77: The One About Stuttering with Nina Reeves

You're listening to the Speechy Side Up Podcast. Today we are joined by award-winning fluency specialist Nina Reeves. In this episode we discuss fluency assessment and treatment, what not to say to a child who stutters, and why you should not write percentage goals for children who stutter. This podcast will cover the flip side of traditional speech and language therapy, so you get inspired and learn from experts in the field. Here is your host, author AAC Specialist and Machete Lever, Venita Littvack. She and her guests are serving up some informative and fun topics in Speechy Side Up. Hey everybody, welcome to the Speechy Side Up Podcast. If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming. This podcast is produced every week for your enjoyment. You can also follow along on Instagram @SpeechySideUp. All links are in the show notes. Now let's get into the show. Today I'm joined by an award-winning fluency specialist Nina Reeves. Nina currently serves as staff fluency specialist for several school districts near Dallas, Texas. Her private practice is dedicated to children and adolescents who stutter, and she travels extensively, presenting training workshops on topics related to fluency disorders. Nina's contributions to service delivery in the schools was recognized by the 2013 Roland Ben Hadam Award for contributions in the schools from the American Speech Language and Hearing Foundation. Welcome Nina. Thanks so much, Venita. It is such an honor to have you on the show today. For anyone who is not familiar with your work, can you tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do today, and how you got there? Oh yes, you got, first of all, thanks so much for inviting me to chat with you about working with students who stutter. I've been an SLP for a really long time, but to, in the interest of brevity, I'm just going to break your question down a little. I basically started as an SLP in the cornfield of Illinois, but I'm currently a school-based therapist and private practice clinician in the verbs of Dallas. I will tell you that I actually became a speech pathologist because of my own experiences with speech therapy. I was in speech therapy from about three years old till about eighth grade, because I had a cleft palate when I was born. And so misprints, my full speech therapist, was such an important person in my life that I always knew I was going to be a SLP. Interestingly enough, I had no intention of getting into fluency disorders. I basically, when I first met my, when I met my first student who stuttered in a rural district in Illinois, I kind of knew pretty quickly that I didn't know enough to be helpful for him. So I jumped into learning and I went to everything I could get my hands on and I read, and it was kind of like that black hole that just sucked me in. It stuck. And now that's what I do, and I continue to learn and grow every day in that, in that one area, along with trying to make sure that I don't become a one-trick pony. But you know, now I do all the things you described in my bio, but I'm also an author and a co-owner of a publishing company with my writing partner, Scott Yarris. And we're always busy trying to do trying to help SLPs feel more comfortable and confident with stuttering. Well, and you've definitely accomplished that. Your story is just amazing. And thank you for sharing about your history with attending speech therapy and how you kind of got into the area of fluency. I would like to talk about the assessment for fluency and the tests that you recommend for SLPs who are screening and assessing young children who exhibit disfluencies. Oh yeah, that's a good question for us to start with. You know, I feel like the best assessments that we can use for students that we suspect have a fluency disorder are really the ones we're familiar with and the ones that can encompass the entirety of the disorder. I really like to make sure that I obtain a really good thorough case history first. And I have some go-toes and they include this sort of combination of what IDEA lets us have, which is portfolio documentation. So that would be things such as transcriptions of language samples to determine not just how often they stutter, but what kinds of stuttering they're exhibiting and what kinds of non-stutter disfluencies we see. Lots of questionnaires and checklists along with interviews of all the stakeholders of that child's communication environment as well as my own observations. And then I combine that with both normed referenced and criterion referenced assessments. Things like, and this isn't an exhaustive list in any way, the talks, the test of childhood stuttering or the SSI-4, and those are helpful to measure what we see on the outside. And I say that with emphasis because so many times, just what you see on the outside, the moment of stuttering that you can see isn't definitely not the entirety of the disorder. But those two tests are there for us to help us in that area. I also like the behavioral assessment battery, which includes the communication attitude tests and some other checklists and questionnaires that help us get at the thoughts and feelings of the child as well as the stakeholders surrounding the kiddo. I like, well, and of course, I guess I'm without fail for students over the age of seven, I would always use the oasis. And of course, that's something my co-author did with his co-authors, the overall assessment of the speakers experience of stuttering. And at the districts where I work, it's not considered a complete assessment unless you've got that oasis if it's appropriate for that child's cognition and age. Very, very helpful. Thank you for sharing all of that. I was actually going to ask if you included a behavioral assessment, which I'm sure you do. I'm trying to think of the professor that I used to have at UCF. It was Van Bruthelm. But they created a, you know what I'm talking about. I do. And I can never pronounce her last name either, but she worked with Dr. Brutten. Yes. Yes. They are the behavioral assessment battery peeps. Wow. That kitty cat and the cat are the attitude tests. Those are now boxed inside the behavioral assessment battery. Okay. Yeah. You're right on. