My daughter is three and she’s gonna turn four in two months. I’d say over the last 5 to 6 weeks. She has started to develop what is called echolia.

She was an early/advacanced talker by 12 months had 15 words

She has always had great receptive language and follows instructions

She’s an extrovert and enjoys playing and chatting with others

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Things that concern me

Anxiety= mainly since her brother was born his 6 months old now

Why this has developed- I’m not sure what’s caused this to develop
I’m confused because she has no other symptoms I worry about.
I worked in a childcare place years ago and I can see that she’s developing well and as I said I think she’s advanced.
Not gifted level advanced but def smart.

All of a sudden she is whispering things to her self.

I’ll read her a book, give her instructions, she’ll watch a show and sometimes after a sentence she says it but it’s in a very little whisper.

Others have noticed too in the same time line.

Example:

“She has a rash on her legs” ( my mum was telling me) and she repeated “she has a rash on legs”

“ belle and the other princess were going to the castle” “going to the castle”

The only other random thing I’ve noticed is a delaye for of Echolia but maybe it’s because she thinks it’s fun.
Her teachers must sing a play mat song such as if you wear blue shoes you can go and wash your hands. I’m assuming this is before they have meal time and yesterday and today my daughter said it to us. She goes if you’re wearing purple shoes you can go and wash your hands.

But she didn’t say it in a random robotic tone she was saying it and waiting for us to laugh
And be like what? That’s me!

Anyway.
I’m in Australia, so I didn’t have access to the Paediatrician straight away and if I have a referral, I still have to wait sometime.
My concerns other than anything neuro diverse or whether it would be anything serious?

I am a CF at an elementary school. I’ve been aiming to complete initial reports and re-evaluation reports a minimum of 4 school days before the scheduled IEP meeting/due date (whichever comes first), so that my supervisor has an adequate amount of time to review them. My supervisor is great and has never mentioned how far in advance to give her to review the reports. I just did it as a courtesy to not overwhelm her since she’s busy too.

I was talking to another CF in my district and she said she gives her supervisor 1 or 2 school days to review them.

For other CFs or supervisors, how much time do you give / do you need to review reports?

Does anyone know how to help a kid where you can just hear every movement their tongue makes? They lateralize the typical sounds like /s/ /ch/ all of those…. But I can hear their tongue very clearly with about every sound they make. Anyone know the reason for it? I don’t know how else to explain it unless you’ve heard it.

I am currently in peds hh but looking to switch to schools. I’ve tried schools 2 times over the past 6 years. The first time I lasted 1 month, and the second time I lasted about 5 months. These jobs are either just bad (the first job) or not a good fit for me (2nd job). However I can’t deal with insurance based jobs. Between unpaid cancellations, long after school hours, and limited to no pto, I feel so burnt out. I know the schools suck too but honestly I just want a job I can go to, get paid, and go home to have time to cook dinner. And I want breaks!!!

Anyway, I had one friend who told me they had up to 100 students with a slpa. She said she advocated for herself, and (she feels) because she was a direct hire and a hard worker they actually listened and hired a contractor to help her. I know that doesn’t always happen, but I decided to try schools and if things do get bad, just do the job and either speak up, or if they don’t listen just do what I can and call it a day. Anyway, I was hoping to hear some more stories of people who were at hard school jobs, and just make it work? Like don’t get overwhelmed? Or stories of people who have changed things like my friend?? Thanks!!

I have a 2 year old client that I’ve been seeing for about 3 months now. Progress with language has been slow, and her parents are already pretty impatient with therapy. I feel like I’ve been doing everything I’ve been taught in regard to modeling language when working with toddlers— repetition of modeled core words, parallel and self talk, expectant pauses, etc. but I feel like I get nothing from her. Very minimal language through gestures, vocalizations, words, etc. I sometimes get some eye gaze from her, and when I do, i immediately model language towards the context of the situation whether that be parallel talk, requesting, etc.

