In this episode, Darius the founder & chief executive officer of Dynamic Therapy, LLC, a speech-language pathologist joins us to talk about speech therapy and how it affects your child’s life.
Darius breaks down exactly how the speech therapist helps your child beyond articulation so that you can sit in an IEP meeting and be able to advocate more for your child. By explaining
speech and developmental milestones
Accommodations
questions to ask speech and language therapists before they evaluate your child,
different parts of speech,
How to support your child at home
how to support your children in high school and much more.
All I’m saying is if your child is revealing speech therapy or you think they might need an evaluation you have got to listen to this podcast.
3:29 - speech impairment and age
8:02 - Speech and language screening and evaluations
11:33 - Cultural Competence
16:16 - IEP Updates
25:16 - Pacing Boards
33:18 Development Milestones
36:13 - Speech/Developmental Charts
37:13 - Reading differently
42:44 - Guardian Angel ( Helping kids help themselves)
50:12 – Testing
56:12 – Labeling
59:17 - Parts of Speech break down
1:01:31 - Quote Resources
Darius Thomas
Website: https://welovedynamictherapy.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dynamictherapyllc/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DynamicTherapyLLC
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Genie 00:09
Welcome to the Parenting Cipher, where each episode, we give you the tools and resources that you need to help you decode the information that keeps your child from making progress so you can connect the dots and lead your child's journey. I am your host, Genie Dawkins, the Parent Confident Strategist and I help parents like you become more confident in navigating your child's disabilities so they can reach their highest potential in school and in life while creating a home life where everybody thrives.
Genie 00:34
Today, we have Mr. Darius Thomas Wallace, who is the founder and chief executive officer of Dynamic Therapy LLC, a speech-language pathologist, mentor, supervisor. Darius holds a unique background in evaluating and treating clients in schools, daycares, clinics, homes and via telehealth. He has collaborated with multidisciplinary teams to address the communication and educational needs of clients with a wide variety of disability classifications, including autism spectrum disorder, emotional disturbance, intellectual disability, specific learning disability, speech, language impairment and ADHD.
Genie 01:18
Darius has also successfully increased pragmatics, language, articulation and fluency skills in elementary, middle and high school clients. Darius, welcome to the Cipher!
Darius 01:31
Yey! I am glad to be here.
Genie 01:34
So Darius as you know, is that Darius work with for my boys for several years and we used to sit across from each other in IEP meeting and I would listen to him and I'd be like, "Yeah, we can have conversations, we will have conversation." And when I created the Cipher, I was like, Yeah, he's on my list. He doesn't know he's on my list and literally stalked him
Genie 02:03
And one of the things that I loved about Darius so much was that he's a Black man and I have two Black boys and how he worked with them was totally different from anyone else, so I want to tell you. Thank you for that. He didn't allow them to sit in what I can't do.
Genie 02:26
One of the things for kids that's the hardest thing is when they are living with a disability and they don't know it and their self-confidence goes down and people are moving around them to help them and it's not working and literally with my nine-year-old, but it's not like the kids like with six .
Darius 02:45
Yes.
Genie 02:45
And his go-to was like, "That's hard for me."
Darius 02:51
Yeah, see you tomorrow, I'll give you an option.
Genie 02:53
That's too hard for me. That's too hard, but it's so funny. One of the things I wanted to really get into with you is this thing we call speech and the misunderstanding that parents have of what it is and unfortunately, the fact that we don't know what it is. Our parents, our children are not always getting what they need.
Darius 03:22
That's all right.
Genie 03:24
So the first thing I want to ask is what exactly is speech-language impairment?
Darius 03:29
Okay, so first of all, hello, everyone. I'm happy to be here on your podcast. And so I'll start off with sharing that a speech-language pathologist is someone who works to prevent, assess, diagnose and treat speech and language disorders. When a parent typically comes to the table, they're like,"Oh, my child has some problems with speech" or, "Oh, they're not articulating correctly." And so they're confusing the terms between articulation, expressive language but as a speech pathologist, that's our role to guide the parents through that journey and to explain what those various disorders are in our whole speech world and so a speech impairment is when a child has difficulties communicating expressively. And so our role is to utilize their strengths to help increase their weaknesses.
Genie 04:29
So what is expressive language?
Darius 04:32
So expressive language is when a person, doesn't have to be a child, when a person has difficulty communicating verbally or through any way, that's an output, right? Because all language isn't expressive verbally. People sign to communicate, people write to communicate. It's all a form of language and then receptive language is what a client or person is able to take in, what they may be able to point to versus with their thing, which would be that expressive language.
Genie 05:05
Ah, so for some numbers, what [inaudible 5:10-5:14]. So, when we were talking about expressive language, there is they're basically, I looked up something and it says expressive language delays at twenty four months of age, increase children's risk for later speech in language services, but they think Black children were less likely to receive speech language services compared to white children.
Darius 05:37
Interesting enough. Our people, I am African-American male. Our people, we do not like labels. I want to label our children, and we're scared that if we do label our children, they won't be successful. That is absolutely not true. While the system or diagnostician may have to label your child for them to receive the supports and services that they need, it does not mean that they won't be successful. It means that they're going to get the help to help them become successful, and so we always have to keep that in the forefront that at the end of the day, it's about our children, it's about the clients, it's not about what we're thinking is going to happen later. It's about what we know that they need right now.
Genie 06:22
Right. And then that said with segways into a conversation of early intervention.
Darius 06:26
Yes.
Genie 06:31
In my book, Not My Child. One of the things I said was early intervention is key, between...Actually, let's be real. Before school, before they get to kindergarten. Early assessment is key just because of the foundation in where speech goes, how it meets, and it also flows into reading.
Darius 06:56
Right.
Genie 06:59
So I mean, when it comes to early intervention, we don't like labels, we really don't. I just happen to have my child in a private school at the time. Asar was in private school at the time and they said, "Do you understand him when he talks?" And I was like, "Yeah". But then I had to pause. So there were tales, so one of the tales was he will only speak to me when I make him speak and ask that, "Do you want this?" And they shake their head, they say like, yes.
Darius 07:40
Right.
Genie 07:42
Because in my mind, I was checking all the markers, check, check, check. All developmental markers, I was checking them and when they asked me the question immediately, I told you guys I was like, yeah. Then I thought about it. And I was like, "Oh, well. Oh, not really."
Darius 07:59
Right.
Genie 07:59
I just know because I'm his mom.
Darius 08:01
Exactly.