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. It's like coming back now. I mean, I don't know if you know, but my area nowadays, like you said, try not to get too pigeonholed, but it's more AAC. But I love fluency. And I would say that's probably like my second favorite area of speech if I didn't get so far down the rabbit hole with AAC. But it was because of that professor. I mean, she was very influential. And I just, I love treating it in the clinic. So I always call her martine Z because I could never get her last name right. So I just call her martine. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. That's her. Wonderful. So just to kind of summarize, you said, like case history, different transcriptions, behavioral assessment battery, the SSI for questionnaires, observations, and then the OACIS for older children, right? Okay. And yeah. And I think that's a great summary. And the reason and there's other assessments I use, like the A19 scale and this and that, that are all available. So I don't want to say that those are the only ones, but when you look at those ways of assessment with getting questionnaires and interviews with students, you find out that you're not just assessing how often they stutter. It's how they think and feel about their stuttering, which is their, it's all within the ICF model, the the the World Health Organization's classification of functioning, where we make sure that it's not just what you see on the outside, but there are reactions, which are there thoughts and feelings and the things they do in relation to having a fluency disorder, the environment, and making sure that we get plenty of information about how the environment perceives stuttering and reacts to it. And then of course, the impact, which is where we in the public schools, that's where we live, is how does having the communication issue impact this child's communication in academic, non-academic, or extracurricular settings, which encompasses, if you think about it, social, functional, and academic communication, it's all of it. And we want to make sure that we're getting a multi-dimensional assessment that that hits all of those areas. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. All right, well, thank you for sharing that. So there was, I was reading one of your blog posts on your website and you were talking about how SLPs should move away from writing goals with percentages for fluency of speech. Can you explain why that is? Oh, yes, it's such an important question. I'm so glad that you brought it up because it is one of the things that confuses us as professionals. When I bring this up, when I'm doing presentations and Scott and I talk about this, you saw probably two posts on that on our blogs. And we always talk about it in our books and everywhere else because we see the fear in the faces of our speech pathology colleagues when we discuss pulling back from that. Because many times in our profession, it's what we were trained on in the past. And someone told us this or somehow we assumed, we got the message that we were supposed to make kids stop stuttering. Or, you know, we're talking school age therapy. And so sometimes that message flows over into, well, let me see if I can just get him to be more fluent. And the reason that we need to have that shift happen is because we know that stuttering is a neurologically-based disorder. And so there's the data that has been gathered on the speaker's experiences of stuttering. The more data we have about that, the more we realize that what the listener sees on the surface is a very small part of the overall experience of someone who stutters. And so if that's all we're looking at, and that's all we're basing our goals and objectives and our progress in therapy, I like to call it chase and agrees pay. And this is why. I think we all know maybe Joseph Sheen's famous iceberg of stuttering where you can visualize that the 10% of stuttering is what you see on the surface. And all of the other clinicians and scholars that have outlined the complexity and the variability of stuttering over the decades, let us know that, as we always say, the only consistent thing about stuttering is that it's inconsistent. And so think about that. Let's take that down the line. If stuttering is variable at its core, then writing a goal for a percent of fluent speech is going to simply make us be asking to be frustrated and to lend that frustration to the children who stutter and their parents. These are the types of goals that, in my opinion, create a due process waiting to happen. And I'm going to illustrate that. Because I want to make sure that no one misunderstands what I'm trying to say. Let's take the scenario of a student who stutters, who stutters at a certain percentage, let's say, on the SSI-4 while he's reading aloud. But he stutters at a different percentage on his description of a picture, and yet another different percentage of stuttered and non-stuttered speech in his description of a remote event. So with all the language load and