When Reading and Talking Both Feel Hard for Kids

Hi, and welcome to the OTsN, the podcast where we merge the worlds of education and occupational therapy to empower families like yours. I'm Sarah Collins, your host, an occupational therapist and a homeschooling parent. I've experienced occupational therapy by supporting families for over 15 years, but also through seeking out support of my own children, so I'm right here in the trenches with you. Though there is not one way to educate your child, there is a lot to consider when individualizing an education. And the goal of this podcast is to explain some of the why behind what an occupational therapist is thinking so you can apply it to your own family, especially with my three favorite topics, executive functioning, hand writing, and sensory processing. Each episode will be packed with practical tips, expert interviews, and real-life stories aimed at helping you to create a supportive learning environment for your child. So grab your headphones and get ready to dive in of the collision of education and occupational therapy. I'm Sarah Collins from homeschool OT, and I'm thrilled to have you with me on this journey of discovery. Hey, hey, and welcome back to the OT is in I'm Sarah Collins, occupational therapist, homeschool mom and your host here at the OT is in where we're going to talk about real-life, real kids, and practical ways to support development with the interviewer homeschool day. Before we jump in, I want to thank Love Every for being the title sponsor of today's episode. One of the things I appreciate most about Love Every is how intentionally their toys and activities support development through everyday play. So much of what we're talking about today, communication, language, learning, interaction, and connection actually begins long before academics. It begins in play and in conversation, in shared experiences, and in little little moments that help children to build understanding of the world around them. Today's episode is such an important one because we are diving into speech and language development with my good friend Amanda Owens. We're talking about what the terms actually mean when parents might want to seek additional support and how speech and language connect to academics like reading, writing, comprehension, and even math. I think many homeschool parents here speech therapy and they immediately think about articulation may be trouble with the R sounds like we had in my own home or difficulty pronouncing certain words, but speech and language are so much broader than that. And in today's conversation, we're really going to connect to the dots between communication, learning, and how our children process and express information. So whether you've had questions about your child's reading progress, comprehension, communication, or you've just wondered what speech language pathologies actually do. I think this episode is going to give you a lot to think about in a really encouraging and very practical way. So let's jump in! One of the things I hear most often from homeschool parents is this quiet worry. My child is trying so hard, so why does learning still feel like such a struggle? I want to share a quick story from a mom in Virginia who found a solution by working with learning Rx because I think a lot of you will recognize yourselves in it. She had two daughters both struggling in different ways. When her older daughter had finished a full brain training program, what stood out wasn't just better reading, spelling, and math, though those did improve too, but the emotional shift. Her frustration dropped, she stopped dreading schoolwork, and for the first time she could work independently for longing girl stretches without melting down. Then her younger daughter started training, and within just a short time this mom saw improvements in reading, attention, and memory. But my favorite part, she shared that her daughter was suddenly reading chapter books on her own with no prompting or nagging. I've heard so many amazing testimonies like this from learning Rx clients because this is what they do. They don't teach content, they strengthen the underlying cognitive skills, like attention, working memory, and processing speed that make learning feel easier and more rewarding in the first place. Every client is different and your child may or may not achieve the same results as this family, but if you are homeschooling a child who's bright, but distracted, capable, but frustrated, or exhausted by daily learning battles, learning Rx might be worth exploring. Their research back programs help the brain get stronger so that learning doesn't feel like such a fight anymore for kids or parents. So head to learningrx.com/homeschoolot to get special discounted pricing on the cognitive skills assessment and sign up to get additional information and free resources from the learning Rx homeschool support team. Hey hey and welcome back to the OT is in my name is Sarah Collins and today I have the pleasure of bringing you my very good friend Amanda Owens. There are not that many people in our homeschool space that are both, you know, therapists working with homeschoolers and homeschoolers themselves in Amanda even takes it one step back and she was homeschooled. So it is such a pleasure to be with her again and then to share her with you. So, Amanda, I know I gave a little brief synopsis of who you are, but there's way more to you. So can you just start by interrupting? That is not the word. Can you just start by introducing yourself? Yes, I certainly can. I'm so excited to be here Sarah. This is just a blast for me because I knew that it was an excuse for us to get together and talk about things that really