Genie 08:02
So I ask other people. I asked my mom, I am like "Mom, you know, what he seeing?" She's like, "No." And at the time, and to be really honest with everyone, at that time, I had two older kids who were going through some things and I was probably with them as well. And I was like, well, they're not failing. I don't know why I need them to get them tested, so when they asked me the question, I really thought about it and he was 3 at the time. And they did like the what is now a full screen, but just like a brief assessment, a prescreening.
Genie 08:38
And they came back and they were like, "Ms. Dawkins, we suggest that you go get him a full screening." So as a parent, because I just told you, we get on nice books and the books tell us these are the things that we spill to check off. In our minds, it's like, it's all good.
Darius 08:56
Right.
Genie 08:57
With a prescreening, what are you looking for?
Darius 08:59
Yeah. So they want to cover so many things based on everything that you just said?
Genie 09:06
Cover it.
Darius 09:08
Yes. We think about speech and language therapy. We start off for early intervention, which is ages birth to three. So any time a child receives services between birth three, they're in early intervention phase. Next, we go to the school age, which is starting a pre-K -3 nowadays with schools going all the way up to the senior year in high school. And then after that, you have kids, they go off to college and they can receive supports probably after they finished the school system.
Darius 09:33
So that's why you have private clinic, private centers or private clinics, which are all known, Dynamic Therapy and so people can then go to those private centers as well and even if they don't want to receive services from their schools or if those services aren't available, they can still go to those private clinics or centers for services. So that's kind of what that looks like. Now in the evaluation process, where I talked about what we do as speech pathologist, the first step is if someone comes to the speech pathologist with a concern, we can conduct a screener.
Darius 10:09
We talk about what the need is, and after the screening, we can conduct a full speech and language evaluation, so we go from screener to a speech and language evaluation and then we tally up all our data, look at the total overview of the child right there at ground, whether or not they speak an African-American English in the home environment, so we're not misdiagnosing them. Right? And then, we write our various report and present it to the team. Now, it's very important for us, a speech pathologist, to have cultural competence, right? If you have African-American child saying the 'th' sound, or saying the the 'f' sound for the 'th' sound, right? It is a dialect of difference based on the word, etc.
Darius 10:56
So can you think of a word that you may say that's African-American English in regards to articulation? Think about like a word that you say.
Genie 11:08
No. It's probably is one.
Darius 11:12
I am pinna go.
Genie 11:13
See, you know but you know, I'm a native D.C.
Darius 11:18
Right. So I'm pinna go. I'm about to do something. That's all a dialect, right?
Genie 11:24
Oh, yeah.
Darius 11:33
We have to be competent about cultures so, we don't mislabel our kids and so then now, we can talk about mislabeling, but if a qualified speech language pathologist. There is that this child has a disorder, we should take all the things that they're saying into consideration.
Genie 11:54
Yeah, lefty, that is the gist because we say cultural competence up is like what.
Darius 12:04
Yes.
Genie 12:04
It is making a difference.
Darius 12:05
Yeah.
Genie 12:07
To actually being able to say, Okay, this part is the cultural, but this part is actually than being able to say this sound.
Darius 12:14
Like this for this. This my.
Genie 12:17
Right.
Darius 12:18
Versus the ‘th’, right?
Genie 12:22
Oh, my goodness. That's important. That's important when you look for screener or even if hypothetically saying, if you're getting one through the school and they don't have another African-American given that you should ask the question, do you use cultural competence? Sometimes people need a prompt.
Darius 12:41
Yeah or are you culturally competent? We worked with clients of this cultural background. Have you studied it? A lot of times, parents just come to speech pathologist and they say, all right, I need my baby to get services. They have no idea what all that means or with the background, the speech pathologist may need to have. It is like, all right, can you see my child make magic happen? Really miracle workers?
Genie 13:08
It is true and it's true. One of the things that I found disturbing, things were my journey that I realized, especially with Asar and when Asar started, you were not his speech therapist, so with that being said, I was in this meeting and we went over the test results and I knew more about the test results in everybody at the table.
Darius 13:32
Yes.
Genie 13:33
We got this conversation about dyslexia and the special education of the person at that time said to me, special education teacher said to me, "Dyslexia is just seeing the letters backwards." "No, not."
Darius 13:48
Right.
Genie 13:48
"No, ma'am, it's not." And I went on to explain to her that the three different types of dyslexia.
Darius 13:54
Exactly.
Genie 13:54
And when I was finished, she was quiet and I'm bringing up this moment to really -
Darius 14:01
It's real, a lot of parents are knowledgeable.
Genie 14:03
Yeah.
Darius 14:04
Yeah, it's a lot of myths out there.
Genie 14:06
A lot of myths. And then I also say because so listen, guys, I'm a resource person and if I don't know, I want to find it. So I had this test result and I had everything. Look, I'm sorry and be real, everything is wrong. Everything is slow, slow, slow, got to fix it, but I was calling people and that's when I realized the correlation between speech and dyslexia, mind you guys, my son had been receiving speech for three years before we got to the point where they were willing to test him because I kept telling him something is wrong. He's not reading.
Darius 14:42
Yeah.
Genie 14:42
He's not reading and they were like, "Oh, no, it's developmental." And I had to literally sit down with them and say this to them. I had to say, "Look, his sister has ADHD and dysgraphia, his brother has dyscalculia and executive disorder and his dad is bipolar. Genetically, his chances of having a learning disability are high. I want you to test him." And he did. That conversation. I shouldn't have had to say all of that.
Darius 15:15
Right. For that.
Genie 15:17
For that to happen. So because we started that way. Yeah, well, they were on my radar.
Darius 15:23
Right.
Genie 15:25
So I'm sitting here with you and we understand that he has a speech learning impairment. They have a specific reading, specific learning disorder - reading. I told them that we will call it what it is, it's dyslexia.
Darius 15:43
Right. Which is a reading disorder.
Genie 15:45
Which is a reading disorder and I learned the power of saying dyslexia.
Darius 15:51
Yes.
Genie 15:52
I learned the power of that, and then even with that being said, there is I tell you so funny. I highlight all this stuff I can't prepare, but what I didn't have was that only have with the school game, he haven't anything else, but having my back .
Darius 16:06
Yes.
Genie 16:07
So when I went to go and say these are the combinations I wanted, they were pushing back. I was like, "I got you because I got insurance."
Darius 16:16
That's important for you to know about accommodations and modifications. That's another aspect, because a lot of times, a child may not qualify for an IEP, they might qualify for a five or four because they receive certain supports, right? Modifications, accommodations, etc but it's important for parents to also know what their child needs. Preferential seating, extended time, read aloud. When you're taking a standardized assessment, these are all things that are critical that parents have to know their child one and be able to speak up for them.
