, especially when insurance is involved, there is a pressure to have more clients and to be more productive. And so I kind of got stuck in that cycle of seeing upwards of like, 45 to 50 clients in a week. And it felt like a rotating door kind of a process. When you are seeing that volume of clients, and you know, there’s a restricted amount of time, it’s not like you can say, hey, you know, I’m feeling really tired. Can we delay our session by 45 minutes, because you’re scheduled back to back a lot of times.

For me, the therapy became a lot of grabbing toys, and doing the session that way. It became a lot of doing a lot of articulation, drill activities, a lot of things that I felt like in that moment, immediately, it took care of their therapeutic needs, but I wasn’t sure that I was being my best clinician. And the way that I could describe it, the best, is that I was seeing the clients but not treating the clients and saying it out loud is so cringy because as a therapist, I would never want to assess myself as not treating a client. But it felt that way to me, like clients were just coming in and out. And I was seeing them and I was doing activities with them. But I really felt like I really wasn’t treating them and doing my best therapy. So I didn’t feel good about myself and the kind of therapists that I knew that I could be in that space.

And so everything was also so toy heavy, like I had my big ol bag and everything was in a Ziploc bag. And it was just like toys, toys, toys, toys. Whereas, I really wasn’t taking time to talk to the families about what to do at home besides like, this is your homework, I want you to do these drills, let’s do like initial T’s for homework. But I really wasn’t, the carryover wasn’t happening. And parents would tell me, I just don’t have the time, I just don’t have this. And I didn’t have the tools to tell them any better, because I was just like, well, sit down to play with your kid or like sit down and do these drills.

Whereas when I transitioned into more early intervention, and working using the home based model, especially given the climate that we’re in with COVID, bringing in the toys, one, was just a hassle because then you have to wipe everything down and make sure that you’re not transmitting and transferring things for myself and for my other clients. But also, too, because in early intervention now, the expectation is that you’re not bringing toys in. So I was so used to clinging onto toys and holding on to toys and that was like my, you know, my saving grace, like, oh, we can do Pop The Pig, thank goodness, like I’m gonna pull one of these out. Whereas with early intervention, it’s like, Nope, we don’t expect you to be bringing in toys. And they kind of have people monitoring!

I felt like I was freaking out for like, the first week, I had no idea what I was doing. I was like, What do you mean, I can’t bring toys? Because sometimes you go into the home and the families don’t have toys. So I think that what that’s done for me is it’s taught me how to be a lot more creative. It’s taught me how to use what families have.

And it’s also taught me how to bring families into the activity, so that maybe whatever mom is doing, we can get involved with and we can still target skills, but it’s not necessarily that we’re playing with a specific toy. So that’s really helped me a lot. And then, I see the carryover happen a lot more. Because if we’re making a sandwich with mom, or maybe for helping her with the laundry or with dad, Whoa, that was not inclusive at all. Or if I am playing to just – I just caught myself I’m like, oh gosh!

Ayelet: Yeah!

Joanne: Two years of training with AC Goldberg and I still am just not getting it right. So if we’re playing with parents, or if we’re completing a routine with parents, and if we’re doing maybe a laundry routine with parents, since this is something that they’re going to do any ways, then that it takes out that pressure from them that makes them feel like I have to sit down for five minutes or 15 minutes and play a game. Whereas now, a lot of my families are carrying it over because it’s already part of their routine.

So it’s been beneficial to me. And it’s also been beneficial to the parents, because they see the value of just taking one activity that they’re doing, and embedding a skill into it. So I feel like that’s opened up a whole new world for me. And now I have a cart, trunk full of stuff and they’re all organized very neatly, but I don’t touch them! I might take in a book every now and then. But now it’s, it’s almost like I really don’t have a use for toys, whatever we can get inside. And we can just do whatever.

And we can still find a way to target things. And I’m not anti toy by any means. I love toys. I think they’re great. But I think the mindset shifts for me, especially with early intervention being like, Nope, you can’t take your bag in there, has been, you have got to figure out a different way, and a different way has been working for me, that was a really long winded answer.

Ayelet: But you know what, it resonates, as you might imagine very much with this person, as in, me. Sorry, I’m raising my hand for all the people who can’t, can’t see us, right? Yes, I  love just number one that yes, it’s not about being anti toy. It’s about utilizing what families already have. If they have toys, I bring them in [to the play]! If the child is playing with a favorite toy, of course, that’s gonna come into the play. But one of my clients right now is really into spatulas. And his family has several different colored spatulas as in like the the like, what’s the word? Not scooping? But like, oh my gosh, what’s the word for like when you’re…

Joanne: Like, curved?

Ayelet: Yeah, it’s like the curved one for like, the edge of the bowl. Not like getting something

Joanne: Ayelet, you’re asking the wrong person. I don’t cook a day in my life.

Ayelet: But there’s they’re both called spatula, right? One kind of spatula is like the flipping kind for. And one kind is like for scooping the icing or whatever off the edge of a bowl and like getting it in, right. Anyway, regardless, spatulas, great toy. But like, that’s what we’re gonna play with. Right? So, for instance, for me, like I find, if I am going to bring something into a session, then it’s usually something that I think the family might already have.

But if I bring it, it’s like, oh, you mean you we can use a salad spinner in play? Oh, well, the speech therapist brought it. So it must be okay. Right. So that’s like sometimes a strategy that I use to like, get families more buy in to like, actually utilize the things that they have at home as play objects, right. Anyway, just a fun, just a fun little side.

Joanne: Yeah, no, that’s great!

Ayelet: I would love for you to just like outrightly name, what to you do you feel like is the difference between seeing clients versus treating clients? Because that was a really interesting note that you said, and I’d love for you to just talk a little bit more about that, if you can.

Joanne: Yeah, so I feel like… and I think I mentioned it before, because of the volume of people that were coming in, they were just coming in and I was doing the session. So I knew that that was taken care of. But just having the time – and time is so precious. And I’m figuring that out now, like time is a luxury. And we don’t talk about it enough. But when you have so many clients coming in, and there’s just… there’s enough time to grab something or think of a quick activity.

Whereas I feel like now, because I do have the luxury of time, I can sit down and like think about some creative things to do with my kids. And think about some creative ways to target their skills, and then give them carryover activity that is actually really functional to them and really invest a lot more time into my clients than I was before. Because another thing that we have to think about is the documentation. When you’re dealing with insurance, you kind of have to be like on your P’s and Q’s. Whereas I feel like I’m not spending, you know, that much time on my documentation. I’m not spending all of my time talking to reps and trying to figure out about a claim or this or that.