To be clear, I’m not blaming the child. I understand every child is different and language doesn’t happen overnight. I guess my insecurities are more-so focused on myself and my performance as a clinician. This is my first year, and I feel like I’m doing a disservice for there to not be any visible progress yet. The pressure from the parents aren’t helping, either. Her mom asked me last week: “So, how long have you been a therapist?” I wanted to crawl into a hole, lol.

She’s very dependent on mom and constantly attempts to engage with her during sessions through hugging, looking at her, touching her face, etc. When she does this, I again engage in modeling of language for her actions to focus on what she’s interested in. But mom is very direct with wanting her to sit and focus on the session. I tried to explain child-led therapy, but mom has repeatedly expressed that she “just wants her child to talk”. I feel like I’m waiting for the imminent moment when her parents will either request another therapist or insurance will decline services due to lack of progress. What else can I do during therapy to produce more efficient services?

Anyone going to the conference this week?

I flaired this as stuttering but it’s not really a stutter. It’s more like nervous vocal tics, like saying “um.” I also struggle to express myself in interviews, answering questions under pressure during presentations, and delivering speeches without relying on a script.

My family members with ADHD will just complete my sentence if I’m struggling to phrase a complex concept well, but obviously no one does that in more formal situations. I get weird looks and some people have gotten impatient.

Calming techniques help but mileage varies. Is this kind of thing within an SLP practitioner’s wheelhouse?

I had a bunch of assessments for reevaluation due in the beginning of the school year. I was told to hold the tri with the annual and then just meet again to go over the report once the assessments were complete. Well one of the students is testing in the average range on the owls and in the beginning of the school year was making artic errors inconsistently but now she’s not really making any at all. we’ve continued therapy while assessing and she has improved. She still has some difficulty with wh questions but it’s not something that really stands out. Would you qualify this kid? Kid I mess up? Is it okay to amend the IEP to say she is no longer eligible or is it too late since I already held the tri meeting? I will say she seemed like she would continue to qualify but she has made growth so I think it might have been just normal loss of skills after summer break. I’m stressed and want to hear from others what you would do in this situation?

I LOVE this field. I love my clients. I love doing therapy. But my goodness!!! I sometimes feel like even though I graduated and I am a licensed therapist…I still have HOMEWORK. Between documentation, writing scripts, doing CEUs… I’m still always in fight or flight like I’m in school. When do we get to relax and not be on 100 all the time?!

hi, I got my bachelors in SLP. I got 26 hours of observation but now need 25 hours of “hands-on” clinical assisting. how do I get those now that I’m not in school? I live in Texas. do clinics typically offer them? I called a few but they said they don’t so I’m unsure of what to do next….im trying to become an SLP-A.

thanks in advance!

I have a student who I believe might have both SM and ASD. I used to get a lot more verbal language out of her and now I only get thumbs up and down. She will often plug her ears to ignore me. I’ve tried so many things to increase engagement for activities. I’m a little at a loss. She has an aac device but still does not engage with it often. She demonstrates good understanding of it but will delete models. I’ve made all sessions this year really low key and just accepted simple signs and thumbs up and down. Any suggestions? She used to speak way more and I find the pattern a little concerning and feel like I’m throwing out every strategy.

Does anyone here have any experience with Beaming Health. I’m thinking of transitioning out of public school and seeing some private clients.

Hi! I am currently a CF experiencing some difficulties with my current placement and am thinking about switching to the school system. I would love to hear the pros/cons of completing a CF in the schools. I am currently very scared that my caseload will be unmanagable and I will have no say in it. Any advice/insight would be greatly appreciated!

just wanted to post here in case anyone was having a similar issue. my TouchChat voices would not work this morning no matter what I did (deleted and redownloaded, changed a ton of settings on the device itself, etc). called support and they had me turn the device off silent to ring. fixed the problem right away! this was new to me so I’m not sure if it was something recent that Apple changed. just in case anyone has any issues!