with all the differences in those speaking situations, not even the things that you counted that were on the surface are consistent. And so if you try to do a percent of fluent speech, then you bring a kid in to one time when you're going to take data. And maybe he makes that percentage in a certain speaking situation. And you could do it the next day in the same speaking situation, and maybe he won't make that percentage. Now does that mean he's not doing what he needs to do, or you're not doing what you need to do? It really has nothing to do with your therapy at that point. It has everything to do with the fact that stuttering is variable at its core. - Wow, that is so good. Thank you for illustrating that too, because I think it helps to paint that picture. Do you have on the top of your head an example of a goal that might be written instead? - Oh, man, I present on goals all the time. - In fact, I'll be presenting on goals again at the Asher Connect Conference in Dallas this summer. But I want to say that if we're taught, I have many different goals because it's addressing all of the areas of a stuttering disorder. But if you're talking about what are, when you want to help a child or a student have more flow in their speech, or in my opinion, have easier communication, 'cause that's really what we're talking about. And they, whether it to be, to decrease the struggle that they have with a stutter, or to increase the fluency of their speech, so that they can feel more at ease and have flow, well then that is wrapped more in the skill of a communication strategy. So we would write a goal for, in that area, that one area, for having the child demonstrate knowledge and use of a blank particular speech handling strategy. Okay, out of this many times. And so you'd write all of the things you need to write in a goal and how you're gonna document it and what it's gonna look like. But you would do it on the basis of the skill that you're trying to discover with a child, not on the basis of a fluency count. - That makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much. - That was, while I was saying it, it made any sense whatsoever. - No, it definitely does. And I can remember like seeing goals where it was more focused on the strategy, using like, you know, the smooth speech or whatever strategy they were recommending for that kiddo. Is that what you meant? - It is, it is. And making certain that we are thinking of strategies in that bigger picture, not just strategies for enhancing fluency, but strategies for decreasing the struggle with a moment of stuttering. So how I can ease into my speech but how I can ease out of my stutters as well. Both sides of that are important. If you're talking about helping a child feel like they have more agency in their communications flow. Man, as we're talking, I'm thinking about all of these other questions I want to ask you, but it's not fair because I've sent you some questions over. But, you know, I'd like to see this address and before we move on, I'm just curious like, if you have on top of your head or maybe this is something we could like talk about later or something that you could share or maybe you even have a blog post about it. Just like myths, like common myths today that people still believe about stuttering and displew and sees that have been completely disproven. - Oh, I love it. And you didn't need to make me prepare for that one. - Okay. So many of those off the top of my head. You know, we do a lot of discussion in trainings and in our books and in our, you know, practical tips and resources we have on our website that help us realize that there's the old information sticks around, you know, in the zeitgeist of society 'cause Aunt Betty is, you know, not studying up on this stuff and she'll say something like, oh honey, you know, I, you know, I think he stutters because he's talking faster than the good thing. Or I think he stutters because he had, you know, an emotional thing happened to him in the womb. And I literally have heard these things said at IEP meetings. And a lot of it, you know, there's some, there's some cultural ones that we have to be very cognizant of the different cultures that's stuttering. It's caused by certain things. And we also have to know that a lot of society still believes that it's about anxiety. - Mm-hmm. - That the origin is in anxiety and it's not. That has been disproven. This is a neurologically based disorder that has genetic influences for some students. But it's origin is about the neurology and the complex interaction of factors that occur in a child's development. And so we don't have a one-off answer to that, but we do know that anxiety doesn't cause stuttering. - So good. Thank you. And I should have known that you would be able to answer that on the fly, so I appreciate that. I guess this kind of goes along the same lines too. So another blog post that you had written about where you're going to be. was what to say and what not to say to children who stutter. So can you kind of expand on that for us? I can. One of my favorite questions. And I, the, the, what not to say comes from listening to people who stutter talk about what they heard and nauseam growing up that was never very helpful, but that was well intended by the person. These are not things that people say to kids because, you know, because they want to frustrate them. These are well-intentioned, but not great over time. Pieces of advice that people in society give to kids who stutter. And they come from not knowing what stuttering is. And they come from trying to do a quick fix, which everyone is looking for, the easy way to do