Talking Toddlers

Your baby didn't ask for a nursery full of gear. She asked for you.

In this episode, Erin breaks down three of the most common baby products on the market — containers, weighted blankets, and white noise machines — and explains exactly why, after nearly 40 years of clinical practice, misusing them concerns her deeply.

You'll learn:

• Why babies need movement, not containment
• The connection between floor time, gross motor development, and speech — and why it's more profound than most parents realize
• What co-regulation actually means and why your presence outperforms every product on the market
• The clinical origins of weighted blankets — and what happened when they crossed from therapy rooms to Amazon
• What the research actually says about white noise and the developing auditory brain

This isn't about guilt. It's about giving you the information the marketing never will.

📥 Free resource:
The Top 10 Essential Skills Every Baby Needs Before Talking

👉 Book a Discovery Call 

These are FREE, one-to-one conversations designed to help determine what to focus on first.

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DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: [email protected]
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

If you’ve ever wondered, “Should my child be talking by now?”  or "Is he talking enough?" -- this episode will give you clarity.

Before children use words, they build the skills that make talking possible.

In this episode, I walk you through the 7 stages of play in the first three years—and how each one helps your child learn to talk, listen, and engage.

You’ll learn:

•  What your child should be doing before words 
•  How play builds attention, understanding, and connection 
•  Simple ways to support development in everyday routines 

This is not about doing more.

It’s about understanding what actually matters—and using what you’re already doing at home.

📥 Free resource:
The Top 10 Essential Skills Every Baby Needs Before Talking

👉 Book a Discovery Call 

These are FREE, one-to-one conversations designed to help determine what to focus on first - and whether a focused 6-week parent coaching format would be helpful for your family at this time. Not evaluations, not therapy - just space to reflect and be heard.

========

DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: [email protected]
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

"My toddler isn't listening."

If you've said those words - or thought them - this episode is for you.

In this episode of Talking Toddlers, speech-language pathologist Erin (with nearly 40 years in early intervention) unpacks one of the most misunderstood parts of toddler development: 

listening.

Spoiler: it's not what you think. And it's probably not what your toddler is lacking.

Erin breaks down why following directions is one of the most cognitively complex things we ask of young children - what's actually happening in their developing brain when we give a simple direction like "go get your shoes" - and why inconsistency is not defiance. It's development.

You'll also hear a story Erin tells on herself - the night she gave her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter a full lecture about "blessed language skills" and "remarkable comprehension"... and was met with a look of pure bewilderment. Because even the expert gets it wrong sometimes.

In this episode:

→  Why listening is a skill, not a behavior — and what that changes

→  What the developing prefrontal cortex actually means for your daily life

→  10 practical, daily habits that genuinely build listening (backed by 40 years on the therapy floor)

→  Why "fewer words" works better than any explanation

→  How routines and repetition build understanding from the inside out

→  The difference between "won't" and "can't" — and why it matters deeply

Whether your child is 18 months or 4 years old, this episode will change the way you see those moments when they just… don't listen.

And if you find yourself wanting more personalized support - Erin offers Discovery Calls for families who want clarity on where their child is and what they actually need right now. 

Not therapy. Not a diagnosis. Just a real conversation with someone who has been in this field for decades.

You're not alone in this.

🎧 Subscribe to Talking Toddlers wherever you listen to podcasts.

📥 Free resource:
The Top 10 Essential Skills Every Baby Needs Before Talking

👉 Book a Discovery Call 

These are FREE, one-to-one conversations designed to help determine what to focus on first - and whether a focused 6-week parent coaching format would be helpful for your family at this time. Not evaluations, not therapy - just space to reflect and be heard.

========

DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: [email protected]
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

Have you ever reacted to your toddler… and then immediately wondered, “Why did I just do that?”

In this episode, we look beneath the surface of toddler behavior and explore a truth that can feel both confronting and freeing: sometimes our reactions have less to do with our child - and more to do with our own history.

I share how early patterns, survival strategies, and emotional wiring can quietly shape the way we parent. 

When we begin to notice the cycle - overwhelm, reaction, guilt, repeat - we open the door to something steadier.

Toddlerhood doesn’t need a perfect parent.
It needs a present one.

If you’ve ever felt caught between being too soft and too strict… between patience and frustration… this conversation will help you pause, reflect, and begin again.

