ABA Unfiltered Season 5 Episode 11 - Speech Therapy & ABA
35m 10s
In this episode of ABA Unfiltered, the host interviews a dual-certified SLP and BCBA who has 20 years of experience as a speech therapist and 12 as a BCBA. She shares her journey from working at an autism center, where she saw ABA and speech therapy transform lives, to founding ABA Speech, a business focused on training and products for autistic learners. She discusses the importance of integrating SLP and BCBA perspectives, noting that her niche is communication. She highlights gaps in BCBA coursework, particularly the lack of training in speech and language development and joint attention. She explains that joint attention is a foundational skill that can be taught through books, music, and play, and emphasizes the need for naturalistic teaching methods. She also addresses challenges in training staff to build rapport and play with clients, noting that many RBTs lack experience in these areas. She advises against overly structured activities for young children, advocating for developmentally appropriate practices that incorporate play and shared activities. The episode underscores the value of combining behavioral and communication approaches to support autistic learners effectively.
[Music] Hello everyone, this is Andrew Blumstrom along with Amanda Fulbright and you are listening to ABA Unfiltered, where each episode we interview guests from around the world of ABA. Whether you're a BCBA, RBT, or just interested in ABA, you are sure to pick up some actionable advice you can utilize on your journey. Hi Rose, thank you so much for joining us today or me today. I'm solo today, I'm missing Andrew, but thank you so much for being on the podcast. Why don't we start by you introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about yourself? Absolutely, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to connect today. So I am a speech-language pathologist and a board certified behavior analyst. I have been a speech therapist for 20 years, so I'm calling myself season these days, and I have been really certified for 12 of those years, which is something I'm very proud of. There are less than 515 people in the entire world that are both speech therapist and BCBA, so it's a small little group we have deemed ourselves the unicorns and it's always fun to connect with a fellow unicorn if anybody's listening. Give me a shout on Instagram and I started my career path as a speech-language pathologist. My mom gave me a career test. It said I should be a speech therapist, so I shadowed a family friend. I was like, wow, you get to be around people all day and it's science-related, but there's not a lot of math. I was like sold. And I worked in the schools and non-public programs for 20 years, and then I started my own business called ABA Speech about six years ago because I had the idea for a therapy product called the Action Builder Cards, and it just like with anything, it continued to grow. I created another product called the Double Lup game. I created a blog, and then I was like, oh no, I need a website. And I started my own podcast called Autism Outreach almost two years ago. And our biggest generator of revenue and what takes up all my time and what I really love and enjoy and what I did earlier this morning are training. So we're an ASHA-approved CE training provider, which is a really hard application process. It was about a 250-page application process, and we're also an ACE provider, which was a little easier, one-page. And so we pride ourselves in being, when you know that, I'm sure you're intimately involved with all the CEU things. And so my days are made up of trainings, and last year I retired is what we called it from the public school to had a little retirement party with my friend. And this past year I focused just on my family because I have three kids. We were talking ahead of time and on ABA speech, which has really just been just my absolute joy to be able to talk day and day out about how to help all autistic learners find their voice. That is awesome. So you answered my first question, which is, were you an SLP or BCBA first? So SLP first? What led you down the path to say, oh, I think I'm also going to become a BCBA. You know, in my coursework, my second year graduate school, I worked with a really great school-based clinician. She wasn't doing ABA. We didn't really talk about, we weren't talking about ABA so much back then, but she was very structured in her approach. And I really loved working with the autistic learners that I was meeting. And then my second year as a speech therapist, I took a position at the Cleveland Clinic used to be called autism center. Now we call it the learner school. And that is really where I learned about helping students who were traditionally extremely hard to reach. So it was a non-public program for students. And this was a least restrictive environment. I always call it my autism boot camp. I have lifelong friends. People that are in my wedding that I'm, I'm with to this day from there. You really just bond with people in those environments. But what I saw there was applied behavioral analysis and speech therapy, helping students who were younger, but also helping a student who I was on my case, so it was 18 and had no way to communicate and seeing him use a device for the first time. And I just remember sitting in the speech therapy office telling my colleagues, I'm going to go places and I'm going to tell people about ABA. And I said that 20 years ago and it's still so exciting because it's absolutely transforming lives when you put speech therapy and ABA