So I feel like I have more time to invest into my clients. And that looks like physical time sometimes, too, like sometimes the session is going really well. And I don’t want to stop and I don’t want to interrupt the kid because they’re doing so well. So we might go over a couple of minutes. And that’s okay, because I have the ability to time myself that way. And parents really appreciate that. Because sometimes in private practices, it does feel like at the 30 minute mark, they are out the door because you have someone else that you need to see.

So just given that extra time to really dive in do extra research. I have a client who has a complex and a rare diagnosis and just having that time to do extra research… and my family has told me, Wow, we’ve never had a practitioner actually take the time to read. Like, I was reading ASHA articles and I was sending to them and I was highlighting some notes and they said we’ve never actually had any of our practitioners do that for us and take the extra time to look into this. So I feel like I’m treating my clients in that way. Like I’m investing. I’m investing my clinical skills a lot more than I was before. I hope that makes sense.

Ayelet: Absolutely. I love that. I think it’s, I think it’s a really thorough answer. And yeah, I think time… time for you as the clinician, time as in helping a family reframe what this time is for, right? And reframe what we can do in a certain amount of time. As far as like, it’s not just the clinician comes in with their bag of toys and treats the child, it’s actually a family affair.

It’s, we’re utilizing this time that you’re already spending in the family to make it even more enriching, make this a language-rich environment, and help the family, the caregivers see that they can integrate everything that they’re doing with their child into their daily life there, and then participation to support communication in this case.

But if it was another kind of developmental therapy, it would be that as well. And that’s what the parent coaching model, routines based intervention, and bagless therapy are all about. So I just love, I love that. And I think time is is absolutely such an interesting piece. Because, in all of those ways, it’s it’s so important. I’d love to hear more, too, because you talked a bit about COVID, how much of an impact has the pandemic had on your outlook on therapeutic approaches?

Joanne: Well, a couple of things have changed. Clearly, our clients can’t see our faces. And so what I’ve had to do, which works, right, it works, because I’m already in the home. That’s another thing when I was at my practice, you know, the rooms are small, they have limits on how many people can be in there. And a lot of times parents would just take off and go, and come back at the 30 minute mark. So because we’re already at home, and I have my mask on, I’m asking, you know, for like my Arctic kids, or like my speech delay kids, I’m having the caregivers actually model, right? So they have to be an active participant because Oh, Miss Jo can’t see her mask off.

So parents are actually doing and caregivers are actually doing a lot of the modeling, which works out because we’re already at home, anyways. And because of the way that the session is structured, it is a parent coaching model. So parents are having to be there anyways. So the modeling, I feel like that’s helped a lot, you know, in comparison to what was happening in the clinic to what’s happening now. The parents are doing the coaching and… not the coaching, I’m doing the coaching! The parents are doing the modeling, which has been super, really helpful.

I think also because, you know, taking in toys, you’re kind of like risking transmitting things, that’s been really helpful, because I’m not bringing in toys. And because I’ve adopted that new mindset, I don’t have to bring in toys. So I think that’s really helped with COVID a lot. The part that was a little teensy bit nervous about was, you know, I’m going into people’s homes in the middle of a pandemic, but I’ve been able to keep safe. And I’ve told parents and I’m really strict about keeping my mask on.

And parents, they understand, I think they see the value of you coming into like coming to them and bringing the therapy to them. That’s huge for so many parents, especially parents who are busy or experiencing time poverty. So I think that’s been really helpful, even though it’s a little bit worrisome… But you know, fingers crossed, everything has been okay. Yeah. Is that what you were getting out? When you asked that?

Ayelet: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, really just open ended question about what your experience has been. And then we’ve talked a lot about different kinds of everyday items and things like that. So I would love it if you could share just a few of your own favorite therapy hacks when it comes to being creative now that you are following more of this, like parent coaching or bagless style of therapy.

Joanne: Yeah. So I’ve had a lot of sessions that in hindsight, it was like, Whoa, that was really kooky. But then it worked in the moment! So I have one of my kiddos, who… we played with a big candle and a little candle for 30 minutes. And he loved it! He scratched it, sniffed it, took it off of the stand that it was on, we rolled it around, we passed it back and forth. We talked about the big one and little one, and he absolutely loved it. And I know that grandma was sitting there like what the heck is happening, but he loved it.

We got lots of really good language out of him, he was able to say up and down, and we’re talking about a kid who has his own playroom and he has millions of toys and he has lots of aunts and uncles who just spoil him, but he wanted to play with a candle! And I got more language out of him playing with that candle because he likes to smell things. I got more language out of him working with that candle then like ever, ever, ever, ever, doing all of our sessions with all the things that he has!

I have another kiddo who just like picked up mirror and that’s what he wanted to play with. And so we played peekaboo. We talked about who we see in the mirror, we reflected other things off of the mirror, and he got a kick out of that. Absolutely loved that. Another kiddo who picked up the remote, really because he wanted to watch TV and I was interrupting his TV time because I walked in and I was like, Oh, well that’s gone. Because otherwise he would just be staring at the TV and completely ignoring me.

And so we played with the remote and there were lots of buttons on there. Some of the buttons were a little bit harder to push than others. Some of them were really squishy buttons. We opened up the battery pack in the back we took things out, we’d hold them and he absolutely loved it once again!

When parents realize that oh wow, he likes to play with the remote! Because you know, there’s like those fancy phone remotes are like there’s those fancy toy phones and parents will go out and buy them. And they make really cool noises, etc. But it’s like, Oh no, this is like your Time Warner Cable remote, and your kid loves it. And we’re doing so much… so much with it. So I feel like I’ve had pockets of that happening where my parents are really shocked and actually really excited because they’re like, oh, wow, we don’t need all of those things.

Then I look back at the session, and I’m like, oh, okay, that was pretty, that went pretty well wasn’t really expecting, that’s how it would have gone but works pretty well. Or sometimes you’ll you’ll think, you’ll have a plan in your head when you go into the session of oh, this is what we’re going to work on. But they happen to be interested in something else, then I’ll just dive into that.