this. And, you know, the, the thing that nobody wants to hear is that stuttering therapy isn't easy. It's, it's complex. It's not, not, it's not, not doable. It totally is absolutely doable and absolutely can be successful, but it's not going to be a one two three. And the advice that people give kids who stutter comes from ignorance of the disorder and trying to fix it in a quick way. So things like my top eight, okay? Stop, slow down, start over, take a deep breath, think about what you're going to say, just relax. And then when a student is trying to communicate with somebody, they'll, they'll stop them and suggest user strategies. It's, do not like while they're trying to just talk, right? And then the eighth one is everybody stutter. It's blatantly untrue. Everyone is disfluent, okay? We all have disfluencies. Nobody is fluent. And some people stutter. Now that's the truth. And so those are the things that people try to do, or try to say to kids, to try to help them out. And they're just not that great in the long run. Are you looking for more high quality therapy materials? Published materials can be pricey and take a while to arrive. Digital resources, on the other hand, can be downloaded immediately, but sometimes the quality isn't as good as you expected. I don't know about you, but I think it's so frustrating when you spend money on your materials and they're not helpful in the end. That is why therapy materials, vault, creates low prep and no prep digital resources for you to download immediately. Thankfully, their resources are created by the same multidisciplinary team of therapists, so you can expect the same quality from every one of their resources. The best part is that each resource can be adapted to target multiple goals and they're very affordable with the average price being two to seven dollars. Therapy materials, vault is like the perfect combination of published and digital materials. You get the convenience of an immediate download and the streamlined and engaging content that you would expect from published materials. Visit therapy materials, vault.com to check out their freebies and a library of English and Spanish materials. And guess what? The team at TMV also wanted to offer you a 20% discount off all activity downloads just for listening to this podcast. Use the code "speechysideup@checkout" to get your discount and stock up on some fun and engaging materials today. That is so helpful. Thank you for sharing that. So on the flip side of that, what are some helpful things that people could say or therapists could say, especially like you had me thinking about group therapy in the schools. If they have maybe a child who's tutors in their group and then you know other kids that maybe have speech-related goals. Is that a good group set up first of all and second of all like how do they address the child who stutters their goals within a group setting? Great follow a question. So let me let me go with the group question first and then I'll get to the things that we can do and say for kids. And I think they'll blend nicely together. The number one thing I want to say about grouping in the schools is that we do it every day with kids with various disorders. And sometimes I think that when you say the word stuttering, people get so frozen that they think, oh my gosh, you know, maybe I can't do the same things that I do with my other groups. And I don't believe that's true. I think that how you handle a group of various communication disorders with any communication disorders is how you would then handle if the kid who stutters comes into the group. You know, just we're always mindful of the differences in the kids that we have in a group. And so it's matter of factly just doing therapy in a way that's like you're working on this, you're working on this, and you're working on this. And it's all okay. You know, we all have different things we're working on. And if you set that environment in your groups, then the child who stutters won't be singled out in a way that is stigmatizing. Because it'll just be the way we do therapy, but we just have to be mindful of that. And so I believe that groups can be a powerful thing. I believe that there are certain topics in in stuttering therapy, depending on the child that you may need to address somewhat separately, but then bring it into the group. Because guess what? Stuttering isn't something that has to be hidden in a closet. It's another communication disorder, just like all our other communication issues that we deal with. And it can be talked about in matter of fact and supportive ways. I love that. Such a great point. And thanks for the question because it leads us right into that idea of, well, what, you know, you just emptied my cup, Miss Nina, like, way eight things, you know, five of which I said to kids who stutter or not. But so you got to fill the cup back up. And it literally isn't something. I can't tell you what to say, but if it because that's individualized, you'll know it when you see it. Trust yourself as a clinician that you're not going to do or say something to create a problem for a kiddo. I think that it's it's really about the messages that we send. So if we're cognizant of making sure that we're not sending an unintended message that you're not doing something right if you're stuttering or you're not, you know, blank, practicing hard enough or whatever it is. If we are speaking and acting in ways that let our students know they're accepted and supported just the way they are, stutters at all. If we're acting as if it's truly okay to stutter all of it. Not just 10%, not just this kind of stutter, but not this kind of stutter. If that's the environment that we're helping to create in therapy in the classroom and at home and in extracurricular arenas, then that child is going to hear what they need to hear that they're okay just the way they are. Because I'm still trying to figure out and I think you're a like-minded, I saw your autism acceptance. It's not just awareness, but autism acceptance. I think this speaks to the heart of all of us as professionals that we don't have to fix these kids to love them just the way they are. We're trying to help them become effective communicators and by the way you can be an effective communicator and stutter. That is so good. