Latest / Motherhood Alliance Podcast / Understanding Pediatric Speech Therapy: It's More Than Just Talking w/ Hannah Wesolowski
Transcript
- Britney Suttner: Hi, we are Britt Andrea from motherhoodalliance.com and we are excited to welcome you to a new four episode series with Hannah Weslowski, a certified speech language pathologist and the founder of Green Bay Pediatric Therapies. As a speech therapist, Hannah specializes in articulation and speech sound production, language development, autism support, and social skills, helping children build the communication tools they need to confidently navigate the world around Through her work in private practice, Hannah loves being able to work directly with both parents and their kiddos, often meeting families right in their homes where they feel the most comfortable. Outside of her work, Hannah is a full-time mom of two who enjoys reading, traveling, and spending time with her family. We're excited to introduce you to her now. Let's get started with today's episode. Hello everyone, welcome back to the podcast. We are excited to kick off a new series with Hannah. Welcome Hannah. Yeah, Hannah Wesolowski: It's nice to be here. Britney Suttner: we're really excited to learn from you. And as our listeners know, we always love to get to know you as a person first. So we're going to dive into a little bit of a fun fact about you, but then also hear your story. And you shared that you just love connecting with people by exploring different coffee shops around Green Bay, which is where you live. So is this something you do on a weekly basis, a monthly basis? Is it typically when new shops are opening like how much you get to do this into your busy schedule as a business owner and a mom. Hannah Wesolowski: Yeah, I try to make it a priority to do it least once a week to connect with either a friend or to connect with a coworker that I used to work with or to connect with a parent. I think it's just a really cool opportunity to A, explore another local business. So I try to hit up the local businesses versus the chains and they tend to have better coffee. And also just, yeah. Andrea Renkas: I do agree with that. Hannah Wesolowski: And also just be able to, yeah, connect with people. I think that Nowadays with technology, we don't have lot of opportunities to sit down and have a conversation with people. And it's just a very intentional part of my week that I try to do every week. Andrea Renkas: Do you have any favorite coffee shops so far that you've liked? Hannah Wesolowski: Yeah, one of my favorites is the exchange down in De Pere. Most Mondays you can find me working there and I like to meet up with people there. It's got like really good vibes, if you know what I mean. Like the vibes are just, they're just good. So yeah, it's a nice place to work and meet new people and their coffee is phenomenal. So that's my favorite one. Britney Suttner: People are always looking for new places, so it's great to get a little tip on a hidden gem, right? And are Hannah Wesolowski: Absolutely. Britney Suttner: you typically bringing your kids with you on these endeavors, or is this like you time? Hannah Wesolowski: This is me time. No, my kids, I am in this balance of being a business owner and also being a mom. So I work three days a week and I'm home with my babies. I try two days a week during the week and then on the weekend. So that is also one of my main priorities as I balance this life. So, because being a mom is number one. Britney Suttner: For sure. Well, and we're excited since you're like in the thick of having, you know, a toddler especially, and we're excited to just learn from you on what you're doing with your own kids when it comes to starting their language early through these episodes. But before we Hannah Wesolowski: Yeah, absolutely. Britney Suttner: jump into a real topic, let's talk a little bit about your story as well. So how did you become interested in speech therapy in the first place? Hannah Wesolowski: Yeah, that is a really good question and it's one that I feel like my story changes quite often because it was so long ago. But I, when I was younger, I had a piano teacher and she had a child who was autistic. And during our piano sessions, I went with my sisters. And so we would have a half hour where we were doing piano and an hour where we weren't. And there was a speech therapist who came to her house while I had that hour off and I got to watch and observe and see what she did with my piano teacher's child and I was just in awe. So I think that was kind of what started it. And then in high school, I kind of fumbled back and forth between, do I want to be in education? Do I want to do special education? I want to do something completely different? And I did a senior capstone project where I got to go shadow some therapists and again, just re-fall in love with the fact that I get to help. people talk and I think our words have a lot of meaning and our words have a lot of power and it is one of the best parts of my job to see that like light bulb moment in either parents or kiddos when they gain a new skill and sometimes it takes a really long time but when those moments