Last week, to celebrate Earth Day 🌎 An episode of the Speak Up podcast that I was incredibly lucky to have been involved with was rebroadcast 🪲🌀 Listen in to hear Dr. Abby Foster and Suzanne Mungall, Speech Pathologists, share their experiences as SLPs affected by climate change and explain why climate concern is so central to the work of SLPs. I introduce the episode, sharing my reflections on the conversation. I really recommend the pod to all SLPs. An incredibly informative and inspiring episode!🩵 Find it wherever you listen to your podcasts ✨

The essentials I pack for all of my nature-based SLP sessions and what I paid for them. 🩵🌀💸 For my sessions, the environment does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to keeping clients engaged. So most of what I spend money on falls into a few categories: supporting connections to nature (magnifying glasses, binoculars), client safety (sunblock, first aid), or making paper-based resources outdoor-friendly (pockets and whiteboard markers). Let me know if this kind of content is interesting or helpful and I can make more! 🌀

So today I came to set up for session and my usual spot was busy ✨ So here is a tour of the back up spot 🪲x (it’s also great)

Hello ✨🐌 If you are a nature loving speech therapist, or at least curious about nature based speech therapy, I would love to apply to be your new favourite account! ✨ I am Claire, a speech therapist based in Australia, and run nearly all of my sessions outdoors. 🌳🌀 I share information about the connections between nature and speech and language, ideas for integrating nature into your practice, and also anything else that is lighting me up x Please join me in this little corner of the internet 🩵🌀✨🐌

For me, SLP life can feel veeery bitsy at times. And lately I have been feeling that a lot. 😵&zwj;💫

I had a meeting with my incredible business mentor @_anniecarter last week and we decided to try out a strategy of time blocking. Where I will gro

For me, SLP life can feel veeery bitsy at times. And lately I have been feeling that a lot. 😵‍💫 I had a meeting with my incredible business mentor @_anniecarter last week and we decided to try out a strategy of time blocking. Where I will group similar tasks together so I have actual dedicated time for things and I am not just jumping around all day. 🩵 When I try a new system I really need it to feel like me so I can get excited about it!! Which helps make it stick x So I made a custom colour palette for the time blocks. With nice calm and pritttii colours. Then dropped the colour codes and labels into Splose (clinical system) and added emojis (mostly bugs). Trial period starts today! Xx I will let you know how it goes 🐛 Do you use time blocking? Does it help? Pretty please share any magical time organisation tips you have for me ✨✨✨

Something I often think about is how outdoor spaces just don’t have the same rulebook for how a body is supposed to move in them. A lot of indoor environments traditionally carry unspoken rules about how a child is supposed to behave in those spaces. And I’m so aware that there are incredible SLPs and OTs working hard to change that with things like swings and crash pads. This is not a dig at indoor therapy at all. It’s more about the recognition that outdoor spaces often offer this by default. I came across a resource recently that put this into words really nicely. It’s the Autistic Play Patterns Deep Dive by Kerry Murphy at @diversepathways_earlyyears and there’s a whole section on outdoor play and how fantastic it can be for autistic children, and how it has the potential to reduce those neuro-normative expectations a child might feel. If you’re interested in the intersection of outdoor play and autism, I’d definitely recommend giving it a read (it’s free and very informative!)

One of the hardest things to watch as an SLP is watching a child making a bid for connection with one of their peers that just gets missed entirely 💔 So I made this resource and I did all the illustrations myself (very proud, not taking notes) it covers all the different ways a child might reach out. Some that children are taught to expect, but also some that are not always taught or socially validated. like making noises nearby. or just watching intently. Those are bids too, and are doorways to connection 🚪 I’ve been sharing copies with educators so they can help peers notice and respond to bids that might look a little different. because when those moments get missed, there is a lost opportunity for connection with peers 💔 it’s in my shop now — link in bio if you want it 🌿

Three books I have purchased recently! With three quite different ratings ✨✨✨ The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes (Pett & Rubinstein) This is such a cute story. I could have rated it much higher. However, I purchased it because I thought it could be a good resource for talking about perfectionism with kids. But the “mistake” that the book revolves around is too silly to open up real conversations about what to do when things really do go wrong. For that reason it’s a 6/10 for me. ⭐️ The Brain Forest (Menon) I’d seen this book everywhere and I really like the authors content so I was genuinely curious to see if it lived up to the hype. It did. The language around different neurotypes is so kid-friendly and it’s a really fun and light. A great conversation starter. 10/10.⭐️ The Whole Brain Child (Siegel & Bryson) this one is written for the grown-ups. A parenting expert and neuropsychiatrist writing about the neuroscience of social and emotional learning. It has lots of real family stories and useful analogies that help make the concepts easy to understand. It’s also a very easy read. Incredibly useful and practical. 100/10 What’s on your reading list currently? I always love a recommendation 🐸💛⭐️

I have purchased a few new books recently and I wanted to share my honest thoughts 🧡 The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes- A really sweet book about a girl called Beatrice. I reeealllly wanted it to be the perfect resource for talking about perfectionism with clients. But the mistake the main character makes at the end which the book centres around- is just a bit too silly to spark conversation about real mistakes and perfectionism. Still an 8/10 as a book, just a 6/10 for my needs. The Brain Forest— this one is a 10/10. Different neurotypes explained in kid-friendly language. It’s a lot of fun and I love the forest analogy. I think it’s great. The Whole Brain Child- also a 10/10. Written by a parenting expert and psychiatrist, it covers the neuroscience behind social and emotional learning with real stories and analogy’s . It has some really nice little comic book style pages and is a very easy read. Really useful for the SEL type work I’ve been doing with clients lately. If you have another idea fora book that is great for sparking conversation about perfectionism please leave a comment ✨🧡

One way to check if your child might need support with their speech sounds is by looking at intelligibility. How much of what they say can be understood by others. A rough guide I use: think about an unfamiliar listener, like a friend who doesn’t see your child often, or a health professional they’ve never met. By age 1 → ~25% understood By age 2 → ~50% By age 3 → ~75% By age 4 → ~100% There’s some debate in the field about exactly what percentages to use, but these are a commonly used guide, and broadly agreed upon by researchers (Coplan & Gleason, 1988; Flipsen Jr., 2006; Pascoe, 2005, as cited in Bowen, 2011). If your child is really below these benchmarks, it’s worth getting a speech pathology assessment. Coplan, J., & Gleason, J.R. (1988). Unclear speech: recognition and significance of unintelligible speech in preschool children. *Pediatrics, 82(3),* 447-452. Flipsen, P., Jr. (2006). Measuring the intelligibility of conversational speech in children. *Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 20(4)*, 303-312. Bowen, C. (2011). Table1: Intelligibility. Retrieved from http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/