Genie 16:16
That's important for you to know about accommodations and modifications. That's another aspect, because a lot of times, a child may not qualify for an IEP, they might qualify for a five or four because they receive certain supports, right? Modifications, accommodations, etc but it's important for parents to also know what their child needs. Preferential seating, extended time, read aloud. When you're taking a standardized assessment, these are all things that are critical that parents have to know their child one and be able to speak up for them.
Genie 16:49
Yup.
Darius 16:49
About what is unable to.
Genie 16:50
Yep, and put it in. I like to bring people into the experience that there has been in meetings with me and I'm not passive-aggressive is how I bring stuff. So people say, "Oh, well, we think it's a very good idea to have him work with another student, help him read." "Oh, really? So Asar is very shy, his self-confidence is low and he knows that he doesn't know.
Darius 17:18
- right.
Genie 17:18
- and you want him to sit with a peer and really show he can't read?"
Darius 17:25
Right.
Genie 17:26
And I left it like that, and they all look at each other and "Oh, you know, we're going to take that one off."
Darius 17:33
Aha. It's alright. Advocating for your child. Know what best for them.
Genie 17:37
And listen guys, you do not have to. It's not about you knowing everything.
Darius 17:42
Right.
Genie 17:43
The most important thing is knowing your child and really looking at the scenario and if you don't know how to verbalize certain things, my favorite thing is ask a question, "How is that going to help him?"
Darius 17:56
Yes, they must explain it to you.
Genie 17:57
Right.
Darius 17:58
A lot of times, even in the IEP process, family see it's 20 page IEP. They have no idea what the verbiage means in there, with the language, with any of it means, they have no idea. It is like, OK, check, check, check, check, check. Cool. My baby can service it. That's all we need to know.
Genie 18:15
Yup.
Darius 18:15
They must ask questions. Parents must, they must ask questions. They have to understand what are these services that my kid is getting? How long will they possibly be in speech therapy or receive these services?
Genie 18:15
Yeah and that's key. I think my first IEP, I ask the question. I looked it over, I looked it over and that's is so what you're telling me is that my son will always be two years behind. And everybody was all right with that except me.
Darius 18:48
Right.
Genie 18:50
Except me, I was like, "No, this is not going to work." For me, and it wasn't going to work for his self-confidence. The Asar that you met was different when he started. Asar diagnosed in second grade, Asar withdrawn. He was bullied.
Darius 19:07
Yeah.
Genie 19:08
He would not speak because Asar had an articulation, but he had more than...He had expressive because I learned later on, I think by you.
Darius 19:17
Yeah.
Genie 19:19
He had expressive and receptive, so it wasn't just his ability to be understood what he was thinking and what he was saying, his sentence structure was also was like incomplete thoughts.
Darius 19:32
Yes, those of that still expressive and receptive language and to clarify for a lot of families out there, expressive language is the output, how they formulate sentences. We're looking at syntax and semantics. Again, that goes more into clinical terms, how kids or structure in their language. How would they output? How is flowing? Articulation is the misproduction of speech sounds, so when a kid may say tat for cat for example, articulation is all about speech sounds and how they're produced. If a kid is saying, ba ba ba ba ba ba for banana, right?
Genie 20:10
Right.
Darius 20:11
Part of the expressive language, so -
Genie 20:14
Yeah, and I would be honest with you. Before you, because we were so blessed, I just want to know that. Before you we had an African-American woman. In the end, she always the articulation, articulation, and I just say, no, I'm going to get someone else and we would talk and she would give me the language to go back and talk to the therapist in the school. And when I would bring up stuff, then all of a sudden she wanted to change it.
Darius 20:47
Right.
Genie 20:49
But I'm like, "You work with him, so you can't tell me that you didn't notice that."
Darius 20:52
Yes. And that's for the provider to teach and educate and to be knowledgeable to do their homework because we, as human beings, we don't know everything and there are many areas of speech and language therapy that we can all work. We have swallowing, we have dysphasia, we have clients with aphasia, we have clients with traumatic brain injuries. we have articulation, we have fluency, we have language. Everyone can be skilled in everything.
Darius 21:23
But that's up for the provider to say, Hey, this isn't my area of expertise, let me refer or let me bring in someone else and let's make this a team approach. We have also be willing to say that that's not my specialty. I am not good at that and that's okay.
Genie 21:44
And that is Okay, but as a parent, I'm trusting you and like you said, we do that. We're like, "Oh, you're going to help my kid. Here you go."
Darius 21:54
Make it happen.
Genie 21:55
Make it happen. And we're not necessarily involved.
Darius 22:03
Right.
Genie 22:05
We're saying someone's going to help my kid and we actually have not created this like team. We're not a team. You have here, you do this thing and help my kid and I'm over here. I'm going to do my thing. What I've learned over the years is this: We are a team.
Darius 22:21
Right.
Genie 22:21
Okay, for you to make sure that your child has progress. You have to be on the team, which you always are. You on a team. My kid's name is Asar and likes to always send people letters every year, especially the teachers and I would be like, these are all the things that my son is going through, because trust, don't believe that teachers start the school year that they are reading your child's IEP. They have a million to one thing, so I will write this letter and at the end of my letter I will say welcome to team Asar.
Darius 22:51
Yeah.
Genie 22:52
Welcome to Team Zavier. And the reason why I did that is we're all working together and in all honesty and everything that I've learned throughout the years, is anything Darius may be doing with my son, the speech is the same thing that I should be doing at home.
Darius 23:09
Right.
Genie 23:10
It's just like that. You ever hear that? I mean, here when people say, my mom said this. I love my sister black saying, but all school saying is, whatever you do at home, you do elsewhere and vice versa.
Darius 23:24
Right.
Genie 23:26
So you want your child to be holistic. You want them to take everything that they are supposed to be. They're getting a school, they're supposed to help them make progress. You should be doing the same thing at home.
Darius 23:37
Right.
Genie 23:37
Because it can't be a duality for them to progress.
Darius 23:43
Right.
Genie 23:43
When he works with Darius, he's saying slow down, pace yourself, because my son has rapid speech so his words will blend in together real quick. And one thing Darius helped him understand is, people are not understanding. People don't understand you because you can't talk, but baby, you talk so fast.
Darius 24:06
Right.
Genie 24:07
Which you have to pace yourself and I never told you this, but I will never forget he was talking to my mother one day and she said, "I don't know what you're talking about, Asar. What is he talking about?" And he said, "I.Want.You.To.Get.Me.McDonald's,do.you.understand?"
Darius 24:36
Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?