together. So that is where I learned about ABA. And then I took my course work when I lived in Austin, Texas and Kelly Rich, who has started the verbal behavior conference was actually my supervisor. So she has a mentor of mine and it was really neat to be able to work alongside her and have her mentorship. That's awesome. I've had the privilege of touring the Cleveland Clinic program and it's an amazing program. About 2018 or so. So I'm sure that they've even done more great things since then. So that's awesome. So you have this like SLP side of your brain and this BCBA side of your brain does one of them take over or do they always just work together? Like, power twins. They really do work together. I used to say, you know, when I'm in a room to speech therapist, I feel like I'm not speech therapy enough and when I'm in a room full of BCBAs, I feel like I'm not BCBA enough. But I really, I don't know how to describe it. I can't tease out which one is which. I do definitely focus on communication. So as a BCBA, I, you know, I definitely focus on communication. That's my niche area. I'm not writing FBAs for students that are engaging in unsafe problem behavior that's never been kind of my focus. It's always been that communication piece and I feel like over time, I feel real comfortable that that's my niche. That's awesome. And I've heard other people that are duly credentialed, duly licensing that before my boss is a psychologist BCBA. And she's like, I always feel like I'm not psych enough for her. I'm like, oh, that's sad. You're enough. This is me. I'm, I disseminate a lot on social media. So everybody has an opinion. But the more you, I've had an online business six years, I'm like, this is that love it early. But, you know, so that's a good place to be. That's a healthy place to be. Yes. I have so enjoyed working with SLPs in the past and consulting on, you know, past clients and just soaking up all the awesome knowledge that SLPs have that we don't have as behavior analysts. And I'm curious, what are some of the things that you wish were included in BCBA coursework or experience, you know, fieldwork or anything like that, that you think that would help BCBAs? Absolutely. I think that's a great question. And I think the number one thing is a course on speech and language development. We don't often take a course like that as BCBAs, but yet we're tasked with creating intervention plans for kids who are emerging communicators. So I think that is very important. We offer an ACE course. That's a speech and language milestones refresher. I include videos of my own kids at different ages. It's easier to get that video released versus clients. And the other thing that I just talked about and something that's been really popular with ADA clinics is a talk that I have called the power of joint attention. And I just think that focus on joint attention. From a more of a behavioral sense, we might hear it, you know, naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions or NDBI. I have the book right here on my desk. My life plan is to read that book and create a larger course based on that. And really in essence, what it is is working on communication in a way that structure, but is more naturalistic. And I just don't think that we have a focus on those different types of things in our coursework. And what's so hard is BCBAs is we may have that power. We may be able to go into a first session and be able to play with a child and to be able to naturally facilitate communication. But we are really in essence tasked with training staff members to do that. And it's very, very nuanced. And I think it's very, very hard to teach those skills. But I do think that it's something that we need to realize in our field. And it's something we need to put on our to-do list for our training, for every ADA clinic that's listening today. Awesome. I actually have my next question that I have for you on my list is is talking about that joint attention course. I personally went on and accessed it yesterday. I haven't dove all the way into it. But it's like this is really cool. And I think that it's really important. And as you said, nuance. But I'm wondering if you could just talk to us and our listeners a little bit about the power of working on joint attention, not just as behavior analyst. But how do we teach our text? How to do this? That's a great question. Yes, that's a great question. And I do have a free course that's 30 minutes. That's about joint attention. I could always share the link with you as well. That's meant to be more for parent and staff training. But the idea of joint attention is really a foundational skill. How we're working on social engagement. And we often do need to embed that into our learner's sessions in more naturalistic ways, which I think can be harder for staff. Because when I was working in a ADA center, the programs that always got run for me were more at the table, discrete trial, because it's easier for people. It's not as nuanced. I would have a vocation program and the kid would go all around the building and do all these different things. And it was never run, right? Because it was harder. And the same thing with joint attention. The way that I talk about joint attention, and thanks for signing up for the course, is that I talk about it in a three-part framework. So we could use books, we can use music, and we can use play. And when I'm working with a younger learner, I always embed. It could be at the beginning of the session, middle or end. And I'm thinking from a speech therapy standpoint, right? Not a four-hour session for a young learner or doing it.