happen it's really encouraging and it's the best part of the job so yeah that's kind Britney Suttner: Yeah. Hannah Wesolowski: of like where where I started and where I'm at now Britney Suttner: Do you think your piano teacher ever knew that that experience inspired you? Hannah Wesolowski: That's a good question. Probably not. I should, shouldn't I? That's a great idea. Britney Suttner: You should reach out, see if you can and just, yeah. Yeah. Andrea Renkas: you Britney Suttner: I just think of those little, those little moments when it's like, we don't even realize that we're inspiring other people. And it's just so fun when, when you find out. So it's just a thought that crossed my mind. Hannah Wesolowski: Yeah, and she was one of those rock star moms who just seemed to master being a mom. She had a kiddo who had pretty profound autism and had some really difficult and challenging times in his life and she just rocked it. So was really inspiring. Britney Suttner: That's so cool. And not only are you a speech therapist, but you also do work with kids with that similar diagnosis. So that's pretty cool. All right. Well, Hannah Wesolowski: Absolutely. Britney Suttner: let's, let's dive into speech language pathology. Can you kind of give us a high level definition of what it is, what you do and who you serve? Hannah Wesolowski: Yeah, so speech and language pathology, think a lot of times when people hear like, my kid goes to speech or my kid needs speech, we think of they have an articulation disorder or they aren't saying all of their speech sounds, which we do way more than just articulation and speech sounds. So we do help with speech and intelligibility. And if your kid isn't able to produce certain sounds, we work on that. but we also do language and language is two parts. So there's the understanding of language and there's also expressive language, which is the words that we say. We do social communication. So social communication is just how we interact with one another in the world. And there's a whole language behind social communication that some people pick up on and can master. easily just by interacting with people and other individuals it's very hard to pick up on that language and so we do a lot of direct teaching with social communication in teaching how the world interacts with one another and then we also do feeding therapy so this is a whole world that I am not an expert in by any means it is not my specialty but there are some great therapists out there who do feeding therapy as well. Britney Suttner: Okay. That is, that's really helpful to kind of get a high level overview. And I appreciate when you find a niche that you do want to become an expert in, right? Because we can't all be experts in, you know, like physical therapy or speech therapy or other things like that. Like if you really niche down and you know which population you love and you work with the most, that's great. Because then for those who need feeding therapy, you can direct them to somebody else. So I appreciate that transparency and I love it when businesses niche down. It just helps parents feel so just like they're in a really good spot with the person they're working with. if that's what they specialize in. Hannah Wesolowski: Absolutely, and our field is just so wide and all of the things that we work on. can work on virtually anything that deals with communication. it is beneficial to study down and to gain more knowledge and information on just one specific area, though we are generalists and can do it all. Britney Suttner: So what age range do you work with in general? And then, what age range do you speech language pathologists work with overall? Hannah Wesolowski: Yeah, so for me, my practice, I cover kiddos who are around age three up until 18. So really that like middle pediatric, three is pretty young, but middle pediatric and then those high schoolers as well all the way up through high school. However, speech therapists, we work birth all the way up until death. So that's one of the other cool things about our field is we cover the whole spectrum because we're always communicating and communication and feeding students. starts day one and it ends on your last day. And so we cover the whole spectrum. So there are pediatric therapists, there are adult therapists, there are therapists that do it all. There are therapists that just focus on babies. It's kind of like a wide spectrum in our field. Britney Suttner: For sure. So I feel like when people think of speech therapy, their mind initially goes to the younger kids, maybe toddler Hannah Wesolowski: Mm-hmm. Britney Suttner: type age, and people get so nervous when their kids are not hitting like the milestones that you find on Google. And so how do you encourage parents to kind of let some of that go and be flexible with their kid? Cause every kid is different. So walk us through that as well as like, when does a parent know that it's actually time to call and maybe get an evaluation from someone like you. Hannah Wesolowski: Totally, my biggest thing is trust your gut as a parent. Parents know their kids more than any other person. And if you have this feeling of, hey, I think