Genie 24:43
So this is the thing when you have kids that you don't understand and you and your family members are your team, right? When he slow down, my mom was in awe and I was in the car and I was in awe because he has just exhibited one, acknowledging that he's talking fast. Two, he can't control it.
Darius 25:07
Yes.
Genie 25:08
And with that comes self-confidence. So I was like, yeah, I was like, Okay, now.
Darius 25:16
Yeah, I remember for my kids, they have rapid rate of speech. I love utilizing a pacing board.
Genie 25:23
Yeah.
Darius 25:23
Pacing board, it may have smiley faces on it, a star is. You have to tap out the smiley faces of stars. Each word that this thing helps them to slow down their rate of speech, so that's always a cool technique for families who loves called a pacing board for rapid rate of speech.
Genie 25:39
Oh my goodness. And when they ask me for it.
Darius 25:43
Yeah.
Genie 25:46
Baby, here's the pacing board, because at that point, it wasn't that we didn't understand him.
Darius 25:52
Right.
Genie 25:53
It was it was something else. I want to say, his sentence structure at that point and then it morphed into...He still has started with expressive and receptive but some of his social. So as Zai will come down. Right. But Zai will come down, talk to you like you can hold the entire conversation with him. Yeah, and then you have to get him to pause and catch you up to speed.
Darius 26:24
Yeah.
Genie 26:25
Yeah. That's like, as parent, you want to empower yourself and empower your child. So you have to be able to realize that dynamic, especially as a black parent when we're talking about systematic racism and even our own biases. Like I said, we don't want to be labeled and I'll be so clear, Asar has Autism Spectrum Disorder. He has the multidimensional, so it's not just the visual, the optical part with what he sees and how he sees it. It's not just the processing part. He has layers and because he was attentive watching the game public charter school in D.C. at the time, we were dealing with the reading and the speech, expressive and receptive language. But Asar also had an optical piece, which when you read , we take advantage of it.
Genie 27:28
So here's the thing kid. When you read, your eyes have to work together. This is called taming; left, right, left, right that helps children read, especially read fast increase their pace. Asar has a high astigmatism. So he don't know, like someone takes a run and it just runs across the eye. So Asar had this, who knows for how long. But Asar would tilt his head, so the part of his eyes that he could see through, he could see. So Asar, the mind and body is a beautiful thing. His eyes work individual. They don't team together.
Darius 28:11
Right.
Genie 28:12
You also took my kid to do this program to learn how to read, because I needed to catch up.
Darius 28:21
Right.
Genie 28:21
And she kept telling me she was like, you need to take him to a developmental optometrist. You need. She was like, she said, stop paying me and take him to a developmental optometrist and finally -
Darius 28:38
What type of provider told you that?
Genie 28:41
She was a reading specialist.
Darius 28:47
Nice.
Genie 28:48
And she kept pressing on. And when I finally took him, of course, we all know what the results were and he broke everything down. But he knew that she was referring me. And it took me two years.
Darius 29:04
Yeah.
Genie 29:04
And she said, I can't take it. She said I can't take him any further and you asked me, so what did it take you so long? And I told my thing.
Darius 29:14
Yeah.
Genie 29:16
And he said, Well, you know, we can and I was thinking to myself, I understand what you're saying, but when you have a child and it seems like every time you have something covered and then someone says something else is wrong, and I hate to say that, but that's how I feel. Well, how much is that and now my son is like he's 11, I call him a Million Dollar Baby.
Genie 29:48
And the reason why I call Asar my million dollar baby, Okay, so when they have, we call it now in general as Autism Spectrum Disorder, but they are other, but there is an underlying most of the time, which is for Asar is called Pervasive Developmental Disorder, which means they are parts of his mind and body that did not develop the way that they were supposed to. So on that note, guys, I'm give you a little bit tip. Asar have to had braces because his lower jaw was smaller than his upper jaw because developmental delay, did not grow the way it was supposed to. Now we talk about life out of mouse with it. Asar's feet does not do not have an arch. He has a non existing arch. So I cannot walk. Man, you can't do trick or treating. Well, he tap out.
Darius 30:45
Oh.
Genie 30:47
His feet hurt. Now, with that being said, by now he has got these [inaudible 30:53] these shoes okay? Five hundred dollars. But I have insurance. But eventually when he's 14, he has to have major surgery on both feet. My Million Dollar Baby.
Darius 31:08
But you know what? It's going to all pay off.
Genie 31:11
It's all going to pay off. But I wanted to bring it out for everybody is like you said, we don't like labels. That's fine. We don't want anything else to be wrong. But at the end of the day, the primary function of a parent is that when you're gone and we all going to go sometime, let's be real. They're okay.
Darius 31:31
Yeah.
Genie 31:32
They're okay, and I like to say I am parenting fucking imperfection. Okay, I'm not the best job I had, but what can never be said is that I didn't give my kids everything possible that I was aware of and that's why I created Cipher. You know more, you do more. No pressure because it doesn't have to look the same, but the most important piece is that you can hold people accountable, be both.
Darius 32:02
That's it.
Genie 32:03
That's it, so I have another something, because when I prepare for people, I I want everyone to shine, so this is about 80 percent of school age children with disabilities are identified as having a speech or language impairment, making it the second largest disability category recognized under the idea that. And they say people of color are less likely to receive speech intervention in kindergarten. And I read I was like, Oh, I'm lucky.
Darius 32:44
Right.
Genie 32:46
I'm so lucky and I mean, I know we talked about it before with early intervention and we says because we don't want our kids to be labeled, but there are other pieces to that that I wanted to get you. What you think about it.
Darius 33:03
Let's talk about it.
Genie 33:05
So we took our kids to doctors. I've never had a doctor say anything to me and they were trying to prompt in to talk and then nobody say anything.
Darius 33:18
Right. It's really important for families, providers, other people to understand developmental milestones as well. Developmental milestones, offer important clues about a child's developmental health and reaching milestones at the typical ages shows whether the child is developing as expected.
Darius 33:37
A lot of times, families, practitioners, they may not understand all the developmental milestones for that specific age group that range. And if they don't, they're not able to pinpoint that these things are need to be taught. So there's a certain age to pronounce, mean to talk. There's a certain age that a child would begin to produce certain sounds. If we don't have that understanding. We're like, "Oh, they'll grow out of it." "Oh, they'll get it at some point."
Genie 34:09
That's the one.