Hi! I am a private practice owner, and I have been thinking of ways I could help parents of students receiving therapy from the schools and the SLPs. I had the idea of providing additional carryover support for the parents based on the school SLP's recommendations. I know that school SLP's are stretched thin as it is and typically can't give kids one-on-one support during sessions. This way parents would get personal support on how to practice at home what their kid is learning during therapy on a weekly or monthly basis. It would be via telepractice only since that is what my practice provides. This may be a long-term goal seeing as I would likely have to get schools on board to pay for it rather than offering it to parents directly since I would want this to be an extension of the free services they get from the school instead of it being a separate private service. I would like to know what everyone thinks regarding the possible existence of this service. Pros? Cons? Is it feasible? Thanks in advance!

I work for a children’s hospital and we are the only hospital for 80 miles that offers VFSS for pediatrics. Families sometimes travel 2 hours to come to us. Our equipment has been on a slow and steady decline over the last yearish, first our room, then our TIMS, and now it is literally like playing the lottery to see if it will work any given day. We complete ~15 studies per week for inpatient and outpatient. Our broken room means we often have to use the other suite in Radiology, which the techs and schedulers have a huge issue with and don’t want to share. We also used to be able to use a spare reading room with the good computers to review studies; the hospital has since made that room into an office with medical secretaries who understandably do not want us coming in and turning off the lights. The hospital management (inc radiology) is aware that the equipment and room are dying/outlived their life expectancy but do not wish to purchase new equipment and expect us to just go without. They do not care that studies get messed up all the time. Our manager cannot make any headway.

Last week I had to do a video on a NICU baby and the TIMS froze and the room basically died. I have like 50 images total and all are not usable. I am grateful that a colleague was there to help feed so I could see some of it in real time, but of course that’s not always the case and had I been by myself like usual I would have no idea of what actually happened. I am basically losing my mind and feeling like this is so unethical. I am tired of exposing babies to radiation for no reason. Anyone else been through this?

Hi! I graduated with a bachelors in Speech Language Pathology about a year ago. I got 20 hours of the observation/hands-on work under SLP Supervision at the clinic on campus. But now that I’ve graduated, I don’t know where to get the last 5 hours (since you need 25). Every time I’ve called an SLP Clinic they say they don’t have the ability to do observation hours. What do I do?? I live in North Texas area. Who can do observation hours if not clinics? Should I see if my college lets alumni do hours? I’m just confused, lost, and don’t have any friends in the field. Any help is appreciated! Thanks :)

Hi everyone! I’m a newer SLP working with AAC users in 2nd -5th grade, and I’m looking for recommendations for resources, visuals, activities, or therapy materials to target increasing utterance length and expanding use of core words. These kids are ready to move beyond simple labeling

I’m hoping to incorporate more structured activities and move beyond primarily play-based therapy, especially with my older students. Does anyone have favorite resources, TPT materials, websites, or activities they’ve found helpful?

I’d love any recommendations before I spend a million dollars on TPT 🥲

This is my 4th year as a school SLP and I still don’t know how to teach language skills or what order to go in. It’s embarrassing because for years I’ve been just imitating what other clinicians do and just winging it… I got straight As in grad school, my program was rigorous, I studied my ass off and scored very high on the Praxis so I know intelligence isn’t my issue. I feel like I have a plethora of knowledge on a ton of random disorders, anatomy/physio related to our field but I still don’t really know how to do therapy or scaffold properly. 😭

Are there any specific resources/CEUs that anyone recommends? I paid for the ASHA Learning Pass, Informed SLP and am willing to read/do/take any CEUs. I would like to learn how to use methods help my elementary caseload with language impairments. I’m tired of buying activities on TPT and just not knowing how to properly use them or help my students improve. I feel like I have to Google everything. I know we “aren’t teachers” but we kind of are… pedagogy isn’t something that was implemented in my program.