ABA, but I think to myself, okay, we need to work on these things because this is how our student is going to be motivated to communicate and motivated to learn. And this is how we build that foundation. So I would just urge you to maybe take the course and to think about you doing shared activities. So it's not always about direct eye contact. It's more about I'm in the activity, you're in the activity. Well we're enjoying this, sometimes they talk about it as being a fun activity together. And how can you take data on that? It's going to be different for every single student, but just starting to have that dialogue and often these programs do take place away from the table in more of a natural setting. So just, you know, using that behavioral skills training to work on training that for our technicians. And it is a harder skill. I was in a Facebook group last week and somebody said it was an ABA Skillshare, which was very large Facebook group if you're not in it. And somebody said, does anybody have any videos or trainings on how to teach RBTs to play with clients? And I don't think that is a ridiculous question because I think back to myself before I had my own children. I just, I mean, I hope my personality comes over. It's fun and energetic. But before I had my own kids, I wasn't operating from this place of being silly and kind of going with the flow. I was more regimented and how I was doing things. And oh, this is what I work on and this is how I do it. And so I do think we have to think about how can we take these nuance things like joint attention. And you could always tie it in with that naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions and throw in some good research there. There's a lot out there as part of our training for new staff. Do you think that that's a part of a like brand new, new hire skill or is that more of an advanced skill? Well, you know, if somebody's already been through the 40 hour, if somebody is in an RBT, I don't know if it's really advanced. I think we just talk about it. We introduce it at the beginning and then it's maybe a module or something that we, that we focus on. You know, because I've had people who haven't established SLP practice and they're going to start offering ABA services and they may even be a BCBA themselves and they were so confused when the RBT just didn't know how to pair and build rapport with the child. But I would be nervous with somebody saying like, here's all the toys and here's a kid who's not talking yet and has never been away from their mother. Here you go. You know, have a good time. It doesn't work that way. You know, it's just, it's a skill that needs to be broken down and it needs to be taught the ability to staff. We've definitely had a look at the task list for RBTs and then said to ourselves, what else? Like, we don't need to marry ourselves, you know, or be beholden just to this. Of course, you have to do that. But that plus what? Absolutely. And I think I do that too. Every time I do an ACE talk and it's probably just because I'm catalyst, I always feel like somebody's going to say like, this isn't ABA enough or, but I always have a slide that says, this is the task list item that I am going. This is how I as a provider am going beyond the task list. So for example, the speech and language milestones refresher, I always say, you know what? This is the task list that we're going through where we need to have these correct interventions. But what we're doing is we're taking a step back and we're looking at human development. And taking that step back, it's going to let us have this transformative step forward so that we can use our, you know, VB map or our VineLin, whatever we're using for intake. And we can use human development and use all of that together to really set goals. They're going to really help our students find a voice. Yeah. Beautiful. Well said. Thanks. You were talking about play and talking about new people that are not really, you know, experienced with hanging out with kids and playing. And by even those that are like I grew up with younger siblings and babysitting and working in after school programs. And sure that helped me become a therapist when at the time. But it doesn't really prepare you for the fact that that's not always reciprocal with children with autism. And so our behavior can be, you know, subject to ratio strain. And because these kids are not going to maybe respond in the way that your younger siblings did or the kids you babysit do. And, you know, you kind of have to work through that and it's different. Have you experienced that as well or talked about that in any of your trainings as well? Yeah, absolutely. And I can't remember what research it is. But when I was really researching for the Joint Attention Course and my larger start communicating today course about helping toddlers and preschool age students, I read research that said just like you're saying, you know, if we're trying to work on joint attention and we're doing these shared activities and maybe the student isn't reciprocating in the way that we would expect and that sometimes parents from the parent viewpoint don't do those activities as much because they think, oh, well, my child doesn't like that. Or they're not interested in that. And that really may not be the case. And we really just don't know because most of the times the students that I tend to talk about are students who are not yet speaking. So we're really just looking at how they're engaging and we're not going to be sure if they enjoy it, if they like it, if they. And