When I used to work at a private practice, I never would have felt comfortable following a child’s lead. And I know that sounds terrible coming from a clinician, but I felt more comfortable knowing that it was an adult led activity because I knew what targets we can bring up. And I knew what to anticipate and accept would happen. And you know, the vocabulary targets we could use and everything like that. Versus where now I am.

And it’s still process! Right now I am in the process of accepting child led therapy and child led play, where sometimes I’m like, Well, I’m not really sure where this is going or like he’s really interested in this or she’s really interested in that and not really sure where it’s going. But just being confident enough in knowing that whatever happens, we’ll still be able to target skills. It doesn’t have to be super structured, but we’ll still be able to have fun and target skills, which I think having fun is like the number one priority, too. Yeah.

One thing to plug in, too, that I’ve stepped away from and I didn’t notice that I was doing, is writing goals about unpreferred activities. But I think that we all kind of go through moments as clinicians where we’re like, oh, my gosh, I can’t believe I used to write those goals. I used to write eye contact goals! Terrible, terrible stuff. But now like, I refuse to even see those goals. Because if it’s unpreferred, why are we doing this and also by replacing the expectation on children that they should tolerate unpreferred activities.

That’s something that I’ve stepped back away from, which also supports the whole child led approach to therapy, is that let’s let them do what they want to and what they’re interested in. Because if they’re enjoying it, then everybody’s happy. And chances are that you’ll actually be able to target more skills that way.

Ayelet: Right. And actually, that’s like, basically the definition of play, right? Like we know, that’s all of the like Early Childhood Education Research, all Early Learning Research, early intervention research, that points to the fact that young children are going to utilize play, right? I mean, you have all these quotes, right, from Maria Montessori and Fred Rogers, and all the people saying, like play is the work of the child, right? Literally, that’s how they learn is through play.

And when we let them explore, and we follow their interests, then we can provide the language around those things that they’re doing, how they’re moving, what it feels like, how it looks, what they might do next, and target all of those beautiful pieces of language and speech, as well. Right? How does it Oh, what is that word? Right? Like you mentioned the T’s earlier, right? Like, oh, let’s let’s see how many words that start with a /t/ we can fit into this activity? Right. And, and that does like it requires some reframes from the clinician. And also, we know that that is what is most, that is the most efficient and what’s what’s the adjective version of effective effictacious? Effica…. Regardless,

Joanne: You’re asking a person who speaks four languages, and I have no clue… Efficacious? I think that might be a word?

Ayelet: You’ve got two speech pathologists, who together could speak at least six or seven languages. We just can’t figure it out. You know, it’s effective.

Joanne: When when the words are coming, sometimes I honestly give up. I’m like, having a little bit of word retrieval issues, not really sure which language I’m trying to pull up, or if this is even a real word. So let’s just go ahead and talk about something else!

Ayelet: Or a medley of several different languages!

Joanne: Exactly, exactly. Oh, my gosh so funny.

Ayelet: Gosh, all right. Well, let’s hear about a few of your favorite resources to share with families or with other professionals who are hoping to approach early intervention in this way.

Joanne: Yes. I mean, besides Learn With Less®?

Ayelet: Oh, thank you.

Joanne: So Learn With Less® is definitely number one. I feel like we met each other in a very odd way because I was actually just using the hashtag #learnwithless because I was like, Oh, this is like what I’m doing. And I was like, Wait, this is a whole program.

Ayelet: It’s a thing!

Joanne: Yeah, I was like this is a whole thing! And then I was like, Oh, let me follow her. And then we got connected by like, some weird happenstance or something. I think I might have tagged you in something. So definitely the Learn With Less® curriculum I feel like would be so beneficial for so many people. I myself have fun and into the category of more toyless play. So I also have lots of different resources. And I usually direct a lot of my families to a lot of really cool Instagramers. And a lot of blogs just to kind of like get out information. I don’t have anything in particular.

But if I see something, I’ll just kind of like shoot it out to parents, I’ll ask them like, if they’ve read this or like, I just read this really cool article, or I just saw this really cool reel, which like, reels are so quick and easy. And parents can read them, or watch them. So I’ll just send it to them. I don’t have any like particular go to resource, but yours is definitely your Instagram page. And your website is definitely one and I’m definitely moving away from Toy therapy or like Toy directed therapy. So I also refer them to some of my blogs.

Ayelet: Yeah, well, we would love obviously, to share those things in the show notes. But in general, where can people find what you’re doing? You know, where you are on the internet and all the amazing content that you’re creating?

Joanne: Yes. So I have my information is not very consistent. But I started out as @thespeechpathologist on Instagram…

Ayelet: Which is the best… and most amazing handle!

Joanne: The name is so good that I refuse to change it to my company name. I’m like, No, I like this one. And when people look up “speech pathologist,” it just comes right up. So I am @thespeechpathologist on Instagram, which I don’t even know how I got that name. And nobody had it before me, it just, boop! It happens. But on my website, I am Koze Speech Therapy. So K-O-Z-E speech therapy dot com, and my Facebook is the same it’s Koze Speech Therapy. And then all of my contact information is on my website.

Ayelet: Amazing.

Joanne: If I can leave your listeners with one thing, I don’t remember who exactly had that statistic. But I did a training that was called Keeping Babies and Children in Mind. And it’s a seven part training and it’s actually offered for free. I think as long as you’re in early childhood, you can just sign up on the Montclair University website. And the statistic was that if you see a child for 2 30-minute sessions, or one one-hour session. You’re seeing them once you’re going to that house once it was mostly geared towards early intervention, so you’re seeing them for one hour in the week.

But children typically spend upwards of 84 hours with caregivers and with parents in the home or in their natural setting. So I thought for me, that was a big mind frame shift for me. Because when you really look at these numbers, the families and the caregivers are spending the most amount of time with the child. So why wouldn’t you direct your therapy and why wouldn’t you shape your therapy to support them? Especially since we know that parents and caregivers are their children’s first teachers? Why wouldn’t you shape your therapy to support them so that it really feels like they’re getting 85 hours of therapy?

You know, like once you’ve given all the resources so for me that was really big, and then I understood okay, you know, pulling out Potato Head or like Pop the Pig and like doing that, and then taking my stuff and leaving. That’s not very helpful. So I think that one to 84 hours for me just kind of blew my mind because I never thought of it in like a numerical way. Sometimes you need numbers to be able to, to get it. So I wanted to leave everyone with that statistic.