Darius 34:11
Yes, they should have that two years ago, but the other, the caveat to that is that, sometimes parents start to panic. The kid has to indicate insane or sound yet, they're like my baby, they sort of all sound because they rap is like, Well, Ma'am, Oh should be massive. It's a seven, eight year old. We have to do a lot of coaching on developmental milestones and that can carry out again from that articulation piece, the misproduction of speech sounds or can carry over to expressive, receptive language, etc. We have to understand developmental milestones and where the child is performing based off of their age and it is quite premature. We have to take that into -
Genie 34:54
A women now speak on that.
Darius 34:56
Yeah, so if a child is premature, they may be in EQ For six months before they were out performing with their counterparts, who were born at their expected age, so we have to take all those things into consideration when we're testing a child. Yeah.
Genie 35:36
That's I mean, especially given, you know, as far as like the African-American community when it comes to the birth rate, difficulty giving birth, c- section.
Darius 35:48
Yes.
Genie 35:50
That plays the role. That's key. That's something that we don't think about. It was sometimes we just know where. We're looking at our child and we like hey.
Darius 36:04
Yeah.
Genie 36:05
You know, you're right, we do want you. We want them to, we don't understand the milestones.
Darius 36:10
Right. It is okay.
Genie 36:12
Yeah, it's ok.
Darius 36:13
Right up to the teachers and the doctors and those things. But if parents ever wanted to know, they can type in speech and language developmental milestones, right? With the milestones, or for whatever thing they're looking for, they're looking for speech sounds. You can type in speech sound development chart, right? If you're looking for language, you can type in speech and language developmental milestones chart, and these will give you ideas of where your child should be performing at their age.
Genie 36:42
So we're going fast for real quick. So let's be real. I have two kids who are in middle school, elementary. Now, I do have two of my step kids who they are no longer in school at all, but my daughter did have dysgraphia, which was interest in their love life is that, but it made sense. It make sense to me what we have figure out what it was and I had to like dig in. It made sense.
Genie 37:13
But if you are, let's say, for instance, you have a child. They didn't get screened for early intervention. They didn't get screened in elementary school, and now you're looking at middle school or high school student who the speech difficulty is affecting the reading, how can you help them? I mean, as a parent, but as far as where you're concerned, when you have, when you actually introduce to those kind of situations, what does that look like?
Darius 37:47
Yeah. So two pieces here. How can families best support their children if they are reading make sense? Well, I always want to encourage families to if there's a book that the child like or author, you can read the same book every single night for a week, for two weeks. You don't have to change the book so often because what happens is children begin to learn and pick up language. They begin to pick up those vocabulary words in the book, so when you're reading the book, you can say the cat is on the room.
Darius 38:23
You allow them to fill in, right? And that's teaching them reading skills as teaching them vocabulary and you're pointing to the words, you're showing them what you're reading. And so, it's important to read one. You can read one same book every night of the week. You can start off by working on sounds. There's so many videos on YouTube where one in particular, I love Bounce Patrol Kids with specific sounds and you make the letters bounce, which creates a lot of fun, and you find yourself dancing, doing the wobble while you're singing, you just teach speech sounds. You don't have to be a teacher or speech pathologist to know that A says 'ah' or 'eh' And we work on the long bowels of siopao. So a B says, bah bah bah bah bah. You're doing all these things naturally, that's all supporting them in their phonics awareness skills, which moves towards reading.
Genie 39:21
Right. So when you have a middle school high school student.
Darius 39:25
Yes. Get them to learn.
Genie 39:31
You know what? I would say that, you know one of my things that I'm really passionate about, early intervention, but most importantly, like elementary. And the reason why is for my daughter, where ADHD and dysgraphia, by the time she got diagnosed, she was like chronically depressed. Now, here's the key piece, as far as accepting her diagnosis, she's like, just give me drugs. I'm good. She went to therapy. She want to do nothing. She wanted the meds, but you flip the script. and I looked at my younger kids and it's like a regular part of their life. They're like, I'm good with it. The only difference is, though, with Asar, I don't know if we had this conversation.
Genie 40:18
Yujing was really good at creating a program for kids who had IEPs and accommodations, and they were all in fourth grade. Yujing only goes up the fifth grade guys. They didn't have enough students for fifth grade to create that classroom and they were going to put the kids back into general classes. Asar said he didn't want to do that.
Darius 40:41
Yeah.
Genie 40:45
Because he had a terrible experience, I am being real. He was bullied for quite a while, but what happened was I started going to private schools and he saw that there were other ways, he saw that it's cool to be different and it's cool to be around people who are just like me.
Darius 41:07
Yeah.
Genie 41:07
And that's the thing that he wanted the most. But he wasn't to the point where he was like, I hate intervention. So this is the theme of accommodations in a public school. When they have to get therapy, they had to be pulled out.
Darius 41:20
Yeah.
Genie 41:21
What that looks like? So when they're younger, I think the key. I think they like "Yehey! Take me." I know Zai was one of those kids. Zai would literally be at the door. His face, in the class, Mr. Darius, you come to get me.
Darius 41:35
Right.
Genie 41:37
But Asar got to the point when he was a general classes. Then, now everything stops. And where's he going? Where's he going? Oh, what's wrong with you? And as they get older, those pullouts, it takes a toll on them.
Darius 41:53
Yes.
Genie 41:53
And they begin to resist it like, I don't want. I'm good. I don't need help.
Darius 42:00
Yes, I want to talk about it. So I have worked in middle schools and high schools. Right now my age range goes from birth to 21. As you can see, kids when they're only a few months old, their milestones for kids is birth to two months, the things that we're looking for, right? So they go to, take us back to the developmental milestones but I work at similar high school right now, one of my service locations, and I will sometimes approach my ninth graders on the first week of school just to introduce myself them I'll be working with them and they just came from middle school and single speech pathologist. And I like, that lady told me I wasn't going to be happy. I don't want some help. I'm not coming.
Darius 42:44
Okay, I hear you. I hear you. Give them a moment and I come back the next week and I said, "Hey, I'm back. I'm going to be here all four years with you and I'm going to say as your guardian angel." Right? We have to change the way the kids look at things, right? You make your speech pathologist, psychologist, social worker.
Darius 43:05
They're like, I don't need that. I'm fine. I don't need any support. So I start calling myself the guardian angel in high school. It's like they don't need to know that. They know that I'm a speech pathologist, but it doesn't always have to be the highlight, right? They could tell their friends in the schools because one, they're embarrassed to receive the supports and services, they could tell their friends. I'm their big cousin. They work at the school that's coming to support them. We have to know how to help the kids help themselves, because at the end of the day, they still need the supports and services, which is why they haven't one been dismissed and two, they need the services.