that's why I use that framework of books, music, and play because I may have a book that I love like Pete the Cat and something really amazing. Well, maybe my student doesn't like that. And that's okay. In the next session, we do check a chick a boom boom or something like that. But I think this idea of just that play is important. You know, I was doing a training for an ABA Center a couple weeks ago and I was talking about play and different toys. And I asked a pretty large group, what is a favorite toy that you like to use in therapy? And it was radio silent. No one said anything. And I don't think that it was like a shy group. And part of me thinks that maybe they're just not incorporating any type of play or any type of natural environment teaching into their intervention. And so I think we just have to look at those ratios. Obviously, it's going to look different therapy for a two and a half year old versus somebody who is getting ready to go into kindergarten and needing to have those, okay, this is morning meeting. This is how we sit in the chair. I mean, those things are important for our learners. But I was kind of. That kind of made me a little nervous about why there was no. Because if you ask a group of speech therapists, what is your favorite toy to use in therapy? It's like. And it's a chat. And it's blowing up and there's a lot out there. So I would just say if you're not incorporating play or anything more naturalistic just to start and see how that works for your client. Yeah. You talked about developmental milestones with communication and speech, but I would say even broader that developmental milestones of all behavior is probably pretty important There's been so many times that I've seen folks working on sitting on a table or group time with two and a half year olds, three year olds. And I'm like, they're not really doing. Shouldn't really be doing that yet. Oh, we're getting them ready for school. But they're three. Even my own children at preschool, I'm like, "Why are they. This isn't terribly developmentally appropriate." You know, that you're having them sit in this group for this long. What's your experience? Been with that if you've been consulting with someone that might be doing something that's not developmentally appropriate? Yeah, I mean, I see that often. And I used to always say, "When I worked in Austin, Texas, I worked in Leander, ISD, amazing district. There were about 35 to 40 speech therapists. I would give a training every week and then go out to their campuses." But one of the things that was always. I was always called out for was morning meeting, morning circle time for autistic learners. I mean, of course, when I would come out then the kids were sitting perfectly and engaging in every activity. But it's just such a hard time for our kids. It is because sometimes the kids need visuals and there's no visual. Maybe they don't have any way to communicate yet and they don't have a device or they're not. There's no way for them to participate. So they're just having to sit there. So just thinking about the environment, that's why I always go back to the books, music, and play as well. And that's why I was saying on the training I did this morning for an ABA Center is, you know, these are important things to work on because your students are probably most likely. Either at an ABA Center or a typical preschool are going to experience wheels on the bus. They are going to hear Old MacDonald. I know for certain they will hear Brown Bear, Brown Bear. And if we introduce them in a therapeutic way, then they're going to feel more comfortable and they're going to have practice with participating in these activities. But I always say that learning meeting can just be such a hard time for kids because oftentimes they just have to sit, like you said. And sometimes it is appropriate for students that are older. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be teaching those school readiness skills. But like you said, for a two and a half or three year old, you know, go to your local library and look at story time and see how that goes for kids that are typical language learners. It's chaos. It's chaos. It's chaos. That's a really good point. I've been asked before, how do you, when you don't have children of your own, children in your family, friends that have small kids, how do you even know what is typical? Outside of reading that. You can read it, but you can see it. And it's a totally different story. and you know I have suggested
like don't be creepy, but go to the park. (laughing) Go to the library, you know, but those are, that park's our unstructured, right? But the library's story time is a great suggestion 'cause it's somewhat structured or it drives me. - It does, it drives me, it's nice. But you can see how kids are just, you know, they sit for a while and they get up or they need redirected by their parents. So I think sometimes just like what you're saying is we're trying to hold our kids to a higher expectation that might not be developed in a way appropriate. - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, definitely. So, shift gears, for a minute, I was looking at your social posts and things, kind of prepping for this talk and all that. (laughing) And I saw something, I believe, just posted it yesterday about does the AAC device belong to the SLP? Does it belong to the BCBA? And that is a conversation that we have had internally. And I just was wanting you to kind of unpack your opinion on that and talk us through that because it's a question that I have not heard