Because lasting change in our children often begins within us. ❤️

👉 Book a Discovery Call 

These are FREE, one-to-one conversations designed to help determine what to focus on first - and whether a focused 6-week parent coaching format would be helpful for your family at this time. Not evaluations, not therapy - just space to reflect and be heard.

📥 Free resource:
The Top 10 Essential Skills Every Baby Needs Before Talking

========

DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: [email protected]
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

What if the most powerful thing you could do for your toddler's development happened while they were asleep?

In this episode, licensed pediatric speech-language pathologist Erin Hyer breaks down the neuroscience of sleep in early childhood — and why it is the most underestimated factor in your child's brain development, language acquisition, and emotional health.

Drawing on Dr. Matthew Walker's landmark research and nearly 40 years of clinical practice, Erin explains what is actually happening in your toddler's brain overnight, why the science community is only now catching up to what clinicians have observed for decades, and what you can do — starting tonight — to protect it.

Note: everything in this episode applies to adults too. Dr. Walker's work is a lifetime argument for sleep. Erin just happens to believe the earliest years are where it matters most.

You'll hear: the glymphatic system explained in plain language · why toddlers wake more — and why that is normal · the 3 words that change bedtime entirely · 10 simple steps organized into three groups · and a story involving a 6'6" ex-Navy husband that every parent will recognize.

Grab the free 10-step printable guide below:

🔗  10 Simple Steps To Support Toddler Sleep 

👉 Book a Discovery Call 

These are FREE, one-to-one conversations designed to help determine what to focus on first - and whether a focused 6-week parent coaching format would be helpful for your family at this time. Not evaluations, not therapy - just space to reflect and be heard.

📥 Free resource:
The Top 10 Essential Skills Every Baby Needs Before Talking

========

DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: [email protected]
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

Last week I introduced the first two habits quietly getting in the way of your toddler's speech.

This week we go deeper.

In Part 2 I'm sharing Habits 3, 4, and 5 - and these are the ones that tend to stop parents cold. Not because they're complicated. But because nobody told them these things mattered.

We start with the neuroscience - and I mean real neuroscience, the kind that completely changes how you see your child's developing brain. 

Your baby arrived in this world already wired for language. Not for any specific language. For all of them. 

Once you understand that, everything else in this episode lands differently.

Then we talk about the pacifier. Who it's really for. And why the transition is almost always harder for the parent than the child.

And finally - screens. After 40 years in this field, I have a clear position. I'll share it plainly, without apology, and with the clinical evidence to back it up.

In this episode:

• The neuroscience of the developing brain — and why flashcards at 18 months are knocking on the wrong door
• Citizens of the world — what this term means and why it changes everything
• The pacifier question nobody asks honestly
• What I really think about screens — and what I told families back in the early nineties that still works today
• The thread connecting all five habits — and what Marcus taught me about what children actually need

Missed Part 1? Start with Episode 147 first — it'll make this one land much deeper.

👉 Book a Discovery Call

These are FREE, one-to-one conversations designed to help determine what to focus on first - and whether a focused 6-week parent coaching format would be helpful for your family at this time. Not evaluations, not therapy - just space to reflect and be heard.

📥 Free resource:
The Top 10 Essential Skills Every Baby Needs Before Talking

========

DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: [email protected]
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

If you've ever watched your toddler at a playground - wanting to join in, but not quite knowing how - this episode is for you.

After nearly 40 years as a speech-language pathologist, I've worked with hundreds of families whose children were bright, loved, and well cared for - and still not talking the way they should be.

In most cases, it wasn't a diagnosis that was getting in the way.

It was a handful of everyday habits. Common ones. Well-meaning ones. The kind that develop naturally in busy, loving homes - and quietly remove a child's felt need to reach toward language.

In Part 1 of this two-part episode, I walk you through the first two habits - including one that will surprise almost every parent who hears it.

This episode is not about blame. It's about clarity.

Because once you see these patterns, you can't unsee them. And the moment you start making small shifts - something opens up.

In this episode:

• Why being too helpful can silence your toddler's speech
• Why 200 words is not the finish line - and what happens when parents think it is
• The snack table story that still stops me cold

Part 2 drops next week - or join my email list for early access. Link below.

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🔗 Join Talking Toddlers email list to get early access to part 2. 

👉 Book a Discovery Call

These are FREE, one-to-one conversations designed to help determine what to focus on first - and whether a focused 6-week parent coaching format would be helpful for your family at this time. Not evaluations, not therapy - just space to reflect and be heard.