matter and so I'm really looking forward to it. But my name is Amanda Owens. I am a speech language pathologist, but I was a homeschool grad. I had gone to regular schools. I graduated high school though as a homeschooler when my mom and my dad pulled me, handed me the credit card and said, "What? Your homeschool now? Get yourself some curriculum." And I did just that. And I finished out my high school year, high school years from grade up, went to college and then decided, "Wow, I probably need something productive to do with my life." I was looking on websites found this crazy thing called speech language pathology and I'm going to give you spoiler alert to something I'm going to be talking about later. I had no idea what that was or what that did or what it could do. It just happened to be next to something that I had been looking at. And I was reading it. I was like, "Oh my goodness, I think this would be so interesting." And it could help people. I love helping people. So long story short, I did a little bit of a visit to a top 25 program in my area, started taking prerequisite courses there. I'd accepted it into the program and graduated two years later. And I haven't been a speech language pathologist for 14 years. I know, as some of my husband, I was like, "I'm at the end of the curve because usually SLPs, we move out of speech therapy after a certain point." So I'm definitely in the middle of my career. I know. I have this theory that they all go, "Mary, doctors, and dentists." And then we'll work our time or something. Anyways, beside the point, I get to speak and volunteer at my state's conference, the Indian Association of Home Educators. I've spent a lot of time with them on their special learners team. And in general, I just go taking speech therapy knowledge to homeschoolers all across the world, actually, through all the different things that I offer. But I provide speech therapy besides helping my husband homeschool our four kids. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. But yeah, anything speech therapy, a golden nerve view about it, it's true. And that's part of why Amanda and I, we either rocks are back and forth, they're markupolo, several times a month and just really go over all the things that we're thinking about how we're serving the homeschool community, how we can better serve the homeschool community. And then also, we just are day-to-day life. And so it's just so wonderful to have her here. And one of the reasons I wanted Amanda to come is because you kind of alluded to it that a lot of people are like, what on earth is speech therapy? But I know that there's so many people that are like, you know what? My kiddo can't say his Rs, this is me included. We really struggled with his Rs that we went in to speech therapy now, granted this was 2020 and everybody was masked. And so I was like in session two, this is unhelpful. I could not see what he was supposed to be doing. And we ended up, you know, just moving on and working ourselves. But and actually with a course that you sent me, which was fantastic. So once we got through all that, I was like, cool, well, that's all that speech would be, but it's not. So can you just dive in a little bit more about besides telling our kids how to say there are as in THs, what else does speech therapy do? Oh, that's a beautiful question. And it's one that I surprise parents with all the time because so many times I'll be working with a child for speech sounds. So their S is their THs, their K sounds, you name a sound. If a child is working on them, people usually think, oh, they need a speech therapist. But back in the day, speech therapy was one thing. And now speech language pathologist has really become something entirely more inclusive. And we do a lot of what needs to be done from the neck up. And if you're just listening to this, you won't see this. But I do talk with my hands, and I'm most definitely like neck up that speech therapy. So we do things with feeding and swallowing. So I worked a lot. with infants who had G tubes and who had to have syringe feeds and we're learning how to eat chew and swallow safely or latch with mama safely and productively. I've worked actually at the end of life with swallowing as well and this goes from picky eating to kids who are choking risks and have to eat different foods in order to be safe. But then if I move on down, you know, from the neck, if I'm moving on up, we not only work on, you know, the speech sound, but we also work on the quality of the voice. So I have some friends from my cohort who work with professional voice users. I have a few kids that work, yes, who work with me and they are doing voiceover work. And we work on clearing the space for good vocal productions to happen for good vocal health. So the voice box in all the associated areas. I work with kids on resonance. Sometimes on how I can kind of sounds like this and I'll work on them so that they don't sound like that anymore. I worked with work with kids with cleft palettes. I work with kids with hearing impairments to be able to communicate effectively if they want to be verbal or oral in their speech. I work with them to help the audiologist train their cochlear implant. Now that is an area that I am much weaker in and I usually refer those families out, but it's something that speech language pathologists do. But where I get super excited is when we move even farther up and we're into the brain and we're working with things like stuttering and cluttering, those different types of rhythm disorders. And there's, you know, the differences in how a child is able to put out their speech even if they know exactly what they want to say. And even more so as we continue to go up into