come up often in my circles, you know, but it has recently popped up. - Interesting. So I had Barb Weber, who is a fellow SLP BCBA on my podcast and that's kind of where I got the idea for that graphic and including it all my trainings. I actually had the chance to present at the Ohio ABA conference about SLP BCBA collaboration and Dr. Heward was in my training. I was so excited, but he was definitely excited about those slides. And that's something that always pops up in my world. And I think the most important thing to think about is not putting the parent in the middle. I feel like sometimes parents are put in the middle of that response form, like how are we going to work on this? I mean, you'll meet some just because somebody's to speak therapists doesn't mean they're well versed in AAC. And just because somebody's at BCBA doesn't mean that they are, but if you look at somebody like Dr. Cindy Gavartre, who I think is out of New Mexico, she did a talk for us called Motivation Matters in our membership and that's her line of research. That's what she presents on, what she does research. I believe she has a lab and she's at BCBA and she's extremely knowledgeable and I'm sure that all the people that she's working with are learning that from a BCBA. I just think that we have to have that collaborative piece and we have to decide, for me, when I was more of a treating clinician, it was really not about who does it belong to. It was more about who's going to do the programming for this device, who is going to program it. If there's a school-based SLP, a private SLP, the kid goes to a clinic, maybe there's a BCBA consultant coming into the school. I've been on teams where all those people were present. I think that adults do really well with knowing what their role is and having a dialogue about that. And maybe there's somebody on the team, who's just to each therapist that's like, you know what, I don't really know much about AAC. If the BCBA wants to program it, that's great. But there's a lot of speech therapists who are number one, very anti-ABA. There's a very anti-ABA sentiment. And number two, they feel like BCBAs are encroaching on our profession. Obviously, I don't feel that way because I'm totally certified. But from a financial standpoint, sometimes I can see that where some parents may say, okay, we've qualified for insurance-based ABA, maybe 20 hours a week, or we could do one hour of speech therapy. We have to choose. And parents will oftentimes choose more services. So I don't believe in the encroachment, but I do see how somebody who's not well-versed in the power of ABA and how it can help transform lives may feel that way. So, and it's hard because sometimes when you're trying to be collaborative, some people are not always doing their part to be collaborative. But I really think in real life, I've really never met a speech therapist that was so put off by the fact that I'm a BCBA, that they wouldn't collaborate. Those things usually just happen to me over on Instagram. [LAUGHTER] Oh, social media. Ah, social media. With, let's say that you're working with a family that does not have speech services. And for whatever reason, maybe the reason you described maybe any other reason, but they don't have a speech program in place at all. And the BCBA thinks some sort of picture exchange or AC device would be appropriate. What's your thought process around scope of practice and us recommending different devices or, etc., when we're not specifically maybe trained in those things? We've just had a lot of experience. Yeah. Well, I think that here in Cleveland where I live, in my neck of the woods, we really are ABA centers, the ones that are, I don't want to say mom and pop, but the ones that are owned by people who are individual businesses. They have speech therapists either on staff or working one day a week or as a consultant basis. More that I've been working through ABA speech and doing more contract and consultant work with larger ABA providers that are more nationwide companies. I am seeing a lack of any type of speech therapist present. But I would really urge people to consult with a speech language pathologist and just have somebody that you can ask all those questions. People utilize my platform because I talk about all these things. So people will send me messages and send me messages on Instagram. And that's kind of why I started this membership, the ABA speech connection, because once a month I do a monthly Q&A call. So then I can field some of those questions and I can talk to people face to face. Because it's hard. If you're an employee, a very large company and they don't have the budget for that or they don't see the importance of having that, but you know ethically that you need a consultant. Somebody, I think that's really important. And where I teach the ethics class here, it can't stay, which starts in just two weeks. And so we're ethically called to collaborate. Right. And that idea of what is our scope of practice versus what is our competence, is going to be different for every single BCBA out there based on your work experience. And have you ever worked with students with AAC or maybe you had Andy Bondi come in and Lori Frost and they did a big pecs training. Everybody's going to have different life experiences. So I think you have to just analyze what is the best route for you. Right. If I were a treating clinician today, like AAC, there's been leaps and bounds, technology advances since I was and I don't know how to work this thing. I don't know. Right. That's definitely outside of