something might be a little off, trust it. Because there are professionals out there who would love to even just have a conversation with you. Pick up the phone and call them and ask. I think that there's a lot of power in if you feel that... there is something that might be off, just advocate for your kiddo. And I think... Even in the world of like pediatricians, that's often the first place that we go and pediatricians are awesome. Awesome resources So if you have a concern bring it up But if your pediatrician doesn't align with the concerns that you're feeling or kind of devalues what you're feeling seek out other resources we tend to see that in the world of pediatricians we either have Pediatricians who are very for early intervention and if you mention one thing they're gonna refer you to a therapist And then the flip side of it, we have the wait and see type pediatricians, which are also great, but sometimes then we can miss those critical early years when you do have that feeling that something might be a little bit off. Britney Suttner: Okay. So to kind of delve a little bit deeper on this specific topic, you know, when kids are learning how to say their words, again, we're talking toddler age right now, they, they miss some letters and it's totally normal for them to be missing letters or pronouncing them, you know, in a different way. how does a parent actually know like, what is age appropriate and what is not? Because if a kiddo is not saying their L's when they're one and a half to two, I don't know, like this is when they probably don't need to freak out yet. So are most of these things things that kids will grow out of? How do parents actually know if their kiddo is within a range of normalcy? I guess we'll just say Hannah Wesolowski: Yeah. Britney Suttner: versus not. Hannah Wesolowski: Yeah. So first of all, Google is a great resource. A lot of the research articles and things that we base our professions off of is out there in the World Wide Web. But a lot of it can be really hard to decipher. And sometimes with Google, we can get down rabbit holes. I, as a parent, if my kid has a rash, I'm Googling. next thing I know, my kid has the measles, right? We tend to work ourselves up as parents. And in reality, she, I don't know, scratched her belly on the carpet, right? So we tend to work ourselves up as parents. I always say like just reach out call call therapists see and that's one of the cool things about Private therapies and private practices is when you're calling like I'm the one picking up the phone, right? It's not my receptionist who's gonna be picking up the phone So I would love to talk and commute and have conversations with with parents on that But we kind of have some like rules of thumb. So by 12 months, if your kid is not babbling, we're concerned. If kids have no words by eating, months were concerned. If kids by two aren't starting to put those two phrases together or two words together, we're concerned. And really with intelligibility, so that's how much you understand your kid, by three if we're less than 50 % we're really concerned. So those are kind of like the four milestones with that early language that we say, of course, Every kid is different. Some kids are walking at nine months and some kids start walking at 15 months. Some kids say their first word at 12 months and some say it at 10 months and some don't until they're 14 months, right? So it's really on a kid to kid basis, but that's why like there are resources out there and there are professionals. out there who do know the milestones and who might say like, hold off and wait, or we might say like, let's just get them in the door and let's ask some more questions and maybe start that evaluation process to see if there is a place that we can support your kiddo. Or on the flip side of it, maybe we can give you some tips and tricks to kind of start to like build up that language and see if that helps. Britney Suttner: Sure. No, is, it is helpful. think parents are always just kind of looking for it. Just tell me, tell me some Hannah Wesolowski: Totally. Britney Suttner: like guidelines, right? At least, and there can be flexibility in it, but it is helpful to hear that. Now you mentioned your private practice. So can you kind of walk through the different settings for SLP services? Cause I know there's in school, there's private practice. What else is there? So walk through the differences and then like maybe pros and cons of each one. If a parent is open to any of them. Hannah Wesolowski: Yeah, so I think often times when we go to our pediatricians, They are gonna refer you typically, to their in-house SLPs. So medical systems have outpatient SLPs in general, they take on pediatric patients, they take on older individuals, and I honestly have never worked in the medical setting, so I'm not 100 % sure on exactly what medical SOPs all do, but they work on the whole age range. So you can get a referral and go to a medical speech therapist. And then we have school-based services. So school-based services start at three, and they can go to age 21 if a child is in the school system until that age. school-based services. really focus