Ayelet: That’s awesome. Thank you. It’s so true. I mean, because again, it’s like that, that half an hour or one hour of an entire week. Think about how many hours there are in a single week that that the caregiver spends with that child. And so if we can, it’s the adage of teaching a person to fish right or giving them a fish versus teaching a fish. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Teaching fish teaching how to fish. Thank you. Yeah. We’re on fire here today. Joanne, thank you so much for coming onto the show today. It was so great having you.

Joanne: Of course. Thank you so much Ayelet!

Ayelet: Are you an educator or therapist looking for new ways to serve families, to use your knowledge to support new parents and caregivers in your community, I’d love for you to check out the Learn With Less® Facilitator Training & Certification Program.

When you submit your application, we’ll make sure you’re a good fit. If you are, I’ll be gifting you my exclusive, private training all about how to create lasting impact leading “caregiver & me” classes with a high quality, evidence-based, “plug and play” program that will have families coming back again and again.

All you need to do to get an invitation, is fill out the quick application form at https://learnwithless.com/certification, today.

The post Why is Parent Coaching Important in Early Intervention, with Joanne Cazeau appeared first on Learn With Less.

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. 

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

There are little tools we have. We, who work with little people, have tricks of the trade. One of them is the ability to tempt your small child into communicating.

On this episode of Learn With Less, Ayelet tells you all about this early communication strategy, known as “sabotage,” but also discusses why it’s a tool to tempt your child – not to “make” your child do anything.

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.

How to create your own box of communicative temptations using the things 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

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

Today I want to talk about one of the strategies I use to promote early communication, both as a mother and as a therapist. This particular strategy has a bit of a funny name: we call it “sabotage.”

Essentially, the idea is that the adult creates a situation wherein the child has to communicate to solve a problem. You are obstructing their path in some way.

Now, since you are purposefully creating a situation wherein your little one has to solve a problem, it’s very important that you do this kindly! It’s ok if your child becomes mildly frustrated, but we don’t want to make our little ones feel like they are failing.

This relates to our discussion in my episode, “Not Too Much Or Too Little: Channeling Goldilocks,” and the fact that infants and toddlers are constantly making assessments about whether something is so difficult that it’s not even worth attempting. We want to make expectations that are within their reach, but at a slightly higher level than where they’re comfortable.

The technical term for this is called “scaffolding,” and I think it’s a wonderful visual image – think of creating a little boost for them to get to the next step up. We don’t want the next step up to seem too far away, but we want to expect slightly more than what they’re currently doing.

Want to support families with infants and toddlers in a community-based setting, while supporting yourself?

There are many ways to set up the opportunity to sabotage your older infant or toddler to encourage them to initiate communication. A nice way to think of your role as the “setter-upper” of a sabotage situation is that you are being silly – a routine with a step missing, or a toy with an essential part missing becomes over the top and ridiculous if your little one points out that something’s “wrong,” and you can react with humor.

Movement and gesture, song and rhyme are all wonderful tools to use with infants and toddlers to help set up an environment conducive to learning, play and interaction. We spoke earlier about setting up “temptations” for communication and using the strategy of sabotage. Now, I think this strategy is a wonderful one when used kindly and as a tool for learning.

But that word, sabotage really brings up some negative connotations, as well, as it is defined as the deliberate obstruction or disruption of another. I think perhaps, a better way to think of this strategy is, in a way, a technique for scaffolding: we want our little ones to get to the “next level,” so we place small challenges in front of them to assist in their learning, and to create new opportunities for them. In other words – we have to make it a fun and positive challenge.

We spoke about this a bit earlier in our episode, and I modeled a way to make yourself seem silly and ridiculous. In episodes past, we’ve talked about the importance of getting down and dirty with your “silly self,” because it can be a great way to connect and make yourself more interesting. This is no different.

If you put your foot down and create a situation wherein your child MUST perform OR ELSE, then the strategy will most likely fail. This is a communication temptation – you are tempting your child to do something. Not forcing them. So, just to be clear, I’m not supporting an “all or nothing” approach. I’m suggesting you try something new out, and see how it goes.

Support families to feel confident and build family capacity – with a high quality, evidence-based family enrichment program.

We also want to encourage small steps toward new skills. If your child has never used the pointing gesture, this is what you can work toward… by modeling that gesture a lot in lots of activities you do or interactions you have, and then as a suggestion that this is what you expect from her.

If your child has never said the word, “open,” but is starting to use words or imitate the first sound of a word, work towards that! In other words, we’re not using the art of sabotage to make unrealistic expectations on our little ones. We actually want to use the strategy of sabotage to get our little ones to initiate or do things that they’ve already done before – you are putting this strategy in place to help push them towards a skill that you know they can be successful doing!

And if your strategy and your modeling and your set-up of this activity doesn’t work, that’s ok! Try again another time, or in another way! For a clear example of the set-up of an activity that utilizes the strategy of sabotage, and ideas for how to modify your expectations for different developmental levels, visit the corresponding activity, my DIY Box of Communication Temptations.

On that note, we don’t want to be using this strategy all the time, in every activity we do, all day long. This goes back to being kind, and to trying different things at different times. We don’t want to ask our kids to “perform” all day – that’s not terribly interactive, either.

And for some little ones, no matter how kind or silly you might try to be, the fact that you’re creating a new challenge where there was not one before might make her really, really mad and turn her off completely. We don’t want that. We want moderate difficulty, tools in place to make it easier, and a present and kind caregiver.

One last note on this – sabotage is most effective when a little one is able to engage in joint attentional acts. We’ve spoken about joint attention in previous episodes, in my bestselling books, and in our “caregiver & me” classes using the Learn With Less® curriculum – it’s that focus between you and your child not only on an object, but also a recognition that you’re both engaged with that object or activity. So, making eye contact, getting your attention with a touch or gesture, vocalizing or verbalizing, etc.

Bring families together (virtually or in-person) so they can learn with you and from one another!

Bowen, C. (2011). Supporting speech and language progress in children with CAS or sCAS. Retrieved from http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/ on June 24, 2016.

Mize, L. (2008). A Little Frustration CAN Go A Long Way… Using Sabotage and Witholding Effectively to Entice Your Toddler To Talk. Retrieved from http://www.teachmetotalk.com/ on June 22, 2016.

The post How To Use Sabotage To Help Your Young Child Communicate appeared first on Learn With Less.