📥 Free resource:
The Top 10 Essential Skills Every Baby Needs Before Talking

========

DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: [email protected]
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

What if one of the most powerful things you can do for your child's brain, language, and emotional development isn't a program, a therapy, or a curriculum — it's dinner?

In this foundational episode, speech-language pathologist and child development expert Erin Hyer, unpacks the science behind what we lose when family mealtime disappears — and what our children's behavior, attention, and language are quietly telling us about it.

After 40 years working with young children, Erin connects dots that most parents have never had connected for them: nutrition, regulation, shared attention, and language are not separate systems. They are one system. And the family table sits at the center of all of it.

This episode is part of an ongoing series on using your home environment intentionally to support healthy development in children 0–3.

You'll hear: why blood sugar crashes look like behavior problems, what shared attention actually is and why mealtime creates it naturally, the story of a child who couldn't bear to sit at the family table — and what changed when her brain finally could, and one simple shift you can make tonight.

This is not about perfect meals. It's about intentional ones.

🎙 New episodes every Tuesday 

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👉 Book a Discovery Call

These are FREE, one-to-one conversations designed to help determine what to focus on first - and whether a focused 6-week parent coaching format would be helpful for your family at this time. Not evaluations, not therapy - just space to reflect and be heard.

📥 Free resource:
The Top 10 Essential Skills Every Baby Needs Before Talking

========

DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: [email protected]
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

There's something running in the background of most homes with young children right now. Not something dramatic. Not something you'd even think to question.

The TV. Just on. Nobody watching. Life happening around it.

And after nearly four decades of clinical work with children and families — I can tell you that this one thing is quietly doing more damage to early development than most parents have ever been told.

In this episode I walk you through five things the research tells us about background TV — and every single finding is specifically about ambient noise, not a child sitting and watching a screen.

What you'll hear in this episode:

The word gap — how background TV drops the words your child hears by nearly 70% per hour, and why that matters more than you think.

Why it's not just quantity of language that drops — but quality. And what that means for your child's developing brain.

What deep play actually looks like in a nine-month-old — and why background noise is quietly stealing it from your child without you ever noticing.

The executive function connection — including what the research says about background TV, sleep, and the rising rates of ADHD in young children.

Sensory processing — the history of how we got here, why "sensory kids" were never meant to be this common, and what I believe we owe these children.

Plus — what about music? I answer the question I get asked most often, and give you real conditions for when it helps and when it doesn't.

This is the episode I've wanted to record for years. I hope it changes how you hear your home.

🎙 New episodes every Tuesday 

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If you’d like support identifying where your family is in this journey, I invite you to schedule a Discovery Call. We’ll look at what’s already working - and what small, intentional shifts could make the biggest difference right now.

👉 Book a Discovery Call

These are FREE, one-to-one conversations designed to help determine what to focus on first - and whether a focused 6-week parent coaching format would be helpful for your family at this time. Not evaluations, not therapy - just space to reflect and be heard.

📥 Free resource:
The Top 10 Essential Skills Every Baby Needs Before Talking

========

DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: [email protected]
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

Parents have never had more information about early childhood than they do today. 

We track sleep, research milestones, optimize toys, and fill our days with activities meant to help our toddlers thrive.

And yet - many parents quietly wonder why their child still feels overwhelmed, dysregulated, or unsettled.

In this episode, I explore a difficult but hopeful question:

Have we made toddlerhood too complicated?

Drawing from nearly four decades of clinical experience, I unpack how environment shapes a developing nervous system — and why connection, rhythm, and presence matter more than programs or products.

We’ll look at:
 • The rising normalization of dysregulation
 • How overstimulation impacts language and behavior
 • Why waiting and presence are biologically powerful
 • What to begin noticing before changing anything

This episode is not about doing more.

It’s about noticing more.

If you’ve been wondering whether something in your home rhythm feels “off,” this conversation will help you see more clearly — and more calmly.

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If you’d like support identifying where your family is in this journey, I invite you to schedule a Discovery Call. We’ll look at what’s already working - and what small, intentional shifts could make the biggest difference right now.

👉 Book a Discovery Call

These are FREE, one-to-one conversations designed to help determine what to focus on first - and whether a focused 6-week parent coaching format would be helpful for your family at this time. Not evaluations, not therapy - just space to reflect and be heard.

📥 Free resource:
The Top 10 Essential Skills Every Baby Needs Before Talking

========

DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: [email protected]
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com