on educational impact. So when we're looking at services in a school, in order to get those services, if there is not an educational impact, or if there's not a social emotional impact, it's very hard to get those services in a school because a school is working towards those academic goals and achievements. So school-based therapy is based on how it impacts their education. And then there's early intervention. So early interventionists, work from zero to three. Oftentimes, this is a good place to start because it is a service through the state. And so a lot of times it is state funded. And so it is free of charge for parents as. Again, I'm not an early interventionist. There might be some co-pays and things like that, depending on the county that you're in. But in general, it is a cheaper and free service, since it is through the state. An early interventionist, they often work on the... Issue that you have or say like it's speech, but they could also sprinkle in some other things. So for example If your kiddo is struggling with sleep They also might have advice with sleep or be able to connect you with other service providers that work on those types of things as well. And then there is private practices. So there are a whole different range of private practices. There are one person small private practices and then there are very large private practices things like the CP Center. So the CP Center is a practice that supports speech, they support OT, they have physical therapists, they have day programs, so they are an all-encompassing private practice. They take on insurances and then there are small private practices that are could either be private pay or take on insurances, but it really just depends on yeah what you're looking for. Britney Suttner: Okay. Now what would be some benefits of the private pay portion? Because I think people are starting to be more open-minded to that. As much Hannah Wesolowski: Okay. Britney Suttner: as people are still like, I have insurance, I want to use it. We're also seeing a lot of handcuffing with insurance. Hannah Wesolowski: Absolutely. Britney Suttner: And so from your experience, what is, what are some of the differences that you can have with private pay? Hannah Wesolowski: Yeah, so I am a private pay practice. So we don't take insurance. One of the biggest benefits that I see with private pay practices are if a parent has a concern, like my kid is not doing XYZ, like I really just want them to XYZ. Let's work on it. I can work on whatever I want whenever I want as long as it's in my scope. And that is kind of one of the things that's really empowering is if a parent is really having a difficult time transitioning from one activity to the next during their day, like let's strategize together and figure out how I can support you in this way. My kiddo is a... Intelligible a hundred percent intelligible, but their R is off, right? They can't say there are sound and it just sounds a little funny and They're eight years old and it's starting to impact them socially. Well insurance might not cover that because on every Standardization and every standardized test they're coming out in that average range, but there's the social emotional impact, right? And so let's start working on That one sound that is starting to have that that impact So we can kind of just work on looking at what the child means instead of what we need to work on in order to qualify for insurance. And that is really the biggest difference that we see in private pay practices versus insurance practices. Britney Suttner: Well, that's really helpful. And I really like that example because it's allowing parents who have concerns to not be restricted, right? Hannah Wesolowski: Absolutely. Andrea Renkas: I know for my son, we've actually just noticed he's 10 years old, we just noticed that he does this like, f sound instead of a th sound. So any thing, that sort of thing. So this is making me Hannah Wesolowski: Mm-hmm. Andrea Renkas: be like, I really think I need to get him to see somebody like you because it's just that one thing he's average, average and he, you know, he just, he does the thing. So I don't think insurance would take that but I guess if so let's say I called you and I said this is an issue we're having or seeing and I think that we need to see have you come see him. How would you make this like a fun sort of like therapy session because he's he would he may or may not have a good attitude about therapy like he should it's not a bad thing to do this obviously it's a good thing. But he might just you know he might just want to know that this is going to be fun and how do you make that a fun thing for him or for any kids. Hannah Wesolowski: Yeah, that's a great question. I am a play-based therapist. And so my goal is I want to first have a rapport with my clients. I want to connect with them. Because if I'm not connecting with them, usually we're butting heads, right? Because I'm trying to get them to do something. So my main goal when I am in a therapy session and starting out with a new client is to make sure that we are connected. What are your favorite interests? What do you love to do? For a 