the brain and we're working on reading. We're working on how the brain perceives sounds, phonological and phonemic awareness. We're working on attention, executive functioning. The child's ability to learn language for the first time as well as for their ability to read and write and comprehend beautifully. I work with kids with auditory processing disorder. Oftentimes I'm actually the first person to catch that. I've even caught that before that a family's audiologist did not catch because they didn't have an audiologist who specialized in that and we were able to catch that a few times. So there's so many. So we do, let me just center it for one second because I do have an entire podcast on auditory processing with Jody Jenrika. And I will make sure that one is right. Make sure that that one is linked in the show notes. But I do want to just, I, because I know there's actually more that you're going to say. But let's back up just to that piece for a second because to be able to take in language, you know, auditorily, right? And then be able to comprehend it and then get it back up. That seems very complex. So tell me a little bit more about what that means and what families would be looking for since that is so hard to get. Yeah, I think this is a really important thing because so many times I get told, you know, I, my kid can understand if they pay attention or I think they just don't want to listen or things like that. And auditory processing disorder as well as language disorders can masquerade is bad behavior. A lot of the times because kids don't want to be dumb more than they don't want to be anything else. They would rather be badly behaved than they would be dumb. And you don't ever have to say my kids dumb for them to believe it about themselves because they genuinely don't understand what you're saying. And so I have seen so many children break down at different points and then it looks like bad behavior. But let me tell you a little bit about how it can break down. So even if a body can hear, can technically hear and the ear gets good signal, when it's sent through the auditory nerves to the part of the brain process, the sound, you can have breakdowns at the point of the auditory nerve. You can have breakdowns in the part of the brain that processes the sound. Sometimes the kids that I work with that have differences in their speech sounds, you know, they don't talk clearly. Sometimes it's in the mouth. But sometimes it's in how the brain perceives the acoustic profile of the sounds and not to get too nerdy. But the acoustic profile sounds way complicated. And certain sounds sound like others. And so many times kids can, when they're organizing the library of their brain, they can put sounds in the wrong spots or pick a favorite sound. This is one of my favorites to work with. They pick a favorite sound like the dip sound because it's super easy peasy, right? They put it in every single shelf. And so whenever they're pulling out, you know, oh, I want to say cat instead they say, "Dagged, why did they say that?" It's not because they're being lazy or they're not paying attention. It may be because the part of their brain that sorts the sound files or even discriminates and tells how they're different or not, depending on whether or not they're able to, something's breaking down there. And that's incredibly important with how they learn vocabulary. Yeah. A whole different part of the brain. Some kids have difficulty storing information into that part of the brain. Like, I have this one child that I'm working with who is really brilliant. She's going to be an authoress. She's going to write books. It's going to be fabulous. But right now she's really struggling with dyslexia because her brain does not discriminate sounds. Does not discriminate sounds very well at all from an auditory standpoint. So she hears it. And there's a bit of an issue there. But then on top of that, her brain doesn't, her brain doesn't, compartmentalize and organize those well. And then when she puts into vocabulary, that's a whole different difficulty. That is fascinating. And what's really interesting, like even my own brain right now is spinning because thinking back to my son that I mentioned when we had him and speech therapy back in 2020. And we just saved the art. So he was four at that point. And us working through it was not even how my mouth was moving was not really making helping him to make much progress. It wasn't until we really worked on reading and seeing the letter and making the sound that it not so do you think, wow, I'm so like this. So many times moms ask me or they tell me, oh, my kids ate but because their sounds aren't ready, we didn't think it would be right to teach them how to read. And I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, you need to give it a try because some kids need that visual because it helps them go, wait a minute, that's different. Yeah, because most parents don't know that brain can break down in that way, that the kids legitimately can totally hear the word cat. And it can hear it as a whole thing, just like a dog-washed phonological awareness. They hear all the pieces, whatever. But they don't really hear the individual pieces, the quite the same way. And their brain does, they hear it, but they don't discriminate the difference. They don't categorize it differently. And that can be, that can be a maker-break difference. And so for some kids, the visual is a gift. Yeah, absolutely. And when you combine that with differences in memory or a child who has a breakdown in syntax or the way their brain processes the order of language, kids who are saying, him was the one who he had the orange at my house on the other day, that was not