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. Such a good point. I love that. This is going to be, this is kind of cute but and funny. I am speaking from experience when I was asking about the group setting because I went back and forth about should I be doing this in group? Should I be not doing this in group? I'm glad that I stuck with the group and you just confirm that. But I would notice that my other kids in the group had a lot to say to the child who's stuttered, including the things that we're not supposed to say. Do you have any suggestions for that or is that just how kids typically talk with each other? Oh yeah. I'm so glad you brought that up. What a great experience to have or setting up a communication environment that supports everybody. What a great learning experience for everyone to have. For those speech buddies to have and for that young child who stutters or however old they were to become then the expert on stuttering and the advocate for himself over time with your support. Because I think it's, you know, setting the communication rules, okay, is that's just part of what we do in a session. We don't point out anyone else's challenges or I don't call mistakes, please. or gosh, these are not mistakes. Kids who stutter, it's normal and natural for them to have stutters in their speech. We could paradigm shift that baby, we could solve a lot of stigma issues. But, you know, so if it's okay to have, you know, some struggles with communication in all ways, then we wouldn't be pointing them out with each other. You know, even the kids in the group. So just making that sort of communication rule is one of the first steps. But then, you know, trying to figure out, you know, how does that make other people feel? And then talking about the feelings that might come up and not just for the kid who stutters, but for the other kids in the group. And so making that into a learned experience about how we accept people as they are, and we are supportive of our speech buddies. Yeah, what a great point. I love the idea of setting the communication rules because it might be a learned behavior, you know, maybe outside of speech, the kids, other kids are hearing that and they are really doing it from a good place. So they think, but it's like constantly, they're trying to remind the child who stutters to slow down, you know, use your techniques. And it might be that they're just hearing those, you know, things being said to the child and they think that they're being helpful. But I love the idea of setting those communication rules because that same child is not correcting them on like their articulation errors. Or, you know, what I mean. So I appreciate that. I think that's a really great tip. Well, great point. And I think that this is all about, you're right, that I seldom see people giving advice to a child who stutters in a negative way. We just need to be very careful because the child who stutters may be taking it as a correction, right? And because they're might, you know, they may be sensitive to that. And so we can talk about it in that moment. You know, are you trying to help? Because I love that part of you that wants to help, but let's talk about what is helpful and what's not. And what Johnny wants you to do and what he maybe does it. Yes. Such a great point. You reminded me. We actually had a conversation one day after like, maybe the fourth session, I was getting to know the kids. And I asked the student who has stuttered like how they felt about it. And they actually were brave enough to express that they didn't like it, that they wanted to try to do like to get through their displeancies by themselves. And I think it did help the other kids understand. I don't even know if I approached it the right way, but it just felt like the right thing to do at that time because it didn't seem like right that they kept correcting him. You know what I mean? I do. And I love, and one of the clues you have that you were doing some really good stuff is that he felt, you said, he felt comfortable. He felt brave enough. You set that tone in your therapy room that he felt brave enough to say what he needed. And it wasn't going to be taken in a bad way. So that's pretty cool. That is a good point. Thanks. I didn't even think about it that way. But yeah, that's very reassuring. And I love those kids. But moving on, I'd like to talk about therapy resources that you recommend to help school-based SLPs get started and use evidence-based strategies when working with students who stutter. Oh wow, so many things. Okay. I have a ton of ideas. And I'll do my best to be as brief as possible. I'm going to forget something. So I'm just going to apologize on the outset that if I don't include everything that I think is cool, that I trust colleagues to go and find these things. And maybe I'll make a point of how to find the right things. That'll be something we can talk about so that you feel more comfortable and confident as you're