Meet Your Hosts: An Introduction to Neurodiversally Speaking

Brittany: 00:00:00

Hey, everyone. I'm Brittany, speech language pathologist.

Shawna: 00:00:03

And I'm Shawna, behavior analyst.

Brittany: 00:00:05

And we're your hosts at Neurodiversally Speaking.

Shawna: 00:00:07

This is a podcast where we bridge the gap between research and practice, exploring autism and neurodiversity through the lens of speech and behavior.

Brittany: 00:00:14

Whether you're a parent or a professional, we'll give you practical tips to bring into your home or your next therapy session.

Shawna: 00:00:20

Let's get started.

Narrator: 00:00:21

Welcome to the Neurodiversally Speaking podcast with Brittany Clark and Shauna Fleming from lmno, brought to you by the Sensory Supply.

While we aim to make Neurodiversally Speaking suitable for all audiences, mature subject matter can sometimes be discussed suitable only for those over the age of 18.

If you're under the age of 18, please talk to your parent or guardian before listening to our show or listen together with him to stay up to date on new episode releases and show updates. Connect with us on Instagram at Neurodiversally Speaking.

You can also send us listener questions to address on the show at hello@neurodiversallyspeaking.com Neurodiversally Speaking starts now.

Brittany: 00:01:09

Hey, everyone, and welcome to our first episode of Neurodiversally Speaking. First of all, we're so excited you're here and you're listening. Thank you for joining us.

We're gonna start today's podcast by talking about a little bit about who we are, but also why we were inspired to start this podcast and why we're here, and then hopefully give you already today some tips and tricks that you can take home with you. Perfect. Sushana, actually, why don't I start with you? I'm going to ask you what inspired us to start this podcast.

Can you answer that for our listeners?

Shawna: 00:01:37

Oh, goodness.

Well, Brittany and I have been operating an interdisciplinary clinic for several years now and been working through some of the difficulties with collaborating interprofessionally. And that the. We realized that many of the conversations around autism and neurodiversity happen in separate professional silos.

And something that we're really passionate about is bridging that gap and helping professionals to collaborate better so that we're leading to better outcomes.

Brittany: 00:02:06

Exactly.

Like when we're at a conference, people actually can't believe that we're up on the stage together as a speech pathologist and then you're a behavior analyst. They look at us like we have two heads.

Well, I guess we do, but like, wow, we're really crazy to be doing this together, and yet this is our whole model, and we really, really believe in this mission that we're bringing the best of speech pathology and ABA together to work with our neurodiverse children and their families and helping support all of these autistic.

Shawna: 00:02:34

Yeah, exactly. I feel like over the time that we've been collaborating, we've realized that often the different professionals are trying to say the same thing.

Like, we have the same goals in mind, the same vision of our client's future, but it's like the language barrier that ends up making professional clashes and causing, like, misinformation or, like, misinterpret of information.

And so helping people understand different sciences or different professional perspectives can really help bridge that gap and help ensure that we're doing a more holistic approach when we're talking to clients.

Brittany: 00:03:07

Love that. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. And we compliment each other so much like what you bring.

I certainly am a better speech pathologist a thousand percent since we started collaborating and working together. And I feel like so many of my practices have improved so much.

Like my data collection, by looking at how am I writing a program and then how am I making those changes to my prompting levels?

Like, so many things that I'm taught a little bit about in speech pathology, but certainly as a bcba, I think you just have informed me so much how to improve those practices.

Shawna: 00:03:37

Right, exactly.

And I think from the SLP's perspective as a behavior analyst, we don't get a lot of training in developmental milestones, even a different perspective on communication.

We have different ways of looking at language or defining language goals, and sometimes bringing those together can lead to a really comprehensive way of looking at treatment goals and what we can do for a client.

Brittany: 00:04:02

Awesome. All right, so then let's address the question, why is, like, why are our two fields so hard to work together?

You and I have been in meetings together and separately, where the SLP and the BCBA do not agree. And we'll probably talk about this. It's a whole podcast episode in of itself.

But what do we think about why is it so hard for our professionals to come together?

Shawna: 00:04:23

I know, like you said, we've all been at those meetings, and it seems to be like some sort of, like, turf war over who owns the therapy or who's going to do a better job with this treatment goal.

And part of that comes from our overlapping scopes of practice or compet, where we both look at communication and look at it differently or define it differently. And so I think then we end up clashing because one person thinks that they have to own it. And instead we can really work together.

Brittany: 00:04:52

Absolutely.

Shawna: 00:04:53

Yeah.

Brittany: 00:04:54

I think there's that fear of encroachment is huge. Again, that's a whole podcast in of itself, but the fear of encroachment.