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 today
• The values Diandra feels she is instilling when she thinks about why she’s raising her children to be bilingual
• What parts of Diandra’s identity are important for her to share with her children through language
• How 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 challenging
• A few of Diandra’s favorite resources for families hoping to share bilingualism or multilingualism with their families

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.

Diandra Instagram 

Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest

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.

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.

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, you affect and you reach families from all different backgrounds, of course, because we’re online, and so it’s wonderful to be able to create content that affects people from all over the world. But I’d love to hear a little bit more about that sort of awareness and cultural responsiveness that your work has made you more understanding and aware of and what role play has in that?

Diandra: Yeah, okay, so the first thing that kind of comes to mind. So, one of the things that we used to do with families is kind of explore this idea of boundaries. And no matter what I mean, I think about culture as kind of like your heritage, where you come, from what you are accustomed to, but I also think about – and people forget about this! – I think about family culture. Because your own family has a way of doing things and they have a way of understanding things. And that becomes part of who you are. And sometimes that shows up more than your actual culture like whether you’re Dominican or whether you’re Mexican, you know, and so..

Ayelet: Yeah, and it can all be rooted within a larger culture, sometimes.

Diandra: Yeah, sometimes. And so, one of the things that was very interesting to explore was boundaries. And so how do boundaries exist in different family systems? And how do different people understand boundaries, and what is comfortable for you might be uncomfortable for you. Or maybe your parents did this when you were growing up, but now you want to do something different with your kids. And then you have to communicate that. So, how do you communicate that to everybody so that everybody can respect each other’s boundaries? And so, with young children, one of the things that we used to do is we used to think of boundaries as the size of a hula hoop.

So, we would do exercises where we would have hula hoops in a room, and then have kids pick out a hula hoop that spoke to them, that attracted them, the color that they liked. So they would go and sit inside the hula hoop that they liked. And then we would relate that to comfort, like, how do you feel in there? Do you feel safe? Do you feel unsafe? How do you know what if… and then we would do a lot of what if this person’s hula hoop was right next to you? Would that be something that makes you feel comfortable or uncomfortable? We did a lot of question and role playing like that. And then like, what if this hula hoop was on top of yours? And we would do this even with families? Like, what if this one was on top of yours? How would that feel? And then we would do a whole activity and a debrief where we would process, like for some people, that would just be too much, too much closeness? And what does that then look like when we’re talking about physical space? When we’re talking about emotional closeness? Like, would it feel different if it’s like, we’re just very close, and we talk about all these things, versus you’re like, in my face, so close to me. And we did a lot of analogies and a lot of observation.

It was playful. You know, it was funny, like, Oh, my God, what do you what do you mean that that, you know, hula hoop is going to be on top of me?! How silly is that! But then, we then took that, we had a visual that we could go off of, and then talk about this concept in a more meaningful way for kids, you know? It was funny and it was active, and it made sense to them. So then they could use words like, you’re too close to my space, or you’re too close. You’re in my hula hoop. That’s one of the things that they could say, which is so cute for kids to say, and then what someone’s like, What do you mean, you’re too close to me, and then being able to give them language that they could use practically, or like, let me show you, if I put a hula hoop over over myself, you’re in here, and I don’t want you to be in here. We did that also with bubbles, we would blow bubbles in a room.

Then we would say, what would happen if you touch it, and then the bubble will pop. And so let’s pretend that we have a bubble and we’re inside the bubble, what would happen if someone touched it, they were so close that they could touch it. And then they would talk about that experience. And then it allow for them later to be able to then communicate that when you’re so close to me, it feels like you’re invading my personal space.

So that was some of the things that I think everyone could understand and relate to, that physical boundary. And then we could talk more about other kinds of boundaries, like emotional boundaries, and how to set them. But it was a way for families and parents, it was like a common language for all when we were all playing, and something that they could replicate at home in a very inexpensive way. Because you know, we could give them bubbles, but they could also get bubbles even at the dollar store. And then…

Ayelet: You can replace a hula hoop with like standing inside of a laundry basket or whatever it is.

Diandra: Correct, or inside a box, or you know, it would be very simple things that they could do at home that would still communicate personal space, safety, security, and talk about how do we feel we’re in this box? We’re protected. And that’s what we want in our family. And so that’s kind of a two examples that kind of pop in my mind that were very easy for families to do at home, but also were very meaningful for kids.

When we were thinking about how do we give them language, they need language to be able to convey how they feel. And maybe they felt like different people have different sized hula hoops. Some people, the older they get their hula hoop gets bigger, and they’re able to tolerate more people in close proximity. Like when they go to a concert, when they are at the movie theaters. There are different events where you are required to have more people around you. But there are times that we don’t need people that are around us, like when we go to the bathroom. And so we were able to kind of then give context using these very practical exercises that we were doing in the office.

Ayelet: I love it, because again, just to drive this home to everyone who’s listening. Play is the way, right? Play is the way that you frame it because that is the common language. I love how you said that. So alright, veering back into the world of bilingualism, which is really primarily the topic that we want to chat about and how it relates to play. I wanted to ask you, too, like from your own personal perspective, what are some of the values that you’re instilling when you think about why you’re raising your children to be bilingual? Because we talked a little bit about this as far as like your identity and why that was so important to you, when you were like, I need this, I need my children to also be bilingual, I want that for them. What parts of your own identity are important to share with them through language?

Diandra: The first thing that comes to mind is my parents do not speak English. And so, I am very close to my family, I’m very close to my parents, very close to my sibling. I love that my kids get to see that members of our family speak only one language and some members of our family speak both languages, and that in order to communicate with the members of the family that don’t speak both languages, we need to use different languages. And so I wanted them to understand that relationship. And that it’s not just us lots of people in the world that speak other languages! And I always say that if we were watching TV, and then something will pop up in a different language, and I’ll be like, Oh, that is a different language, you know, like Spanish, English is the language and then Italian is another language. And then I tell them, you know, in another in another country, there’s a little kit that speaks mainly Italian, English and Spanish.

