How to Improve Communication with Your Child – Insights from Dinalynn Rosenbush | EP026

It's really great to be here with you again today on the Share giving secret. My guest today is Dinalynn Rosenbush, who I know from before because we had had a interview on one of the last pot of paloozas where I was interviewed by Dinalynn. So today's the Turnabout is fair play day, and Dina Lynn has a lot of good things to tell us about speech therapy and what parents can do to make this journey a lot easier. So welcome, Dinalynn, why don't you begin by telling us a bit about yourself.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so delighted to see you again, and I want to say to the listeners too that Deborah and I got to meet at pod fest. So in January of this year, we got to meet in human form. And that was like, so cool. Her episode was 126 your child has imaginary friends. Deborah greenhut tells a parent's story to use these friends for healing and learning. And it was a fantastic, fantastic episode. And so parents, as you are listening to this episode, you have more resources from Deborah, and she's a great resource. As she helped my community, she helped my family, and she is helping you, so it's fabulous. Now, what did you say? Oh, yeah, to introduce myself. My name is Dena Lynn Rosen bush, and I have been working as a speech language pathologist for 30 years. I've worked in the schools, and during that time, I regularly worked with parents who wanted to know, what can I do at home, and I worked with parents that were stressed and they wondered, What am I going to do at home? So there's both sides of it, and then now I work part time as a speech pathologist in the schools, because what I am focused on now is really learning and gaining the skills as as a business to be able to help parents. I know how to help parents, so I'm learning how to do the business part of it, and that is to build a coaching program and courses so that parents have the resources that they need to get through some of these rocky times.

That's a great thing to do. I think often parents are thrown into this world of helpful things that they're not really understanding very well, and they don't know which end is up. When you hear that your child needs extra help. It's both heartbreaking and heartwarming, because at least it's there, but at the same time, what am I supposed to do? So I can really appreciate that. So I wanted to ask you today about how a parent should cope with that entry into speech, speech pathology, or actually, any kind of extra help. What? What are the things we need to know to avoid stressing ourselves or trying to jump in and do everything for the child or do everything at once?

Okay, so thank you for that question. And I hear three questions embedded into that. I'll try to remember all three and address all three. That was great when a parent first gets that diagnostic label of Oh no, there is a disability. It's like parents seem to go through into a tunnel, and we as educators need to remember that they can't hear anything that's going on, and we're in this IEP meeting, but they're in the tunnel. So there's two parts to this, and since I'm talking to parents, I want to give you permission to say I want it in writing so I can look at it later, when my I have more mind about me, and when we like, when I give a label to a parent and it's The first time. Usually it's in preschool, when we talk to parents and they're scared and they're heartbroken, and I bring out the box of Kleenex because I'm giving hard news, then you know, to again to encourage the parents cry. Yes, this is one of the emotions to process, because you're scared and you're disappointed and you're encouraged, like you said, but you're also, you know, like wondering about the future, you're wondering 1000 things at once so fast that you can't put one question together at a time. This is okay, just take the time you need. The other thing I would say to parents in that setting is find the person in the room, and fairly often it's your speech pathologist, because we have that one on one time with your child, so often, it just seems to lend itself well. But find the one person in the room that you connect with as an individual, so that you have one talking space where you can go back and ask the questions and see what did this mean on the IEP. What did you mean by that when you said this about my child? How can I do this? Other thing you recommended at home, because it is absolutely normal that you will only remember in part, so don't expect of yourself that you will. Member in whole, it's too much information to take in. And we all know what it's like when you get really big news. We really do go into that tunnel. We can't really hear all the things. And I think sometimes as as teachers, we have the Department of Education for our state, whatever it is saying you need to cover these topics, bing, bing, bing. And so we have one meeting to do it, and we're not going to have you back 15 times. One is hard enough for you to find your daycare and get a time off of work or whatever you need to do. So we're going to go over everything we can, and it's a lot, so bring a friend with you and be be gentle with yourself. There's a lot. And the thing I see most that make, that parents make mistake on, if I want to call it that, is that they expect themselves to handle it as if it was an afternoon picnic, and they can't. There's too much, so be gentle. And then from that space, from that space, you go through that process of some healing and some acceptance and you're ready to move on, because ultimately, when you leave that space, you're going to look at your child and he's going to be the same child that you just had and loved just moments before that meeting, and then you need to think about the positives, and you need to be able to move forward just like you would, even in the presence of this information. And you need to know that your team is the school, and they're going to be working with you, not against you.