And I know that speech pathologists kind of feel like they own communication and that's our domain. And certainly, yes, it's a massive part. That's why it's in our title. Right. Speech and Language Pathologist.

But I am here to say, and I feel very confident in saying that ABA has such a place in working on communication skills as well for those autistic children and youth and that we really should be collaborating and doing it together. All right, let's pause there because we're going to talk so much more. That's what this whole podcast is about.

But let's bring in another something that we're hoping to talk about in this podcast is the need for evidence based conversations about neurodiversity. So when you and I were trained in our masters, neurodiversity wasn't even a word that was taught or used.

And, and let's be honest, even the first like five, ten years of our practice, neurodiversity wasn't a term that was thrown around like it is today.

Shawna: 00:05:50

Yeah, so true.

And I think now what we're seeing is sort of a battle between the scientific evidence based approaches and how to do that in a way that is neuroaffirming and appreciative of different lived experiences.

Brittany: 00:06:07

Absolutely. And then another thing that we want to address and talk about is the misinformation.

We're on social media and we feel so strongly every post that we put out into the world, we want to make sure there's evidence behind it and that we're using good information to share out with the world. But not everyone is such a good information sharer and they're using the evidence to do that.

And so there's a lot of pseudoscience out there, particularly in the social media world.

Shawna: 00:06:35

Yeah, exactly. And I think part of it comes because bridging the research world into our practical life is so challenging.

Because something works well in research, it's almost never going to work that exact same same way at our clinic setting.

And I think that that's some something that we do really well is reading the research and thinking about what are the principles that then have evidence behind them.

And then how can I change these slightly to still keep the scientific aspects of it that are evidence informed, but then how can I use that information along with Client preferences and client learning preferences to create something that's very client focused.

Brittany: 00:07:14

Yeah, I love that. And I love that that's part of our shared mission as we're both trying to pull in pieces of the evidence and then also take our own data.

So we're looking at what does the client prefer, what does their family prefer? And then, you know, bringing in the evidence and then also our own data and taking those informed. Making those informed decisions.

Shawna: 00:07:30

Yeah, exactly. It's about bringing like, what does the research say and what have researchers found works?

What do we know from 10 years in the field and on the ground work with clients and then what does the client and family know about their own life? Right. And bringing all three of those things is really what makes a client focused neuroaffirming plan.

Brittany: 00:07:49

That's right. And when we're talking about this research to practice gap, there's also, I wanted to mention, like the time lag.

So research is so important, but there's a re. There's a gap between research and implementation. And so like, how do we address that as clinicians, how do we shorten it?

And then, you know, we're on the ground today working with a client. I want to know what the best practice is. And that can be really challenging.

Shawna: 00:08:11

Yeah, for sure. Especially with something like neurodiversity. That's a fairly new thing in society.

Brittany: 00:08:17

Right.

Shawna: 00:08:17

And so if we're thinking all these neuroaffirming practices are getting evaluated right now and then might take two to three years to actually reach us, the consumers, then we're missing the boat for three years and maybe doing something that we're not passionate about or isn't neuro affirming. And that's where I think really clinical experience comes in.

And being able to bridge that gap by using your clinical interpretations and the client perspective to come together.

Brittany: 00:08:44

Yeah, absolutely. That's right. I'm thinking of a client that we've just recently assessed actually in the clinic, the two of us.

And in a report that we got from the family and from a psychologist, the child was disruptive, dysregulated, pulling materials from the clinician, refusing to participate. And then the client came in to see. And I saw him first and then you saw him second. And when I saw him, he said my name.

He was the most polite child, you know. And what I'm trying to say is then you saw him in the daycare and you saw something completely different.

Shawna: 00:09:16

Right, exactly.

Brittany: 00:09:18

And so across these different settings too, we know that we need to see the child in different environments to really understand what their barriers are. Right. And barriers to communication.

So he was fine making friends with me as an adult, but then seeing him in the daycare, you noticed that it was so hard for him to make friends that are his peers at his own age. Right?

Shawna: 00:09:36

For sure.

And I think now that I saw him for a longer period of time, you could also see that potentially when he's in the clinic, he was doing some masking, and he was like, he could keep it together. When I saw him, he could kind of keep, keep, keep it together following the rules of the daycare for a short period of time.

And then after a little, like after an hour or so, you can see, okay, then he needs some more support and has some sensory needs that weren't being addressed in that environment. And so he started hitting and doing some of these behaviors that seemed really disruptive to the class when really he was just had an unmet need.

Brittany: 00:10:08

Right.