today. Those like gobble-dee-gook, like, you're like, what did you know? I just have like, bro, I need to follow this. That was word salad. I am so lost. Those kids, like, they have ideas, but they're part of their brain that goes, all right, everybody we got to organize this thought. Yeah, there's so many different places where things can break down in the sound system and the language system. And it's, it's not common knowledge. It certainly is not in the what to expect when you're expecting for. Right. So this also kind of pulls together so much for me as an occupational therapist when I think through sensory systems about how so we rely on all of our systems together, right? So for my son with his speech there, the auditory piece, he was probably not within the hardware part, you know, not within his ears or even probably the nerve, but going into the software of his brain of that organization of the sound. So then it took the additional sense. So the visual sense to really help him to pull that all together. So so many times we talk about multi-sensory curriculums and multi-sensory activities. And so that really feeds over even to our kids language as well. Oh yeah, absolutely. So there's actually some really cool tie-ins if you want me to add out here for just a second. Kids who do not eat salads are not as likely to have language. Kids who do not play with two different kinds of toys together are as likely to put two words together and create phrases. It is important the play and all the sensory aspects connected with that, the perception of reality, et cetera. And for the sensations of eating solid foods with texture, not just puree, and it promotes not just speech sound development, which I guess could make more sense, but it also promotes language development. And I think that's so cool. That I have a little one that I'm working with right now, the Down syndrome, and she is making a jump from being syringe fed, all of her liquids, to having a and she is chatting up a a storm and not just making more sounds, but she is communicating for more purposes. She's saying her version of no for the first time in like five years and we are stoked. But I think what it is, a lot of it, as the changes in what she's sensorally experienced. - Yeah, so not just the shape of her mouth to drink from a cup, but instead like that she's holding it, she's seeing something different. She can probably perceive the liquid in the cup versus even if it's maybe it was colored within the syringe, wasn't necessarily able to really see, okay, so that's something that isn't solid that's going into my mouth and you know, it was a multi step process. - It was a multi step process and I'm sure as no tea, you love the executive functioning of that. - I do, I do. - Very much so. All right, so let's talk a little bit more about this light because you did mention how language and dyslexia and you know, we've talked a little bit about their reading piece. So how all of this comes together? 'Cause this is where in the homeschool world, I think where people were either jumping at the speech sounds, which I totally get. - Yeah, totally. - You can very easily see that or hear that, obviously. And recognize them, I don't know how to work with that. But a lot of times when it comes down to reading and writing, we don't necessarily know when it is time to get some help. So can you tell me kind of how they're related and what parents would be looking for to recognize, okay, is this a speech therapy issue where we or speech issue where we should go and get some help from a speech pathologist? - Gotcha, gotcha. All right, so very simply, if you're not getting leaves and bounds progressed by doing reading tutoring, if you were one of the few kids that has, and hopefully I can say this, who has failed something like Barton or OG, that is beautifully organized, that is very scientific reading, has all sorts of really cool things about it. And your kid is just still really hitting a wall and you have a great person. That is a sign that maybe there's something like you said with a hardware, with a software that needs a dress. And I personally love working with a family that has a good Barton person, that has a good OG person, that has a good whatever, you know, bull they happen to use approach, a great curriculum, because I like working on the brain so that moms and their team can hit the ground running with the other reading supports. I like to do the underlying stuff and the places where I see any tutoring type-based system, no matter how good it is, fail, not because it's not good, but because it doesn't have those components and it either kids, though I would argue that more kids need this than we might assume in the homeschool circles, even though they have homeschoolers have amazing language enrichment, just straight off the gate. I get so many less late talkers in homeschool circles than I get other circles because things are wonderful, things are enriched. Usually if they're a late talker, there is something more significant going on in the need. But I would say that is a difference in memory, it is a difference in attention, it is a difference in some cognitive linguistic skill and oftentimes a expressive or receptive language disorder that's kind of underneath it. It is a difficulty in visualization, it is a difficulty in being able to retain information for long enough to process it, a difference in how the brain understands and uses language at some level or sounds like in the case of one of the most common types of dyslexia is phonological dyslexia. It's that difference in how your brain sorts all of that beautiful sound information. - Okay, I feel like this is a great time to take a break. And when