trolling the internet. That maybe you can become more of a savvy consumer of what you're looking at. I am going to make a disclosure because obviously I'm going to talk about a couple of the things that we've done and that we have out there. So, you know, asha disclosure wise, I make royalties and ownership interest. And I have intellectual property and some of the things I'm going to talk about and not in others. So obviously I think we did a pretty good job with our clinical guides. Yeah, we have one for school age stuttering assessment and therapy and one for early childhood stuttering assessment and therapy because they're very different from each other in a lot of ways. There's overlap in some ways like in some of the assessment things, but they're the way in which we approach early childhood stuttering assessment and therapy and school age are different. And so, we have some guides that take you, you know, from the moment you hear, can you come take a look at this kiddo to what's good for dismissal. And I think those are very helpful to really create a framework for a cohesive look at what to do with students who stutter at various ages. Not just pull this from here and that from there, but a cohesive look. And I think that's really important. And because then you can find all sorts of other things, once you feel like you know why you're doing what you're doing. I think that a lot of times I get asked about what about those kids with fluency disorders and the coexisting issues, you know, ADHD and autism spectrum. There's a newer resource out there because I get asked about it a lot. It's called fluency plus. It's Kathy's Taylor Scott and it's from Slack Publishers. And it has different chapters on, you know, fluency plus other things. And I think it's really helpful in many areas. It's not going to give you everything you ever needed to know about all of those different areas, but it'll give you a great start and lots of resources for their learning. I have my copy right next to me because I'm doing some study guides with some of the SLPs I'm working with at my district. And then I think for seeing stuttering is more than just stuttering. Scott Yaros always says, there's a couple of resources. Once from our company, we're just the distributor of it because they're from England and it's hard to get that shipping from England. It's called scammering therapy from the inside. One of the better books I've ever read on that sort of speaker's experience. I think it's very valuable to get past just the what are the techniques like what do I do? It's like learning experiential learning, which is so valid. There's also another one called more than fluency. And I'm trying to see it on my shelf right now. I'm trying to see who published it. Cloral publishing. Has that one. And I think the idea for finding the right fit for you and to have that evidence base. I'd like to ask myself a couple of questions. Number one, whatever I just picked up, are there citations in it? Do I know where that person got that information and who did the background of it? I like to look at how older the citations. Does the research stand the test of time? Has there been research on this since 1940? Very important. And then I really learned this in graduate school. I have a friend who's a person who stutters and he's in marketing and he and I did something once called the savvy consumer, becoming a savvy consumer of speech therapy for people who stutter. We did a presentation and love that idea of that savvy consumer. And my professors always put in my head who has done the research of what you're holding in your hand? Okay, if there's research, how old is it? Has it stood the test of time? And who has done it? Is the only, are the only people, are the only research articles from the people who make money selling you what you're holding? Or have there been, you know, other researchers looking at whatever this is, whatever is being proposed? So those are just a few of the questions I asked myself when I'm looking for any kind of evidence-based strategies with any kid I work with, be it stuttering or language. I think, you know, it's important for us, you know, sometimes I think we do more research on buy-in a used car than we do on what we're using in therapy. And I really find those questions help me mold the better evidence-based strategies and resources that I take. Yeah, such great considerations and ideas for resources as well. Thank you for sharing those. So I'd like to wrap up with a little little getting to know you game. And it starts with just sharing any good stories or therapy fails that you've experienced in, and you've said even an SLP for a long time, but you have some good stories. - Oh, wow, yeah. Therapy fail. The one that comes to the top of my mind is the first kid in my stuttering therapy in the corn fields of Illinois. And I always feel like I should call this kid. He's probably well into his 30s by now. I should give him free therapy for the rest of his life. Because I really, I didn't listen to myself therapy fail. Okay. I knew going in that I wasn't supposed to be doing, I had some pretty good training back in the day. I was trained by a van right for entrained guy who stutters. And we, I had an undergraduate course, a graduate course and 25 hours of clinical practicum. I know that's unheard of now in many ways for stuttering. But I thought I was, you know, gonna take the world by storm. And I walked into my first school and like my brain just, I just let my brain go. I don't know what happened, but the lady that was there before me had been writing percents of stuttered speech goals. And I