So it’s very important to me, for them to understand that there are other people in the world that speak other languages, and that not only Spanish and English exist, even though those are the two that we prioritize. So that’s one of the things that I guess for me, I always was aware of this, because in the Dominican Republic, we share our country with many people from different nationalities, but also right next door, our neighbors are Haiti. And so they speak French Creole. And so we were always exposed to French Creole. And we, I was always aware that there were not only Spanish, but English, but French Creole. And then whoever I interacted with or saw, I knew that they were speaking a different language that wasn’t any of these three that I saw on a regular basis. And so I was always aware of that. And I really, really want my kids to have that awareness. Because in our community right now, they’re not going to be exposed to that very much unless we go out of our ways to show them.

Exposure is one of the things that is very important to me, whether that’s through books, movies, whether that is us going out of our ways, and seeking out opportunities that they can hear other languages. So I would say that, so it’s not just like, I want them to dominate and be able to be fluent in both of the languages. But I want them to also be aware and be sensitive to other people speaking other languages, because that’s the world we live in. And it wouldn’t be fair for them to only think like, oh, that person should speak the languages that I speak. I don’t want that mentality for them. I think it’s very important to want acceptance and then give acceptance.

Diandra: I want to just pick out another thing that you said within there, because you said exposure is the is that key, but also in, in what you said is connection, right? And it’s not just connection to the two languages, its connection to the people who speak both of those languages, and to the understanding, again, that not everybody speaks those two languages, and that there are so many languages in the world, and that those are all representative of different people and different connections.

Ayelet: Yes, that’s awesome.

Diandra: And so I think that and then this – when I think about language, and I think, what do I want to give them? I want to give them language, food and traditions.

Ayelet: Yeah! Language, food, and traditions – beautiful, yes. Okay.

Diandra: So for food, I think about like, you know, my husband and I go out of our ways to prepare Dominican dishes. My husband has learned how to prepare many Dominican dishes. And sometimes I think I’m like, Oh, my God, you cook better than I do? How is it possible? I’m like, is my mom teaching him secretly how to prepare this? Because how can he do this better than I? So we go out of our ways to incorporate that food piece because I think the food provides its own specific language that you can really tap into and inviting our kids into cooking with us and being aware with what goes into what dish I think is just a very special way to let your culture really show up and really give that back. And it’s something that also goes into tradition!

There are certain things that you think about when you think about Thanksgiving, you think about a certain set of foods that you are going to have at Thanksgiving dinner, or you know, at Christmas, and we’ve done a really good job in blending both of our cultures and being able to incorporate a little bit of both into even what traditional holidays… because my kids are, they’re bicultural, you know, the medical and they’re American and so and I want both of those cultures to always exist and always dance with each other and never compete. That’s what, if I can give my kids anything it’s like to embrace both of their cultures and to let them be together.

You know, I had said something to someone before that sometimes I get a sense of Spanish and English being in competition like that is sometimes what it can feel like when you’re raising a bilingual child in a majority language community can feel like the languages are at odds. So when I think about my own bilingualism, I see them as yin and yang. They’re best friends. They’re constantly interacting with each other. And that’s what I want for my kids when it comes to the languages and the culture.

Ayelet: I love that, Diandra. I just love how you said that the It’s a dance, if they are constantly dancing with each other. Love it. It’s great.

Diandra: Thank you. So that’s kind of when I think about what’s most important, I want them to be aware and connected to themselves in the larger world, that there are other people in the world that speak other languages different than them, or similar to them. And neither is better. You know, neither, it’s not better to be monolingual or bilingual or trilingual, multilingual, all of it has its positive things, and we have to embrace them.

We have to be respectful and sensitive towards people, it is a privilege to be able to pass down or to give your child a language that they don’t actually need to survive. And so I want to always remain sensitive and not feel like everyone should be raising bilingual kids. I think we should be all racing conscious kids, kids that are aware that there are other options and other things in the world and other people, and we can celebrate it all.

Ayelet: Oh, man. That’s it. Exactly. There’s nothing else. Okay, so on that note, let’s hear just a few of the things that are working well for you! These things that you’ve identified as far as the playfulness, the musicality, and creating community and things like that, in your family. And then some of the things that are like presenting themselves as more difficult because you mentioned like it is, yes, it is a privilege to raise our children, bilingual, multilingual, multicultural, as well. So what are the things that are going well, and easy or easy for you? What’s working? And then what are some of the things that are showing themselves to be a little harder?

Diandra: So, start with the positive. So I’ll start with what’s going on. So what’s going really well is that we’re still playing, I think my kids have a pretty good association with “Spanish is fun. And we love Spanish.” And both of my kids are Spanish dominant. So that means that they both speak predominantly Spanish, my oldest who’ll be three in February is very aware that there are multiple languages, he’s very aware that there’s English and Spanish, and he’ll say, how do you say this in English? Or if someone tells him something in English, he’ll be like, how do you say that in Spanish? And he’s very curious, and I love that.

So I think like we planted the seeds of curiosity about language, or even like when someone is speaking not Spanish, not English, he’ll ask, what are they saying? Like, what are they speaking? Which is what I wanted. So he knows that other things exist. So that is going really well. They’re very engaged in language learning, they love learning, they love playing. My husband’s Spanish fluency has skyrocketed because he is immersed in Spanish all day, every day.

Ayelet Marinovich: And let’s just call attention to that. Like he’s not a native Spanish speaker. He’s learned Spanish.

Diandra: Yes, he’s not a native Spanish speaker. He when I met him in college, he had taken Spanish in high school, like most people in the States. And so he was aware, he knew that I was speaking Spanish, and he was aware and he had worked for a while at Disney. So his ear was very open to language from that experience, but our relationship was mostly in English, except for when he interacted with my families, l, he would say little things here and there. But since having children, his Spanish, like, I mean, he says, like Spanish is my love language with my children. Like, that’s all he’s ever spoken to them.

And so he really, really connects on that level, like Spanish to him means the relationship he has with his kids. And so he will, and he says, like, I’ll continue to work on it, because I want to preserve that, like, that’s how I feel connected to them. So even like, sometimes I’ll be like, Oh, well, when we’re around family, we’ve we’ve explored the idea of like switching to English while we’re with family, and he’s just like, it just feels so unnatural. And like, I know, because we’re so used to it, but we’re figuring out what we’re going to do with that. Very interesting. I’m fascinated by that. Because I’m so you’re switching back from my whole life that it’s easy for me to like, it feels unnatural, like awkward, I guess a little bit weird, like speaking in English to my kid, because they’re looking at me, like, what are you doing? But I can do it. I don’t think twice about it. But he gets more like hung up like, Wait, that’s not what we do. Like, that’s not my relationship with them. I don’t really want to do that. And so it’s so interesting to hear that from a non native speaker that they feel so deeply connected to language that it means the relationship they have with their child.