we come back, I think I'm gonna ask you to define some of those terms that you just heard. - Okay, I'm here, it's like, huh? - I know, I don't think it's so stinkin' technical, but I promise I'm not fancy. - You guys learning to read is not just about letters and sounds. From an occupational therapy lens, it also involves attention, motor coordination, visual processing, sensory regulation, and language working together. See, it's not a simple task. So, we also need the right tools to help us to support our kids. The love of every reading skill set supports the whole child through hands-on materials that encourage fine motor development for writing readiness, visual discrimination for recognizing patterns and symbols, language-rich interactions that support comprehension. The activities are designed to be interactive and meaningful, helping children actively engage their bodies and brains in the learning process. And parents are guided through what to offer and win, because goodness gracious, we do not need to be more overwhelmed. This helps us because we don't need to design or piece together instruction on our own, but we have the right tools to support our kids. So, explore the reading skill set. I love every dot com. Now, back to the show. Welcome back. So, Amanda was just telling us so much information and it's all really valuable, but I want to break it down just a tad bit more. So, the first thing that you said, actually you said a lot, but the first one that really caught my mind is when you were talking about language processing. So, I think we did mention the difference in the hardware and the software, right? So, we were talking about the mouth and then, you know, some about the actual brain. But when you're saying that we're processing, what do you mean by that? - So, it depends on the process that's being done, what parts of the brain are being used and what's being required of them. And there's actually some folks like one of my favorites, David Kilpatrick, Dr. David Kilpatrick, he's a reading specialist psychologist by nature and training, but he talks about how there's not really technically phonological processing, but instead it's your working memory, so your ability to remember something long enough to use it and how it is used by the sound system. And so, in the sound system, my thought is your processing is your ability to not only discriminate the differences between the sounds acoustically, but your ability to retain that information while doing something with it, like hearing the word or decoding it and blending it. So, when you have the word cat, you have cat, and you gotta remember those in order for as long as it takes for you to blend them together. And to me, that's phonological processing, even though it's not a technical term, sounds technical, but it's not like on the official list of technical terms, but then language processing when I think about central auditory processing disorder, I think about kids who they hear all the words, they totally hear them correctly. And when it gets into their language system, it's like when you bring a whole bunch of laundry, clean laundry into a room, and instead of neatly putting it away in the drawer, it's just kind of throw it everywhere, and just see where it lands, and then you expect yourself to pick out an outfit or to have a clean room after that. And you just can't. - Nope. - And some kids don't have the process of how do I read the order of what was just said? Remember it long enough to do something with it. And if they also have a language disorder on top of it, they don't know the difference between, would you get your socks on after your shoes, or would you get your socks on for your shoes, or whatever? They can know the meaning before and after, but suddenly when you put it into phrase, things get hazy. The small words get lost with kids with central auditory processing disorder and kids with language disorders. And so that would be how I think of language processing. - This is fascinating to me, because it's almost like when I'm talking about handwriting with families, and we've done several podcasts on this as well, all of those underlying skills that are involved. Like we need to think about our strength in addition, here at this point, you're like, we need to think about the math, right? And how much it can move, or the actual ear can house. We need to be able to think about these two systems. Then I talk about the motor control of your hands, and you're saying the motor control of your tongue to be able to get these sounds out. Then I think about can you process what you want to say? Can you come up with your idea, and then get it on the paper? Okay, and so what you're saying here is can you process the idea that you're hearing and then come to all the way to the frontal lobe to get our working memory to then get back to engage with them out. So communication is so much more complex, I think even than I was realizing and I've worked in this field. - Yes, yes. There's so many crisscrosses across the brain, and it's so interesting how many different places can go funky. And then you have to untangle it, and it's really hard to untangle that on your own. And I see, I mean, I'm a homeschool grad, we homeschool our kids, I have so much love for homeschooling, and I think there's so much that we can do on our own, which is why I like equipping parents far more than I like being like, okay, you need to go out and get out. You get somebody who wants to work with you and teach you 'cause you're gonna do far more good than I would with you. your child, but you need a buddy too sometimes. And I think that's because unless you want to really study the brain and be an expert on your child, which