thought, oh, she's been in the, in the business for 30 years. Maybe she knows what I don't know. And so I started writing those and used them for a couple of years. And all I did every year was just switch the percentage. I didn't know what the heck I was doing because the measurements never came out. The data never, the data never meshed with what I was actually doing in therapy. I was, I think helping him a little bit more than it looked like on paper. So therapy fail, don't, you know, not listening to yourself and letting other people tell you what to do. - That's a really good point. Yeah, I think we can, especially if there's someone more experienced, we can get a little self-conscious and not trust our gut feeling or our, you know, training. But I love that you shared that story and your honesty. So thank you for that. And I know that we have all done something like that at some point, especially in the beginning. - Oh, yeah, I could tell you therapy fails from last week too, but I, you know, because it's not like I've only failed in therapy, you know, 30 years ago. I fail, I fail, I pick myself up from, you know, moments where I go, well, that was an interesting idea. All the time, it's just a part of life. I laugh because during Asha, I created another Instagram called SLP Unfinished because I just keep telling myself, I learn every day and I don't, I don't think I ever want to be a finished SLP because then it's time to retire. - Yeah, oh, that's really good. Actually, I'm glad you brought that up because just in terms of AAC, like there's this new book that just came out and it's like hitting the, you know, the World by Storm, the SLB World by Storm, it's really got a lot of buzz around it. And one of the things that they talked about is like, how a core word of the week is not necessarily the best idea that really we should be modeling what teachers do with letters, which is like not doing a letter of the week, but doing a letter of the day. And up until this book, which I just started reading last week, like I was advocating for a core word of the week. And now I'm like, oh man. So yeah, we never stop learning. The research isn't even like out really to compare the two approaches, but it makes sense when we look at like how the letters are taught. That's probably better because they're getting more psyched exposure throughout the school year than if we were just to introduce like one word per week or one letter per week. - Oh, that's cool. So moving on, I'd like to know what are three things you can't work without. - Espresso. Lots and lots of espresso. I know you're a mantra girl. Is that what I read? You're a mantra? - Yes. - Just had one today. - Yep, I just mainline this stuff. Don't milk for me. Just give me all of the caffeine I can have. I think that's the first thing, more of the fun, funny thing. The other thing I can't live without is colored paper. - Oh. - We do a lot of reflective writing, reflective drawing. My students all have therapy binders where they are, you know, we're taking portfolio documentation every session. Not just quote unquote data. I have my data separate, right? But this is their work. This is what they're learning about and then they're taking it and showing it to their parents or their teachers or teaching others about stuttering. And so I am a colored paper junkie and I know that's old school. I know I should be doing, I'm more and more iPad stuff. But my students think colored paper is neat 'cause they don't have a lot of paper anymore. And then the last thing I can't live without is being open to learn from my students. They teach me every day how to be a better therapist if I listen to them. Sometimes I think, and this is, you know, our training, we were trained to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Somebody should be talking. And especially in the world of fluency disorders, a lot of therapy is about listening and about silence. And being open to that, when we've been trained that we have to talk a lot is one of the things I can't live without. - I love those. And I am all about the colored paper as well. Are we talking like the traditional colors or like more fluorescent colors? - Oh, girls. - Yeah. (laughs) I love it. That's great. So what are you enjoying doing outside of work? - Wow. You know, I'm gonna have to do a disclosure thing. That was a tough question for me. (laughs) 'Cause I've worked a lot. And I'm trying to find a better balance. But, you know, to stay active, I used to be a runner until I got hit by a car while I was on my bike and now I don't run anymore. So I do a lot of cycling. I got back on the bike. I do a lot of cycling. I like Pilates. Anything involved in travel, especially with my husband, we love to travel and experience new things. But at home, I'm learning to enjoy binging a great story. When I, while I'm cuddled up with my cat and my husband, just for a little brain drain and allow the brain to relax a little bit. It's kind of fun. - I feel like we would really get along 'cause I'm about cycling as well. And I'm sorry to hear that you got hit by a car. That is like one of my biggest fears when I ride on the road down here in South Florida. My husband's been hit. My dad's been hit. Thankfully, like they're okay. I hope yours wasn't too bad. - Not too bad. - Okay. Good. I am a huge Peloton fan. Have you heard of Peloton? - I have heard of Peloton. I don't have it 'cause I like to road cycle. - Okay. - It's very, you know, those commercials. I don't know. - I know. I felt like I was like, come on Peloton when they did that commercial and it was so controversial because I am such a fan. It's like a little