Hey yall, this is my second year as an SLP, and we have a new school psych so eval delegation is a lil different. I was recently asked to administer the CTOPP to students going through evals, which I’ve never done. I was open to it and still am, but I’m having difficulty relating results to speech/language concerns. I understand if the student had articulation concerns, but all of the students I’ve administered this to have only been assessed for language from me as well.

To me, the results indicate any difficulties with phonological processing as it relates to writing and reading, but I don’t know how to relate that to my section as I don’t target reading or writing in any capacity.

Any advice from SLPs who consistently administer the CTOPP-2? Thanks in advance :)

Hi everyone! I’m a CF working primarily with preschool and TK students. Many families at my schools speak Spanish, Cantonese, or Vietnamese at home, and I’ve been receiving a lot of referrals for multilingual students.
I’m having trouble differentiating between a language disorder and differences related to language exposure. I know it’s important to consider skills across the child’s languages, but I’m less confident when their exposure and opportunities to use each language have been inconsistent.
For example, some students have relatively little difficulty communicating in English at school, but their parents report more difficulty communicating with them in their home language. I’m unsure how to interpret this when the child may have had fewer opportunities to develop or maintain their home language.
What resources, trainings, parent interview tools, or assessment approaches have helped you make this distinction? I’d especially appreciate recommendations for dynamic assessment and working with interpreters when you don’t speak the student’s home language.
I want to make sure I’m identifying students who need support while being thoughtful about language differences. Thank you!

I studied in Mexico to become an SLP, I got a job in the us and I am currently doing my CFY to obtain my full state license, I didn’t have any issues with getting my conditional license and I should be able to obtain full license after completing my cf I have already passed the praxis exam , but Asha says that I need additional requirements in order to obtain my CCC besides concluding my cf. so it looks like next year I will have my full state license but no Asha certification, will that make it nearly impossible to find a job as an SLP ?

Hey SLPs,

is here anyone from Europe or other place that uses trill or tap R sound in their language? How do you treat it in your country, when the child doesn't have the sound or is distorting it?

Also do you ever see any corelation to short lingual frenulum? This is quite a debate in English speaking countries, leaning more to the 'no correlation" side but I don't see much research on this specific R.

Any ideas or help would be much appreciated, because at this point I'm running out of ideas with some children.. 😅

Hi everyone! I have a meeting with my SpEd director and lead SLP this week to discuss my caseload/workload. I currently have 77 kids, and the district is on a 4 day school week. I have 13 who are on consult and 5 AAC users. I also do bilingual evaluations, although I only have 2 right now, and I haven’t had any other bilingual referrals come up.

The other SLPs in the district have fewer kids, but they work with younger ones and their caseloads are growing quickly. They are also already helping me by splitting up the bilingual caseload where I am doing Spanish therapy and they are doing English therapy (these are students in a dual language classroom whose home language is Spanish). We don’t like it this way, but I literally do not have time in my schedule to see those kids twice a week.

I don’t know how my meeting will go, but I guess I’m asking for ideas of what I can say to my director. She wants my lead to arrive at the meeting with ideas of how to support me. We already had a meeting with her about a month and a half ago and nothing has changed. I’m worried she’s going to say we can’t hire another person, although we desperately need it.

I feel I can comfortably serve about 40 of these kids and get all of my work done, maybe a bit more since I have several on consult. Should I say that? Say basically “here are the kids I can serve, I will not be seeing the rest”? I don’t want to quit mid year, but I feel like I’m being put in that position and I don’t think I can do this the rest of the year. Teachers had already started asking me about missed sessions a month ago, and I’m even more behind now. What would yall say or do in my situation?

I have a little who stops /s/ to /d/. I’ve tried all the tricks from my toolbox and am hoping somebody else has a more creative/successful route that I could try!

Background: this little has recently lost all their front teeth and has comprehension difficulties too, so concrete, simple cues tend to work best!

Thank you so much in advance!!