Darius 43:41
So let's find ways to get them involved. And that could be talking to them and asking them how they want to be pulled out of class. If they see you talk to the teacher, will you tell the teacher, "Hey, on Mondays I'm going to come get Johnny at ten o'clock?" The teacher already knows you're coming, so when you come by the door, she could just point to and be like, that's it. It doesn't have to be a big call out thing because that sometimes affects the kids and their confidence. And you have to know that the kids have to know what they want and you ask it. But also it's important for parents that's in back to school night, get to know the teachers, be able to tell the teachers, like you mentioned, let them know there's a team approach and I'm going to be there to support them. But for the kids, things become harder as they get older. So middle school and high school, the math assignments are harder.
Darius 44:28
The science assignment are harder and speech pathologist, we're not teachers, right? So our role is to work on speech language disorders in the school system or whatever area may be voice, etc. So we have to make sure the kids are getting the support they need. And so a lot of times for my high schoolers in particular, I always tell them, "Hey, if you are struggling in math, go see your math teacher. If you're struggling in math, go see a tutor after school. Your math teacher is most likely doing tutoring twice a week at the school." So just really guiding them and teaching them how to advocate for themselves is most important that I find in middle school, high school.
Genie 45:03
It is.
Darius 45:04
Yeah.
Genie 45:05
It is. I know with Asar, he's in middle school and we have these conversations that go, "Did you talk to your teacher?" "No," "Why not?" "She already know," "No she don't know."
Darius 45:21
Right.
Genie 45:22
"She don't know."
Darius 45:23
Yes.
Genie 45:24
She don't know. And I think as parents, we tend to go down two roads, Okay, the road. You ain't doing them. Do it. The road, I told you to do, you not doing, you're gonna fail. I've learned a new road. I've learned a new road to be like the ghost in the back, like I'm truly the guardian angel.
Darius 45:45
Right.
Genie 45:46
I tell you what to do. I ask you when you want to do it, I tell you why how it will support you? Right. And I wait, and I wait. And then I'm like, "Oh, I can't take it no more," and then I go behind my back.
Darius 46:05
Yes.
Genie 46:07
Don't tell them I can't teach because it's possible. He did talk to her in his own way and let's be clear, as a parent, we expect our kids to do well, what we want them to show us the way. We want them to show up, but they may show up a different way and they not necessarily come back, and be like, hey, Ma! I talked to my teacher. He never talked to the teacher, you know what he did there? He sent an email.
Darius 46:38
Okay, very professional.
Genie 46:41
Right? It's just funny because this is first year middle school.
Darius 46:49
Yeah.
Genie 46:51
And he's growing and that's something this seminar and every time I'm middle school, why middle school matters? And they were talking about middle school, so pivotal for kids because their brain cells are growing so exponentially. They say they compare it to a newborn baby and they're trying to sort themselves out. They're trying to figure out who they are without you. And as parents, we just like, "Oh, we're in-charge"
Darius 47:24
Right.
Genie 47:24
And we want you to show up A, B, C and D, right? And I'm learning none of the line, but sometimes I backup too much, and I'm like, "Oh, what are you doing? He needs help." Sometimes you know, so there is no Asar. Asar is like this old man in this little 11-year-old-body, so Asar is just like, "Oh, my God, why didn't you hear me?" Like, "Because you didn't set my alarm." Oh, no, we're not doing that."
Darius 47:57
Why?
Genie 47:57
Why didn't you set your alarm? Why don't you do it? And then we have this conversation. But, his default, I find like middle schoolers, way sedative because he's little mean too. I don't know out there, but I got little old kids and their go-to is to blame me and they will tell me, "You're the mom." No, don't blame me.
Genie 48:30
We're going to look at what you could have. You could have done it to help yourself, like you not gonna blame me, and with Zai always say, how can I support you? I did this and we did this personal development course and that's the go-to not how can I support you?
Darius 48:49
Right. Unexpected, know what to do.
Genie 48:52
I feel like once you get to middle school and high school and if you don't have anything else to say, the best thing for you to put ownership back on them is say "I'm here to help you, but how can I support you?"
Darius 49:07
Right.
Genie 49:10
Don't expect the answer right off the bat, but if you keep asking them that, one or two things are going to happen, they're going to start giving you a response or they're want to figure out how can they support themselves.
Darius 49:24
Right.
Genie 49:25
So then I wanted to talk to you about, so many things I told Darius before you on call. I was like, yeah, I want to talk to you man. I want to talk to you about the labelling children in IEPs. So I know is I doing these meetings, there is like 20 pages and everyone who does the test, they go through the end results. Right?
Genie 49:51
And when they hear the word or they hear the diagnosis, speech impairment and then they go on, then they break it down and then it'll be like articulation and then I'll break down that test and you're sitting there like, that's so good.
Darius 50:10
Right.
Genie 50:12
Once, an IEP is not just that initial IEPs, you meet twice a year, you go over the goals that were set, create new goals. As a parent and let's say hypothetically, doing the initial testing, the thing that they're bringing up is expressive language, the articulation piece, but using other things. How do you actually bring that into an IEP meeting when the person that test it, already feels like, oh, well, we already tested him for that. How do you bring it up?
Darius 50:48
So that's a great question. One, in the evaluation process, parents should be included in the beginning, they should be asked what are the concerns? So when the therapist is evaluating the client, they're able to test for those things as well. They should be communicating with the teachers. They should be communicating with any other providers that the child may have because you want to make it a team approach. You want to make sure that you're getting the full picture.
Darius 51:21
What I asked them about their past hearing screenings or their past vision screenings because all those things play a part in the child's growth and development and speech and language, so if you just happen to forget something, you can always call the therapist during the evaluation process but it's even fun to bring that up in the meeting to say, "Hey, my child is having problems with this, what can I do to support them and what can the school do for them?" It's totally fine. So no matter what the area is, even if it wasn't covered in the evaluation process, the provider can say, oh, well, this may be a tribute to this, but it's always important to bring it up at any time, and when you're going to or when a kid has an IEP, you can always call an emergency meeting.
Genie 52:10
Right.
Darius 52:11
You're part of the team. You can always call a meeting to talk about your child and what things they need and how the school may be able to best support that.
Genie 52:22
The reason why I'm thinking is when you start off, you said that's important, that parents do the evaluation so and then talk about later on if you have any concerns. So this is what stuck out for me with that is this, when you do an initial evaluation, sometimes, especially as an African-American, we want the help, but we don't want the label. So sometimes when you're answering those questions, not going to say it's a lie, but I'm going to say it's a little bit because you don't want it. You want it, but you don't own it.
Darius 52:59
Yes.