my scope of competence. You want to go old school pecs? Right. Right. And but you know what, even in the district that I worked in with all the experience that I have from the Cleveland Clinic and ABA centers that I've worked at, we had a very contentious situation, which was nice for me because our AAC consultant for our county, Kaya Hoga County, would come out to my building every single month. And so she would do things like program advice or talk with the parent. And we just antecedently had to have her in place. And so it was like nice to have that person. So you might want to think that too. If you work for an educational service center or some type of consortium, you may have an AAC specialist that is really trained in that. And if you have access to that person to utilize them, the other thing I've been telling BCBAs is that all of the technology companies like Pranky Romic and Dynavox, they do have salespeople that are designated for the different states. And so something that I did at one of the ABA centers that I worked at as I called up all the reps and I had them come in. And then the staff, we could look at some of the different devices and we got some loaner devices. And so that's just kind of like an advanced tip. But if you just look up the companies, there will be somebody. And usually that person is usually a speech language pathologist. Yeah, that is a hot tip. And I've done that before and had people come out to the center to train to make us more comfortable with a device that we've never seen before. Right, absolutely. It's always changing. Yeah, definitely. That's a really good tip. Awesome. So you've mentioned your trainings. You briefly mentioned your podcast. I read that it's your over 100 episodes now. Yeah, almost at 150. We're planning it. So very exciting. That's really awesome. Share with our listeners where they can find you, what are your upcoming things that might be of interest to our listeners. Absolutely. We're launching a membership in the fall in September called the ABA speech connection. And so it will be a new live action, ACE course, every single month, and also a CE library and a time to meet together with myself and the group for a monthly Q&A. So what I've been finding out is that people might be the only BCBA in their district or at their place of work. And people just feel lonely in the important work that we're doing. So I don't want anybody to feel that way. So we're putting in that level of support. And I'm very excited about that. So we're launching that very soon and that will be on my website, ABA speech.org. And on ABA speech everywhere. So if Instagram's your thing, tick, tick, I'm over there. Come find me. That's awesome. And would you say that this is more for SLPs, BCBAs, duly certified or there's a little bit for everything, everyone. There's the first one. Yeah, it's for both. So we're an ASHA provider and an ACE provider. So some of the things that we've covered this past summer are matrix training. So in my mind, we have two different pathways. We have somebody who's newer to the science of ABA and then we have something that's more advanced. So we have talked about matrix training. We talked about actionable tips and strategies for behavioral skills training. Last week, I actually last.
I did a talk on navigating, ethically navigating IEP meetings with confidence. And so most of our talks are both asha approved and ACE courses as well. And some months we might do something different like in September I'm going to talk about group therapy and Dr. Jennifer Posey is going to do a talk, a journal article review. So a little something for everybody. That's awesome. Jennifer's going to speak at our clinical conference. She's great. She's great. Yes, she's awesome. Awesome. Very cool. Well, every week we or every episode rather, we like to play question of the week. And are you are you game to play? I would love to. Awesome. Awesome. All right. First question for you is if you had an extra hour today, not every day just today. What would you do? What would you fill that hour with? I would probably want to do a Pilates class today was a busy day so I didn't get to work out yet. And I really love here in my hometown we have a reformer Pilates studio and it's pretty amazing. So I would probably want to do some Pilates. That's really cool. I've never used the reformers in my life. Regular. Yes. That's cool. Very cool. You seem to be a lifelong learner like like I. So tell me about something that you've been learning about recently. I think that I've been learning about recently. Probably I have this book about NDBI naturalistic, behavioral development interventions. I really want to offer more courses in training on that. So from that part of my life, my professional life, I've definitely been reading articles about that, having people that talk about that on my podcast. And my life goal is to read that book. It's like a textbook. How far have you gotten? Chapter three. All right. Making progress. Get there. Get there. Awesome. All right. So now we'd like to play Spent the Wheel, Mystery Question. So if you will give me just a moment without Andrew here, I'm feeling a little fumbly. But we will. How we're through this. Okay. All right. We've landed on question number seven. Tell me about your very first job. Oh, wow. Oh, okay. My very first job was as a tennis instructor. So I grew up taking tennis lessons at my local tennis courts with an arthorac program. I grew up in Akron, Ohio where LeBron James is from. And I loved that. That was my very first job. I don't know. I