That's so important. I think what you're talking about is being authentic in both your own reactions and the ones that encourage the parent to have, which often if, if I go into my doctor's office, he's often so busy on his computer that he doesn't have time to make eye contact while he's telling me what I need to do. And that can be very unnerving. So the practitioner who's able to take the time, and I know my doctor tries, but it's awfully hard to keep the notes going as fast as he's supposed to. That's true for teachers as well, having been one myself, making sure and for speech

paths and OTs and PTs, you know, like the paperwork load that is required governmentally and due process and all the thing is heavy, right? But that doesn't mean we discount the relationship that is so important,

yes, and it's really a heroic task, I think, to maintain that balance in the relationship so that the parents can become trusting confidants of of you, you have the most precious information about their child, and it's important that that trust be maintained throughout. So I want to

add to that, because that's the attitude that or the thinking pattern that I often see. I have so much precious information about their child, but what parents forget is that they have the most precious information about their child. I have specific data regarding speech and language and communication development. I know what's going on, maybe with their listening and their their ability to comprehend, but you know who they actually are underneath it all. You know what lights them up and what shuts them down? You know what they like to eat and what's going to make them sick. You know whether they've eaten and if they're sick or if they're well. You know if they're constipated, like you know your child intimately, and that is the most valuable part, because your relationship with the child is what I now need to forge, is a relationship with your child before I can be effective. You've already got that. So if we can give you those skills, then we can work together.

Absolutely, I think what you're talking about is validating that the parent is the primary holder of knowledge, and while you have specialty knowledge, those things need to be able to fit together in order for this whole process to work out. So that's the basis for the bond that you need to form. And I think a fair number of practitioners don't think about it that way. So it's it's wonderful to hear that you do. And no matter what the situation is, I think we all need a little bit of that kind of understanding, whether it's our own diagnosis as adults or for someone that who is very special and precious to us.

I think that that's a common thing for like in speech pathology school, the first thing that's drilled into you from from your earliest classes is step one, build rapport. Step one, build rapport. No matter what test I ever had, what is the first thing you do build rapport? And that was always the right answer no matter like all the way through school, the first question on the test was, what's the. First thing you do build rapport. So in my field, I would hope that that is done right away, all of the time. And maybe that's the reason that so often parents do find that it is the speech path that they can connect with, that they can have the one on one with, because you can't really get anywhere unless you have that

right. I think some practitioners of the multidisciplinary team you may need when your child needs help, some have the attitude that the family is less important than the immediate person who is receiving care, receiving some sort of treatment, and I know I've been sidelined a few times as a caregiver, and that really disturbed me to not be an equal partner in a process where I was going to have to help someone. So it's wonderful build rapport. Should be a cynical non for everybody in every field, and maybe it should in general.

Yeah. And if we have that kind of mindset all the way through, then we are having a partnership, and then everybody wins.

Yeah. Speaking of winning, I know we talked a little bit before about how sometimes people approach therapy as a kind of race or a trophy to be won. And you have some really important things to say about that. Could you share some of how a parent should look at the process once we've established rapport, and you know, we understand that at least basically what the direction is. How do you handle the progress problem or the progress issue, depending on how it's shaping up?