Genie 53:00
So your eyes are not all the way open about it, but you're answering these questions, especially when you ask those questions and sometimes usually the scale is, sometimes, always, never. When you start taking those tests and you check always, always, you'll be like, you gotta jacked up. I'm not gonna put always.
Darius 53:28
We must be honest.
Genie 53:28
But you must be honest and but like speaking with Dairus, you said, you always have an opportunity as a parent doing an IEP process unless you change your answers. What I'm saying is, go in and say these are the things that I've noticed. You may know some before. Maybe it wasn't even on your radar, because when you do get in the space, you hear a lot. That changes your how you view certain things because you have more information, most often when you take this test, you don't have a baseline of comparison or information, as is like there you say, which is really cool because I didn't do what he said.
Genie 54:07
I was like, when you do a screening to look at the charts, that kind of gives you kind of like a baseline of what you're looking for. We'll have baseline. So we kind of like I'm just going to take this test real quick.
Darius 54:19
Right.
Genie 54:20
Oh, it look bad. Maybe not. Now, I'm not going to say always. Sometimes you don't say never. I be like, sometimes.
Darius 54:30
Yes. And you're referring to those of that the evaluators give you, including your consent and the report. Genie 54:40
Yeah. I'm not going to say to hard in the pain. They gonna move their hard on spirit as parent because unless I bring it up, the fact that your child has a speech diagnosis is no way a reflection of how you are as a parent.
Darius 55:01
Yeah, that's right.
Genie 55:05
I think one of my biggest things is I never blame myself, but what I did was, I was upset with myself because I knew I had like a few months on this off. But every time I would talk to people, I would talk to doctors and sometimes teachers and let's be clear, teachers, that's not their wheelhouse, so you asking now what I really don't know. I think nothing is wrong and they would give me this, like you just say. It's all developmental. All kids are going through the same thing. Okay, it's not your kid.
Darius 55:43
Right. I think another great thing to share is that about kids not being labeled or parents don't want their child to be labeled, it's always best to give the child the help as soon as you start to see the concern. You want to help them when they're young and honestly, when they're in kindergarten or first grade or second grade, something get to high school, they kind of forget that they ever had those services. They forget provided with main ones.
Darius 56:12
They're like, what? What? I have speech. What? No, I didn't. Yeah and so I always say it's best to give them the services while they're young and when they need it. Don't wait until five years from now when it's gotten worse. Now, they're in middle school and they can't read. You knew that in kindergarten or first grade, but you were scared of what the system would do to that. The system is going to help them, get them their support.
Genie 56:44
That's right. So Asar, I don't even if he had a dyslexic diagnosis by the time you met him, I think he did. But now, Asar doesn't [inaudible 56:55]. That's totally, in a testament to what is to saying, dyslexia specific learning sort of reading is no longer on Asar's test IEP dropped off. The test that way. But as Zavier does test that way, right? So I'll say, "Asar, help your brother out. Don't you remember what it felt like not to be able to read"," He'll be like, "No."
Darius 57:20
See, he's above that now.
Genie 57:23
He's so above. "No" I'm like "You don't remember that three days a week tutoring?" "No" "You don't remember how it felt not to be-" "Nope." That's a testament. That's just true. Early intervention is key. Needless to say, the earlier the better, just self-confidence layer and that's what's important nowadays and then I'm gonna ask two more questions. One about the labeling. So now you have a parent.
Darius 57:53
Right.
Genie 57:54
They finally agreed to give the evaluation. They are told you, Okay, we're going to give your child speech therapy for articulation, because that's my thing, right? And now, the parents like, "Ma'am, they've been doing speech, they could talk."
Darius 58:12
Right.
Genie 58:14
They could talk. I don't want them speaking. I had a client like that, right?
Darius 58:20
Yeah.
Genie 58:20
And I had to explain to her, speech is just not talking.
Darius 58:24
Right, exactly.
Genie 58:26
It is. What I have to say about what I've learned about the therapy world is you have a title, don't actually match the job do.
Darius 58:35
Right. There are a lot of times people hear speech pathologist or speech and they think, "Oh, you write speeches?" "Oh, you just help recall, right?" "No, we do so much more."
Genie 58:49
So much more. I mean, I think one of the things when I was doing my research and they were talking about dyslexia and speech and they were talking about like they're different. They're separate diagnosis, but how they having intersect and we've been working with you. I realized I was like, Oh, you're not doing [inaudible 59:08] still, you're doing sales. I was like, that was speech therapist do? Are you just that good? But, you know?
Darius 59:17
Yeah, everything in the speech world, speech and language, there are stages to it and so we have to...If the angle is making sure that a child is able to read certain things, where in the area of phonological awareness, right? And there are stages, topological awareness and with things we're doing to address that and so that's up for the provider. But there are so many things that we do. And I says, again, from voice to fluency, which is stuttering to expressive and receptive language, to articulation, to feeding, to dysphasia, just swallowing. If a kid falls down on a playground and has a traumatic brain injury, their language be affected because of that.
Darius 01:00:12
In school, we have to know all the cranial nerves. We have to know the anatomy and physiology of everything from your neck up is what I like to say. Everything that involves how we communicate, we are involved in and it's important to know for even families out there that have children that are non verbal, right? Which means that they may not be communicating expressively. We teach them signs, simple signs, so to navigate their communicating, we're using core vocabulary boards where the kid is pointing to things versus using expressive language. So there are multiple ways of communicating. And as a provider, my role is to give the client a way to communicate.
Genie 01:00:55
I like that.
Darius 01:00:56
Yeah.
Genie 01:00:56
That's important.
Darius 01:00:58
That is.
Genie 01:01:01
To you, so I always ask people, what do you want to talk about? And you mentioned some activities incorporating the child's strengths and weaknesses and things I love about that is one of the things I started to say is not disability but superpower.
Darius 01:01:18
Yeah.
Genie 01:01:19
Emphasizing the positive, not so much with the negative. So during this time, what can we do? Especially in this COVID world?
Darius 01:01:31
Yeah, right, there are a lot of activities that people can play at home. I even like to stick with things that are simple. Things, that you already have in your house. You have cards. Everyone has a deck of cards at home. You can work on numbers, you can work on sequencing of cards. You can work on following directions. You can work on taking turns. You can work on conversation skills within that because you can have a conversation with it. You can make it structured.
Darius 01:02:00
So all things that are simple around your home playing UNO, you have young kids they're in the first or third grade or in kindergarten. You're working on colors. You can work on colors with it. You can work on numbers, you can work on matching. You can set up these rules to work on skills that your child needs to work on. Also, Boom Learning.