cult. But you don't need the actual bike to use Peloton. You can do it like on the app. - Oh, yeah. - Oh, you just made my day. - All right. Because I mean, I don't see the point, like I love the bike, but I don't see the point of like purchasing it. It's so expensive. It's such a big investment when you can get like a regular bike. And I know actually another friend of mine or somebody that's on Instagram, she got one through Facebook at a really good price and it was virtually brand new. So. - Nice stuff. - Yeah. All right, last question. What is one piece of advice you would tell your younger self? - Well, this is going to be no surprise because of how I asked the question about how I had to struggle of what I do outside of work. I would tell myself that too much of a good thing is not always a good thing. It's got Scott Yarerson, I my co-author and I have this conversation constantly because we're both crazy people with our work and we love what we do. It's like, it's such a good thing. So I'm always working. I do it all the time in all the different ways. But I think I'd remind myself, if I could tell my younger self to find that balance of work and rest earlier and stick with it. I think this might be a book. I feel this sort of connection across the wires, but there's a book I'm rereading for like the third time whose title says it all and I don't know if you've ever heard of it. It's called "Present Oath." I knew you were going to say that. I was literally thinking at my head when you started mentioning it. Wow. Yeah. You started to get together for actual coffee because yeah. You know, I think her type, that title says it all. And I think if I knew all of that earlier, I could have found the balance a little bit earlier and it would have been easier to maintain. But, you know, we love what we do and we didn't get into this professions for the money. You know, none of us is getting rich, being a speech pathologist. So it must have been about how much we love kids and that we want to help people communicate because communication is so important. But too much of a good thing can be sometimes not a great thing. Yeah. I like that piece of advice. I think what you're doing is out of the best interest of the people that you serve. I think if it was something that was selfish that you were doing a lot, then maybe it could be a really bad thing. But you've just made such an impact on our field. We are so grateful for the work that you've done and the impact that you've made. So thank you from the bottom of our hearts. And thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview. I so appreciate that and, you know, we'll talk anytime and maybe at, uh, maybe we'll see each other at one of the conferences and can talk more about some of the books. Yeah, I would love that. Well, thank you again. Oh, and where can everyone find and connect with you? Oh, okay. Um, well, we're building more and more of a social media presence. I feel like I'm the oldest lady on Instagram, but I'm getting there. You know, I'm on Instagram at Miss Nina SLP and of course at Stuttering Therapy Resources, both of those places. I have a professional Facebook page. I don't, I don't connect with my colleagues on my personal page because you really don't need to see my cat. But you'd want to see some of the links that I'm reading about. And that's Nina Reardon Reeves SLP. And I also put those things up on Stuttering Therapy Resources too. We're on Twitter at Stutter at Stutter Resource and we're also on Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers. So we're out there with websites and they can find me through my website, NinaReeves.com. Easy to remember. It's my name. And our website is, it's kind of interesting. We named our publishing company exactly what it is. Stuttering Therapy Resources. So that it would be easy to do. And so we're out there and we're always happy. A lot of you know that Scott's on Facebook a lot. I'm doing the Instagram part of it. And we're just really loving connecting with our colleagues and trying to help them feel more comfortable and confident with kids who stutter. Because as you said, it really is so important and so wonderful to connect with these kiddos and see them blossom. Yeah, absolutely. And it's so important that you guys are kind of meeting SLPs where they're already hanging out. It's a lot of work and I think it's inconvenient to expect SLPs to do all this research and like, you know, go look for research articles. But the fact that you guys are like, you know, meeting them on social media, putting this information in front of them. The information's going to be disseminated so much faster and it's going to be better for our clients overall. So I really appreciate the work that you guys put into that. Yeah, that's great. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Gennina. And until next time. Before we go, I wanted to see if you like listening to these episodes every week. Do you want to keep hearing from these awesome guests and do you love that you can learn the helpful resources and tips for free? My editor, aka my sister, and I spend a lot of time every week putting these episodes together so that they can be ready for you on Wednesday mornings. We would love it so much if you would take a screenshot of this episode and share it on social media or leave a positive review. And guess what? Every month I will choose one reviewer to win a little thank you gift. You can choose from a product in my TPP store, an AAC coaching call or gift card. It's the least I can do to show how much I appreciate your support. It's because of you that this podcast keeps going.