Ayelet: That’s incredible. Yeah.

Diandra: So I’ve got really well I love seeing that relationship just blossom in another language. So I always say it’s so interesting to see you parent and your second language and so he’s he’s pretty fluent. Yeah, I always be Yeah, I’m like I’m so shocked that like I didn’t I guess we never, you never know what to expect, you know, sometimes, for many families, it can feel overwhelming for the parent that isn’t a native speaker to now have to do this, you know, in the language that they don’t feel most comfortable in. But we have seen it, that it can work, but it is it is a lot, a lot, a lot of work. And so I guess that’s kind of where, if I think about the difficulty, it’s like, it’s a lot of work to stay present, and to stay on it. Because at the end of the day, we all have so much English practice. And like even for myself, after I moved from the Dominican Republic, my professional interactions, my professional education, my trainings have all been in English. And my point person will always continue to be my parents and my grandma. That’s who I speak Spanish to.

Prior to having kids, they were my only – then whenever I had family here and there that I spoke to in Spanish, that’s my whole Spanish, you know, since moving to the United States. And now I’m back to full time Spanish and sometimes English. So it’s very interesting how fluid that goes. But it is difficult. It is a lot of work. A lot of times it falls on us because we’re the only input that they have, especially in a pandemic where you don’t have the ability to interact with other people or travel. So it’s been that’s I guess, the difficult part like navigating that whole process that it’s all on us. We’re the only input, finding a large community of other parents who are either Spanish speaking or even non native, but raising their kids bilingually. That’s been tricky. We don’t have a lot of that.

We’ve been lucky to find three other families in our area, that we’ve connected with but even that, even though we love the connection, and everything like that, it’s hard because everybody has different bilingual goals for their kids. And everybody does bilingualism in the way that fits their own family. Sometimes it’s not the same as yours. And sometimes like even though my family language plan might be minority language at home, someone else’s might be one parent, one language, or it might be mixed. But at the end of the day, no matter what anyone’s family language plan, what I love is that my kid gets to see my kids, both of them, get to see that other people are also speaking other languages in their home, and that they’re able to be, they can connect on that level of like, we do things different than maybe someone else. And that’s I think, that’s a special thing, when we find someone who’s going through the same things as us, we feel seen, and we feel that we’re not the only ones and that is so powerful for people to stay connected and rooted in what’s important to them.

Ayelet: Let’s just also say again, just to emphasize none of those ways of doing it like as in both parents speaking the minority language at home, or as we might call it L1 – language one, versus one language two, right? And one parent, one language, for instance, which just just to call out to people who are maybe not as familiar with these terms. One parent one language is just as it sounds as in, one, like Diandra would be speaking Spanish. And for instance, maybe her partner would be speaking English, if that was the way that we’re doing it, for instance, and that there is no right or wrong way. It is the right way for your family.

Diandra: For sure. It’s the right way for your family. And each way has different results. But again, it all goes back to your own goals. You’re like, well, you want to get out of it. And so people have to do what works for them. And in different seasons, people change their plans. Yeah, it’s so fun that it’s just a plan, it’s a plan for right now. But it could be – we might have a different plan once they start school or, you know, life changes! And so you never know. That’s kind of like the fun part. I I enjoy that we’re so committed to our plan, but it is difficult for other people to understand for your language plan sometimes so what your family wants to do.

Because you know, there is always concern there sometimes I guess concern around the English because at the end of the day, most kids in the United States go to school in English, and so we’ve experienced a lot of commentary around well what about English or are you not nervous about English? Is he going to be delayed? Are they going to be… there’s just a lot of misinformation out there when it comes to bilingualism because it’s not really the norm in the United States. And so we’ve had to spend time educating ourselves so that we can advocate on behalf of our children but also educating other people and that can feel exhausting sometimes to be honest, it can feel really exhausting having to defend something that you know is important to you and that also is going to be okay. So yes I think that that has been difficult for me and my husband too.

Ayelet: That is hard. That is hard and I want to just say also like to point out something that you said the Diandra which is that is not done norm in the United States. There are many places, your own upbringing included, where bilingualism, multilingualism is the norm. And just to also clarify that delay and disorder, like unless there is any kind of delay or disorder, for instance, presenting itself in that first language, there’s not going to be in the second language. So that in and of itself, just to clarify, is a misnomer.

Diandra: Yeah, bilingualism does not cause delays direct speech delay, it does not cause any kind of delay, whatever, you can master one language, it translate to the next language if you were taught that, but kids can’t produce things that they’re not taught. So you can’t expect a Spanish speaking child to know how to say a word in English if they’re not taught that word. Yeah, this that, that can happen. Babies can’t produce language unless they’re taught language. And so it’s the same thing with your wherever speaking toddler,

Ayelet: Yeah, right, right. And like all of the things that we’ve been discussing this entire process, your toddler, for instance, is very much aware of different languages. That is a wonderful, that’s exactly where he should be right? Like, that’s amazing. Anyway, I just want to clarify all of that. And that that is, like you said, that is not the norm in the United States. But that does not mean that again, back to the awareness of different cultures with different experiences and different language models, just because one place does it one way doesn’t mean that it’s the only way to do it.

Diandra: Yeah. So I guess that has been just something that for me, who was raised bilingual, and who was raised where like, both of my languages were celebrated always. And my parents even tried for us to learn French, you know, we started learning it in ninth grade in the Dominican Republic, just like kids started learning Spanish, but I already had two languages when I was starting to learn a third language. And so if it was up to my parents, I would have continue on with that, but I was good with my Spanish and English. But I think that I was raised that you celebrate any language, extra language ability or acquisition that your child has. And so to then trying to raise bilingual children in the United States and then being interfaced with… it feels like a little bit of pushback like for why doesn’t he speak English?

First, it’s not the it’s not the problem isn’t to speak, to speak more than one language. The problem that I keep feeling is actually the root of the problem, if I put my therapists thinking cap on, I would see like, it seems like the problem is that they’re not speaking English first. If they were speaking English first. And then Spanish was the language that we then were introducing later, it would look different, but because Spanish is the language first and English is going to come second, there’s this uncomfortable feeling around it, which I don’t know, I don’t I try not to think too much about it.