Yeah, that that is a good question, because when you're talking about kiddos that have severe disabilities, your progress can be so slow documentation to be able to see, oh, well, last month we had 5% and now we have 7% might be the kind of growth you're looking at, yeah, and other disabilities are lighter, and you can make progress through and and in speech and language, there are many kids that get into program, and then they have the label of disability, and then they're out of the program because they just simply correct something. But in the education system, it is in the category of disability, so we have to treat it with the paperwork and the due process of that. But it's not necessarily lifelong. So what you're talking about, though, is a caregiver who is who is looking at this progress like a trophy, like we want to get to this mark, and then we're okay, then we're good. I would rather think of it like, like your health. Maybe you want to get yourself to be able to do 25 sit ups. When you get to 25 sit ups, do you say, Great, I can do it. And then stop? Of course not. You want to get yourself to eat well, and so you have a day with or a week or whatever, with no sugar. You say, I did it. So you go back to the sugar. You know, it isn't, it isn't like that. It's more of a lifestyle. So as parents, when we think about what we want to learn in order to have our kids get on this on this journey, we want to set up our lives so that we are communicating in a way that teaches them good, forward growth communication. We want them to be communicating with us, but remember, they're growing. So we need to up the skills as they get older, so they get to this mark that we want so much, or maybe they haven't. We're still making progress, and then we want to continue, and keep continuing by putting the bar just a little bit ahead of them always. Because as they grow older, we just want to, I think of it now, let's say vocabulary, because that's an easy thing to you know, talk about. We want to build some vocabulary. But as our children get a little bit older, we don't just stop, we keep going with the vocabulary. So there isn't this trophy of winning. I'd rather a parent think of it as this is our relationship. I understood you at this level, and now you've grown. I'm going to understand you at this next level. And now you've grown, I'm going to challenge you at this next part. I'm going, you know, just to keep the bar moving. Does that answer the question? Yeah, I

think so. And it sounds, I guess the words I might use would be, it's a journey, not a destination. There are many points where we stop and look at things and we enjoy the fact that we can do the 25 push ups, but there's always more to attain, and that's the pleasure of life, to be continuing to do that, not to just stop at some artificial place and say, Okay, I had I had enough travel. Now I'm not not going to do it anymore, right?

And parents that think that they aren't doing that, but for some reason, there's this like wall that I see parents sometimes hit, especially when they get to the point where they think that their child understands, and then they assume they always understand. Yeah, but whenever you're dealing with a child that has a communication delay and they don't obey or they don't follow through exactly what you say. You have to consider that they miss something, yeah, and if you approach it as a behavioral issue, then you're going to thwart some of that relationship. But if you look at it as they miss something, then you will naturally go at it as, oh, what is it that I need to teach them? I see that they missed part of it, and that is a much lighter way to communicate, which is part of what I'm calling the language of play, really, to get into that type of mindset, absolutely,

it's like, if you're if you're playing a game, or you go to a city and you only have one piece moving forward, and you don't look at what the other parts of the game are doing, or you only go to the Empire State Building in New York, you really haven't seen the whole city. So if you say, I've been to New York, well, yes, you've been to a major place, but you have not been to all of New York. So there's plenty more to explore, plenty more to learn about, and lots of growth milestones along the way. This is not the only one, so, and I think if parents are treating their lives like a race, it becomes more difficult for a child to do something else and go in a more healthy way. Yes,

yes. And I know that our time is getting close so, but this is another topic that is really worth leaning into at some point, which is, how do you settle yourself back? Because if you can be in more of a playful space, you the the result of that is less stress. Yeah. In fact, when parents are stressed in their situations with their kids, one of the most beneficial things you can do parents or any caregiver, is to go do something that is different, that is fun, that your mind is going to be on a different topic entirely, and it includes movement, and it includes something you haven't done.

Yeah, it's like a hooky, right? Yeah, yeah.

Like, take a day play hooky, get on a kayak and talk about the deer you saw in the woods. It's totally different in a different space, different smell, different feel, different everything than you would normally talk about. And if you're even with different people, that's great. That kind of play break is super calming on your nervous system, to be able to de stress you so that when you go back, you will be much fresher.

That's great. I know we had that great conversation about play, and I wish we had more time today, but we are, as you said, getting very close to the end. Could you tell us a bit about where we can connect with you, where listeners can go to find out more information about what you do. I

would love to I am at the podcast the language of play. My email is Hello at the language of play.com, and then I have a free gift that you could have in the show notes, and that is five ways to get your kids to listen better.

Fantastic. We will definitely put everything in the show notes. And it's been such a great opportunity to meet with you again. And sure we're going to stay in touch and hopefully have another another go round of interviewing one another as we learn more about the language of play and about caregiving and all the things that we are so interested in. Thank you very much.

I appreciate it. Dina, I love the work you're doing in the world. I appreciate it. Thank you.