that is its own full-time job, sometimes it's nice to have help. Yeah, I say this all the time, like home schooling is not alone schooling. It is where we get the privilege of building our team because we are the experts in our children and we need to oftentimes define somebody to come alongside of us to help out in the areas where we need it, you know? And this can very well be won, especially when you're talking about how this language affects your reading, how it affects your, we just talked some about how it affects your writing. I mean, how it's going to affect your comprehension of math because there's so much language involved in explaining how to do a math concept. Like it all comes together. Yeah, just you know, that kids with language disorders are much more likely to have time blindness and difficulty with mental math related to time. I did not, but tell me the more about that, why. Well, okay, so it's interesting. I think it has to do with the types of understanding with how the world works. And I think it's interrelated with syntax and concepts that are very what's called cognitive linguistics. So like thinking language based. When we think we human beings, we think in language. We may think in pictures too, but we also think in language and concepts like before, after alongside. Like above, like all the prepositions. Yeah. A quarter two. Half hour passed. Like they're all very languagey, aren't they? And word problems are a whole other business. If you have a kid who does amazing with calculation and just syncs when they do word problems, consider that you might have a very high level language difference. Even if they communicate well, you can have amazing conversational skills and still have the remnants of a language issue. You really can. Fascinating. So then how do parents know? Because this is one of the, I want to say downfalls as much as I love homeschooling and I'm with you. Obviously, we homeschool our own kids. It can be hard when we are used to how our children do, you know, how how they are doing within their math and how we often accommodate them very well. We don't necessarily see the other, you know, Johnny, who is also the same age as our kiddo, who is doing to compare not to compare to be like, man, you're better and I'm behind. But instead to compare and be like, wait a minute, why are you struggling? And a lot of times they can find that faster when we have more professionals like in a school system looking. But when we don't and we are the parents, how do we know what to look for and when to seek that help? Yeah, that's a really good question. So if you have multiple kids, if one kid is just having a harder time than all your other kids, that's enough of an indicator. If your mama got, it's just twinging and you're like, man, this is so frustrating. This is causing tears. Is my normally sweet and wonderful child suddenly being willful? Maybe it's genuinely hard, right? And a language disorder for some kids can be, you know, how you've heard the term hidden disability. It can be something that it's not obvious. And you can have a bright spark, a kid who is so bright in certain aspects, who just for some reason is different with that. And a lot of times, you know, as homeschoolers, we're so good. Like you said, beautifully accommodating. We don't experience friction because we're always giving our kid exactly what they need to do their next step. But if you have any questions, any doubts whatsoever, if you're not humming along at the pace that you would have expect for them based on their other intelligences, then why not ask for screening? Yeah, I know that I am not the only speech language pathologist that offers screenings. I offer my very inexpensively because I want people to know whether or not something's up. And a lot of SLPs offer free consultations. It doesn't hurt to ask because honestly, most of the time when a parent has this question in their head, they're almost always right, probably because you know your child so well. Yeah, right. So what kind of questions would you ask or would you expect a parent to ask you when they are deciding whether to come to speech therapy? I usually find that parents ask me, is this something that you can help with? Because they already know that there's a problem, but they don't know if I'm the kind of person that can help with that. So that's a question. Don't feel ashamed asking that. Ask them any question that you can write down. If they get offended, they're not the right speech language pathologist. But if you can ask them those questions, you're probably going to get a good answer. So don't be afraid of asking questions. I think is the moral of that little story. But I think one of the things that I get asked the most is not even a question. A family will say, okay, so when my kid does this, this happens. Is that normal? You can always google that. You can totally google that. Or you can email an SLP. I for instance, answer that question all the time in my community. But one of the questions that I usually follow up with is what are you doing currently to help? And the thing that parents don't realize until I ask that question is how much they're compensating for their kid? How much they're doing for their child or providing supports for their child without even thinking about it? And I don't actually feel bad about that because this is, that's the homeschool parents superpower among many of them that we have in our repertoire, right? But while it's a gift in one sense, if we want them to fill in those gaps instead of just compensating for them, if they truly want to improve the way their brain does their processes, then they need to wash their kid fail a little bit. And then ask