But you feel it, you feel it when you know, you’re at the grocery store, and you’re speaking Spanish and someone’s looking at you weird or in a different way. Or when you’re in no English, mostly monolingual setting and it’s English, and it’s a group setting, and you like turn, and you’re talking to your child and the language that you both communicate, and and everyone is kind of wondering, why are you not also speaking to them English, even though you know, you have your own family plan and stuff. So that is, that’s been the interesting kind of thing.

For me, it’s been an eye opening experience. And that’s why kind of I called it that, because my parents want to talk to them about this. They’re like, what, like, they don’t even can’t even relate. They’re like, we never worried about Spanish or English, or one taking over one causing a problem. Like, we just wanted you to have more than one. And so, it’s so interesting what their bilingual parenting experience was, and then what my bilingual parenting experience is raising bilingual children. Yeah. And so it just, it’s interesting to have that perspective, and that’s kind of what’s led me to do more of the supportive mental health content on Bilingual Playdate for parents that’s really resonating with a lot of people, because it’s very hard to go against the grain and to stay rooted in that this is going to be worth that this is going to, you know, yield the resource that I want.

And for my research and educating myself on what that process is like for people here, because I didn’t grow up in the United States, so I don’t know what that must have been like for a lot of people. But what I have started to really understand is that a lot of immigrant parents are pushed to not pursue the home language with their children, because of this fear that they won’t learn English, they’ll have an accent, they won’t be able to be understood. And a lot of language loss has happened as a result of that. And it breaks my heart, and so if I can do anything to support other families like mine who are in the trenches right now trying to figure out what the best way is to support their child and to keep their home language alive. That’s what I want to do.

Whether that’s through play whether that is through I see you, I hear you, I’m here with you. Whether that is through send me a message let’s connect let’s think about outside the box. Let me connect it to other people that are professionals and know the information about this. I’ll do whatever. I want to protect… I, it breaks my heart to think that there are generations of families that can’t communicate with each other because someone felt that incorporating another language would be a threat to English or to whatever the majority language was at that place. Yeah.

Ayelet: All right. Well, on that note, let’s hear we’d love for you to share a few of your favorite resources, including Bilingual Playdate, for instance, for families hoping to share bilingualism, multilingualism with their families.

Diandra: Yeah, so I’ll go through the points that I talked about, and then who I would go to. So on Instagram, there is an account by Rebeca Imberg, she actually lives in Germany and she is a trilingual mom. She speaks Spanish (first language), German, and English and her account is @biliki_ds when I’ll send you that information too.

Ayelet: We’ll put it in the show notes for sure.

Diandra: Okay, perfect. So she is a linguist she is who I would 1,000% and anyone to who is thinking about bilingualism and wants to create a family language plan. That is who I learned family language plan from, that who I go to and I have questions about what we’re doing, if this is a strategy we need to do or if she should be nervous and what to do with, when it comes to the time for school. So that’s where I would call Rebecca is a wealth of information.

Also go to Kayla Diaz from bilinguitos. So she is also a linguist. She also talks about family language planning, but she also offers Spanish Immersion School Online and so there’s a lot of Spanish play so right up our alley when it comes to Spanish intentional play and then also having a community because you can have your child so my oldest has done some of her classes and he can see other kids speak Spanish and say, Oh my god, Mom! There’s another kid that speak Spanish. And I know there are many kids that speak Spanish, I promise you. It is not just you or like your two other friends that live here. There’s so many I promise. And so it’s so helpful. She is parent & me like baby classes says that families can join us.

So I really I really like Rebecca, Kayla, to connect I love Klaudia Johnson from laleo.bilingual.therapy and she is also another speech language therapist, like you. But she focuses on bilingual language development and she will scream at the top of the mountains that bilingualism does not cause any language delays. And so if anyone is curious or has any concern regarding their child’s bilingualism and their language development, that’s who I would refer to or go to.

And then obviously Bilingual Playdate, but I also create bilingual resources Spanish and English I help creator and translate, I guess, more like translating so Mikaela Martinez from Raising Little Goose. She is a project based teacher, and she creates educational resources for parents and I guess teachers could use also in their classrooms. And so me and her connected and I’m working on translating many of her resources so that Spanish speaking families can have access to it because not many of us will be able to send our kids to school in Spanish. But we can do these things at home and we can continue to incorporate play at home and keep our language alive.

Ayelet: Beautiful. Oh my gosh, I can’t wait for people to check out all of these amazing resources. I was so happy to see I’m already following most of those people on Instagram as well. So go check out all of those amazing accounts and resources. There’s so much for all of you. Diandra, is there anything else that you would like to share? I’m so pleased that we’ve had this opportunity to chat.

Diandra: Oh my god, me too. I’m so excited that we were able to do this and that we’re raising awareness and talking more about this because it’s so important for this message to get out there. The only thing I can think about is, I just want to send whoever’s listening, whether you are a bilingual family yourself or raising bilingual children or you know a bilingual person just to take the time to give yourself a pat on the back and say, you’re doing the best job with your child and their bilingualism, and you know, it is hard work and it’s going to take a lot of your time and perseverance to keep doing it but it’s going to be worth it.

I have never felt regret from speaking two languages and being able to help multiple people like I’ve never, you know, there’s not going to be a sense of regret and so I just want to continue to encourage people to do that to give that gift and and to celebrate you because it is – so much falls on the parents, so much falls on the family, and I want it to be known that the parents are at the core of whether a language can be passed down or not.

Ayelet: Thank you for that. Everyone, please go and join Diandra over @bilingualplaydate on Instagram and see all of the amazing things that she puts into the world. We’re so excited to see you next time. Thank you.

Diandra  Thank you.

Ayelet: Are you an educator or therapist looking for new ways to serve families, to use your knowledge to support new parents and caregivers in your community, I’d love for you to check out the Learn With Less® Facilitator Training & Certification Program. When you submit your application, we’ll make sure you’re a good fit. If you are, I’ll be gifting you my exclusive, private training all about how to create lasting impact leading “caregiver & me” classes with a high quality, evidence-based, “plug and play” program that will have families coming back again and again. All you need to do to get an invitation, is fill out the quick application form at learnwithless.com/certification

Now, I’d love to know more about you: does this work call to you? Do you already serve families in your community in a similar way? Send me a direct message on Instagram – I’m @learnwithless and I’d love to hear from you!

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