Darius 01:02:25
It's a website where there are already so many activities where other providers have made all these various gains called Boom Learning. We call them boom cards and they're like fun decks where the kids can constantly engage and do anything from following directions to increase their vocabulary skills, to learn and spatial concepts or prepositions, and so whatever the [inaudible 01:01:25] is that the client has, so that the child has, you can look on Boom Learning, typing that word and you will see a host of games that you can play and many of them are free.
Darius 01:03:01
I typically only do free games because there's so many out there then do others. So but summer activities are fine. Painting, drawing on the sidewalk, getting kids out and being active, but the main thing I always encourage is communicating. We have to communicate with our children. We have to talk to them. We have to prepare them for what's to come because we transfer to all online learning right now. We have to make sure they're prepared, so whatever grade they're going to, we have to get them to thinking about the subjects that they're about to be immersed in and how to prepare them for those various subjects or those classes.
Darius 01:03:45
But making sure they're organized. A lot of my kid, I help them with organizing their school bags and their school binders. Those things are very important over the summer that you can prepare for to get them ready, because although they're online learning, they still need to have their binder, they still need paper. They still need to be taking notes when they're in class, right? And making sure they have folders so they can organize. Okay, my homework is on the left, my turn and piles on the right. This is happening. These are all things that we should be focusing on to prepare them engaged in for the summer, over the summer, for the school.
Genie 01:04:18
Structure.
Darius 01:04:20
Yeah.
Genie 01:04:20
I like it because that's something we hopped into like, oh we virtual and we were like, What?
Darius 01:04:26
Yeah, that's how we navigate.
Genie 01:04:27
What do we need to do, and it did take a lot of restructuring, but I do have to say with Zavier my mind, I've learned a lot as far as his learning style and then I also learn know how I can support him more.
Darius 01:04:39
Yeah.
Genie 01:04:40
I thought was interesting so I could hear if he didn't get an idea, a concept. Now we'll build in time and little time, help when your kid could not take a lot of time. Sometimes, it can really be like ten minutes.
Darius 01:04:52
Yeah.
Genie 01:04:53
And you have to deep. I mean, you know, I like to say apparently imperfectly because, we look at media, social media and we see other people do stuff rely online, got time for that, which is bad than no minutes.
Darius 01:05:08
Yeah.
Genie 01:05:09
I mean, like you say, we have these computer games. So here's the thing with the games. I know we're predisposition in this new age to put our kids on a tablet and walk away.
Darius 01:05:21
Yeah.
Genie 01:05:21
I spoke to this woman who does digital parenting. She said this is not about the quantity of time a child is on a screen, it's the quality of time with them on the screen. And with that being said, if your kid likes YouTube, if your child like you want to do boom cars with them, sit with them.
Darius 01:05:40
Yes, exactly.
Genie 01:05:44
Sit with them, connect with them even if it phone cards or playing UNO, I let you see me rub my hands when UNO is the game. I love UNO. It's a great way to teach your child social skills because my son is a [inaudible 1:05:59].
Darius 01:06:00
Yes.
Genie 01:06:00
He will be mad because he did not win and he will throw a tantrum and vacate the space, so it's a great opportunity to do that, so two more questions, why did you become a speech pathologist?
Darius 01:06:15
Oh, that one touches my heart. So I became a speech pathologist because I wanted to make an impact in the lives of all people. I asked the Lord maybe 15 years ago, what career should I go into? And what I realized throughout my journey is that I've never done anything else outside of work with kids. I've never worked on hospitality. I've never worked in any restaurants. I've never worked at the mall.
Darius 01:06:41
I've never worked at Geico, whatever that may be. I've never done anything else outside of work in education or work with kids. I've done worked for Upper Bound. I work for various summer camps and I just realized that my calling was working with the youth and making an impact in their lives. And so I chose speech and language. I chose communication disorders, speech pathology, whatever term you want to use because I love to communicate, I love to share. But I also know that I can build a relationship with kids. And so that's why I chose it. And I've never looked back and I'm excited about it.
Genie 01:07:18
I thank you.
Darius 01:07:20
Yeah.
Genie 01:07:20
I thank you. So because this is the Cipher and I always ask, what was your favorite song and you say Fall by Davido.
Darius 01:07:31
Yes, I love this song.
Genie 01:07:41
[inaudible 1:07:33-1:07:40] so I love music, so let's be clear, I love music, I love all types of music. I hear music all the time. Didn't necessarily mean I know. So as soon as I played, I was like, Oh so yeah. What is it about that song?
Darius 01:07:54
You know, interesting enough, which is the beat, the flow of the song, it just really gets me going and it's funny because I have some young kids. It's like at first and second grade, they asked me to play that song, they're parent's was like, oh, that's their jam. But I just think that it's nice, though. In the first word is money fall on you and I'm always encouraging my kids to work hard because I want money to fall on them.
Genie 01:08:21
Yeah.
Darius 01:08:21
I want them to be able to have a career, have something that they're passionate about so they can give back to their families and give back to the community. But it's just a good song. I just like to be.
Genie 01:08:34
I like the way. But you thought about it because you know the lyrics. But I like also the fact that you say a career.
Darius 01:08:40
Yeah.
Genie 01:08:41
And it's important.
Darius 01:08:42
Not just the job.
Genie 01:08:43
Not just a job. When I was a kid, it was about a job, a job, a job. That time, I had my kids, I was like, Oh, no, you don't want no job, baby, you want a career.
Darius 01:08:52
Yes.
Genie 01:08:53
You want something when you wake up in the morning and you're like, oh, yeah, I'm about to go in to get something and get busy.
Darius 01:09:01
Yes.
Genie 01:09:03
Job is that thing that you do to pay your bills.
Darius 01:09:05
Yes.
Genie 01:09:06
Which is not just your bill.
Darius 01:09:07
Yeah. And it's so important for us to know. We have to find careers, things that were passionate about.
Genie 01:09:14
So I just want to say thank you very much for being on this show and I want you to tell people where to find you. It's going to be on my show notes, but -
Darius 01:09:24
Yeah.
Genie 01:09:25
For those who are just listening.
Darius 01:09:26
So I have all social media platforms, but the main one where you can find everything is www.welovedynamictherapy.com Dynamic Therapy is my business name and we have Instagram, we have Facebook, we have Twitter. And so if you just type in Dynamic Therapy on Google, you should find us in the DMV by www.welovedynamictherapy.com because we love dynamic therapy.
Genie 01:09:54
Thank you!
Darius 01:09:55
No problem. Thank you!
Genie 01:09:56
From one parent to another, you are doing the best, which you have. Remember to be patient with yourself and your child. Please subscribe and check out the website www.theparentingcipher.com for additional resources from this episode.