themselves, okay, does that feel normal to me? That I think that is a good indication. Oh, so good. Because I do have an entire podcast. It's called the accepting and the expecting that really actually talks about the science behind making a mistake and how we need to do that to encourage learning. Like when we as parents are compensating and you're you're right that most of the time we just do what we don't even know, but we're compensating and accommodating for our kids in a way that they're not having to challenge their brain. And sometimes it even takes the outside person to allow that challenge because it's not always easy as a parent. I'm like, "But, but, oh, yes." One of the biggest gifts I believe that you can give your child is the ability to fail and try again the ability to fail and not let it crush you. Yes. That's so big. And I don't know how many times I've worked with a child who's never been given the opportunity to fail. And when a parent, especially when they figure out, "Oh, my goodness, my child has had a speech or language disorder all this time. I feel so guilty. Why didn't I get help sooner or whatever? Because that is something that comes up all the time. Because in homeschool families, we wait a little longer." Yeah. When they have that moment that they look back and I can be like, "But, now you have the opportunity." And now you're giving them a huge gift because now you're giving them the opportunity to grow. And to be independent, that's your your cheap job right is to make them independent and to fail and retain a certain level of constructive. Yes. Oh, yeah. I love that. I mean, this has been so fantastic. And I know we could keep talking about this for hours, especially that topic because building resilience within our children and helping them to see all of the different areas where that is helping their brain to grow. Right? I mean, we've talked about how interconnected the brain is with language and with the mouth and all of it all put together how that failure then helps all of those pieces. You know, goodness. Can you tell people where where to find you and some of the ways that you do support the homeschool community as a whole? Okay. All right. You can find me at www.illuminatecommunicate.com because I wanted to make it really hard for people to find me. I hadn't spelled ever so many people, but it's www.cate.com. Although if you search for me and illuminate oftentimes you'll find me and I'm sure that I'll be somewhere in the show notes. But I have a community. I serve three states with direct speech therapy and weekly video coaching. But in my community, which is a resource that is very easily accessible, I answer questions. I do little trainings. I have courses that I have written for speech language and you name it. And I have three very easy to get started with three day challenges for parents. We talk clearly challenge the more words and cozy conversations challenge and the reading ready brain challenge. And in three days you should know what to start. with your child. And then if you take the challenge and you continue it for a week or so, you will get to take a look back at your progress that you've made. And I, all my tools that I make these days, five minutes a day. That's all I'm asking for Mama's because that's, that's, it's, you're busy, but five minutes a day. So, wow, that's so fantastic. And I will say, we did use that R curriculum. I don't know if that was still in there, but it is. Oh, it is. Yes. It is finished. And all it's huge glory. The R30 roadmap. It is giant. That's the only non five minute one. The practice is inside your five minutes. Yeah. Maybe I should have my son come in here be like, hello, I can say my R's now. I read and write. Yes, it's just approved. I'm great it is. Well, thank you again so much for being here. This is a wonderful conversation. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate you. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the OTSN. And a huge thank you again to love every first sponsoring today's episode. I'm always grateful to partner with companies that truly value child development, curiosity, connection, and learning through meaningful everyday experiences. It today's conversation encouraged you, helped you connect some dots, or minded you that you don't have to figure out all of this alone. One, I love it if you leave a review. And two, I want to invite you to join the wait list for the OTSN insiders. This is Boreanu and actually won't even launch until August, which is why there's a wait list right now. It's the next step for parents who want ongoing support, practical strategies, encouragement, and community from someone who understands both occupational therapy and the home school life. It's designed to be a place where homeschool parents can continue learning, ask questions, and feel less isolated while supporting 30 unique learners. Once a month, I'm going to give a very short presentation that's going to dive deeper into these podcast topics. And then we're going to talk about it. I'm going to open the floor to you, the parents, to be able to ask questions. And then we as a community are going to be able to answer. This is not going to be another membership where you have so much information that bogged you down and prickly scares you. Instead, it's going to be a, hey, this is what's going on right now. This how this podcast relates to it. Can you help me out? Yeah, I can. And I'm in. So you can join the wait list through the link in the show notes. And I cannot wait to share more with you soon. I'm Sarah Collins, occupational therapist and home school mom. So thanks for listening and recognizing that you are not doing this alone because the OT is always in.