10-year-old, maybe it's kicking a ball in the yard. Great. Let's go outside and let's kick the ball in the yard and we'll practice Andrea Renkas: Yeah. Hannah Wesolowski: saying a word every time we kick that ball. For a little kid it might be playing with Play-Doh, like how can we play with Play-Doh and I'm gonna incorporate our goals into that activity. I have a seven year old right now and we play board games. So every time I come over I'm bringing a new board game and it doesn't even feel like therapy. I think sometimes when we think of therapy we think of like sitting across the table, right? And like that tutoring mentality of, all right, I'm gonna drill you with words and you have to say a hundred words in a session. And even through that Playbase model, like we are getting 100, 200, trials within the 30 minute session and the kids don't even feel like they're doing work. It feels like we're playing and so it really starts with like what is a kid interested in doing and how then can I incorporate the goals into that child's interests. Yeah. Andrea Renkas: I love that. That would work out really well for him because he is high energy and that would definitely work. Hannah Wesolowski: Yeah, and a lot of kids like don't want to be sitting at a table especially at those younger ages or kids are in school all day long sitting at tables all day long the last thing that they want is to come home from school and sit at a table and have somebody else Andrea Renkas: Yeah. Hannah Wesolowski: tell them what to do when they've been told what to do for eight hours a day, so Andrea Renkas: Yeah, absolutely. Britney Suttner: Yeah. I also think about those, those younger kids that are shy, know, they, they have somebody new come by them and they're just like, so this is where I'm envisioning you coming into their home, into a space that they are comfortable with, maybe bringing a couple of new toys or using the toys that they're already using versus going into like more of a clinic type building is going to have a very different effect in how the child is responding. would imagine. Hannah Wesolowski: Totally, yeah, there's definitely pros and cons to each setting in a home. Sometimes it can be harder to control that therapy session because we have access to our home and we're comfortable, right? But also, we are. playing with the toys that we play with. We can model with parents with toys that kids already have. We can show them how to do therapy within their everyday lives. Versus in a clinic, it can be a little bit more structured. There's benefits for a clinic as well for some kiddos, those kiddos who struggle focusing. there's kind of pros and cons to each one of those as well. Britney Suttner: Yeah. Well, I love what you're doing. And I think it's important to have smaller businesses like you that are flexible with their schedules and will go to people's homes or, you know, meet them somewhere if it fits better for them. And the private pay allows more flexibility. So I love what you're doing. And I do want to mention to our listeners that Hannah does do a free consult. So if you're wondering, I mean, just give her a call and she'll walk you through if she thinks speech therapy is appropriate or not. Right. And then Hannah, you're also offering our listeners 10 % off in evaluation. So thank you so much for doing that. You guys can just mention Motherhood Alliance podcast to Hannah and that's how she'll honor that. So if someone wants to book a consult with you, what's the best way to do that, Hannah? Hannah Wesolowski: Yeah, so on my website there's an information section where you can just fill out your information and then that goes directly to my email. So my website is www.gbtherapies.com. Otherwise, you can send me an email. That is hannah at gbtherapies.com. Britney Suttner: Perfect. And what is your radius that you'll go? Hannah Wesolowski: Yeah, so right now I am in my home base is in Howard. And so I tend to travel like 20 minutes from my home. So it really covers like De Pere, East De Pere, West De Pere, and then 20 minutes north of where Howard's Momoko is. Britney Suttner: Okay, and then do you offer virtual services? Hannah Wesolowski: I do, yeah, so I have a few clients that I do virtually and virtual kiddos I can see anywhere in Wisconsin, so. Britney Suttner: Okay, great. Good to know. Well, we have a couple more episodes coming up with you. We are going to be talking about IEPs. And so I think this is going to be a really helpful coming up next with you, just because there's so many parents where, especially if they are seeing some things that they're a little concerned and their kiddo is getting closer to school age and they're just really nervous about what does the IEP process look like, you're going to help us answer a lot of questions about that. We're also going be talking about how to help your child become a strong communicator in general. Like I think this is a big... piece that parents are thinking about nowadays, especially with technology, we just are worried that our kids are going to able to communicate as well. And so these are going be some great episodes coming up with you. We can't wait for the next one.