think I was paid like $5 an hour or something, but it was very, very fun. I made a lot of friends that somewhere. Awesome. Did you still play? I do. Sometimes. But I like a lot of people. My age have transitioned to pickleball. But really I love this question. I love to play golf. I'm more of a golfer. I love to play golf. I grew up playing golf with my dad. So that's more of my jam. I just feel like tennis is. It's a lot of work. I have never played a single game. It looks very hard. It's a good workout. But we have pickleball courts around where I live in my town. And I'm curious. I'll say. Yes. Oh, it's fun. It is. Yeah. You got to try it. It's very fun. It's hard. But it's good. It's easier than tennis. But it's fun. Awesome. And so I said that Andrew missed this conversation too because he also was from Ohio. I was in Ohio. Ohio taught us. Yeah. Absolutely. How fun. Well, I would love to include some links to your broadcast and your website. So we'll put those on the show notes so that people can go and check out all of the great things that you're doing. And follow you on all the social media as well. You're everywhere. I try. Thank you so much for joining us today or joining me today for this conversation. I think that you're just an excellent resource for both SLPs and BCBAs. And I hope that people continue to connect with you and you continue to disseminate and help the field. Well, thanks so much for having me. Yeah. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day. Okay. Thank you. If you or someone you know is looking for some CEUs, head over to BCBACEU.bluesbrigatism.com and use the promo code podcast to get $5 off any CEU in the catalog. A link to the site can be found below in the description. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you next time.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The guest is a dual-certified speech-language pathologist (SLP) and board certified behavior analyst (BCBA), part of a small group of fewer than 515 "unicorns" worldwide.
She founded ABA Speech six years ago, creating products like Action Builder Cards and a podcast, with a focus on training (ASHA and ACE provider) and helping autistic learners find their voice.
She recommends adding a course on speech and language development to BCBA training, emphasizing joint attention as a foundational skill for communication.
Joint attention can be taught through a three-part framework
Training staff in nuanced skills like play and joint attention is challenging but essential, as many RBTs struggle with pairing and rapport building.
She advocates for incorporating developmental milestones and play-based interventions, especially for young learners, rather than overly structured table-time activities.
Summary:
In this episode of ABA Unfiltered, the host interviews a dual-certified SLP and BCBA who has 20 years of experience as a speech therapist and 12 as a BCBA. She shares her journey from working at an autism center, where she saw ABA and speech therapy transform lives, to founding ABA Speech, a business focused on training and products for autistic learners. She discusses the importance of integrating SLP and BCBA perspectives, noting that her niche is communication.
She highlights gaps in BCBA coursework, particularly the lack of training in speech and language development and joint attention. She explains that joint attention is a foundational skill that can be taught through books, music, and play, and emphasizes the need for naturalistic teaching methods. She also addresses challenges in training staff to build rapport and play with clients, noting that many RBTs lack experience in these areas.
She advises against overly structured activities for young children, advocating for developmentally appropriate practices that incorporate play and shared activities. The episode underscores the value of combining behavioral and communication approaches to support autistic learners effectively.
FAQs
Rose is both a speech-language pathologist and a board certified behavior analyst, with 20 years as an SLP and 12 years as a BCBA. She is part of a small group of fewer than 515 people worldwide with both credentials, often called 'unicorns.'
Rose learned about ABA while working at the Cleveland Clinic's autism center, where she saw ABA and speech therapy help a nonverbal student use a communication device. She later took coursework in Austin, Texas, with mentorship from Kelly Rich, founder of the Verbal Behavior Conference.
Rose wishes BCBA coursework included a course on speech and language development and a focus on joint attention, as these are critical for creating intervention plans for emerging communicators but are often missing from standard training.
Joint attention is a foundational skill for social engagement and communication, often taught through books, music, and play in naturalistic settings. Rose emphasizes it helps build motivation and a foundation for learning, but it requires nuanced training for staff.
Rose suggests using behavioral skills training to break down play into shared activities, focusing on naturalistic interactions rather than direct eye contact. She recommends introducing joint attention early in training and using frameworks like books, music, and play.
Rose notes that expecting young children, like 2-3 year olds, to sit for long periods or participate in group activities like morning meeting may not be developmentally appropriate. She advises using play and naturalistic teaching to match typical developmental milestones.
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