Shawna: 00:10:08

That wasn't being fulfilled in the classroom. And so we were able to make some simple changes and tweaks to support the classroom and him and meeting the expectations and goals.

Brittany: 00:10:17

I love that.

And I would say, as a speech pathologist, we were not trained or certainly I was not trained in, like, how to help someone, you know, I want to say, manage their behavior, but that's not what I mean. Like, how to help someone communicate what they need in order to, you know, not hit or not be disruptive in the classroom.

I think if I were in your position and I went to that daycare and stayed there for as long as you did, I think I would be really struggling. I don't know how to help him make those changes. And really, that's where you come in. And that's where I love working together.

Shawna: 00:10:51

Yeah. I think that's a great example of our collaborative practice.

Brittany: 00:10:54

Right.

Shawna: 00:10:54

I think as a behavior analyst, I'm very attuned to the environmental triggers to a behavior. What could be impacting it? What are some of the things a client might be trying to say?

Like, he might be trying to say, I'm overwhelmed or something like that. Right. But he's only three.

And then this is when I would come in to the SLP and say, okay, I think this guy needs to talk about the fact that he's feeling overwhelmed. What do you think is a good way to go about it?

Brittany: 00:11:17

Right.

Shawna: 00:11:17

Is it a picture card? Is it a phrase that we're going to teach them? Is it a different form of communication that we're going to put in?

And then we can work together to then figure out what that looks like and what the prompting and support should look like initially and what sort of our end success criteria is going to look like.

Brittany: 00:11:36

Yeah, perfect. That's such a nice example totally of how we work together. So let's talk about now, like, what do people expect from this podcast?

We're really hoping for an audience that involved. Sorry, includes parents. Absolutely.

We want to give you tips and tricks that you can take home and use today at dinner time, at bath time, at snack time, whatever it is in your home as part of your regular routines.

And so we're hoping that parents, you're listening to this if you've got a neurodiverse child and giving you some of those suggestions that you can use at home today.

Shawna: 00:12:08

And then from a clinical perspective, we're looking at neurodiversity as more than just a buzzword, and it's not simple to navigate. And we've been doing this for 10 years. We're moms, children.

And so see a lot of these similar things coming up in our lives and hope to give clinicians really practical tips and strategies that they can be using in their sessions or to be sharing with their clients and parents of their clients to help support them in developing some of these skills that come with being neurodivergent.

Brittany: 00:12:39

I just realized, Shauna, that the name of our podcast is neurodiversely speaking, we better define what is neurodiversity. This is not a term that when you and I trained in our master's programs, was. Was ever mentioned.

And let's be honest, even in those first five years of practice, we didn't hear that term at all. So what is neurodiversity?

Shawna: 00:12:58

So true. And I think when we look at neurodiversity, we're really looking at being accepting and inclusive of people whose brain works in a different way.

Brittany: 00:13:09

Right.

Shawna: 00:13:10

And sort of appreciating that there's so much variation in humanity that our brains are all going to be different.

And so instead of trying to fix something to make it a part of society or to meet societal expectations, instead what we're doing is celebrating those differences. And then as clinicians, our job is to help these individuals kind of live their most fruitful life and live their joyful life.

Brittany: 00:13:35

Love that. Yeah, we're really just here, like you said, not to fix anyone.

And I think that's often where therapists sometimes aba, let's be honest, and other type of professionals kind of get a bad rap because in the past, maybe like A long time ago, it probably looked a little bit more like we were trying to fix someone. Would you say that's right? Oh, my gosh, yes.

Shawna: 00:13:54

I have many examples from when I was learning and I was an ABA therapist where we were denying access to things or forcing compliance almost, you know, and it felt weird at the time, but I was sort of just doing what I was told.

Brittany: 00:14:12

Right.

Shawna: 00:14:12

And then if we fast forward to today and look at our approach to supporting mostly individuals that are autistic, we're looking at developing self advocacy skills. So how do you communicate those wants and needs? Instead of, you have to do this thing? I want you to tell me, no, I don't want to do that.

And teach them some of those skills. That way they can use them in the real world.

Brittany: 00:14:36

Right. I love that.

That reminds me of a professional development that we did together, which is, again, something that helps us learn and grow and work together as professionals from different fields. But he talked about the value of leaving your therapy door open.

I feel like, again, that's a whole other podcast, but leaving your therapy door open and kind of saying to the client, hey, if you like, I want to make this so fun that you should kind of want to be in the with me and you should want to come in and play and do all the cool things that we're going to do. And if not, then the door's open.

Shawna: 00:15:03

Exactly.

And I think there's a lot of really amazing behavior analysts doing compassionate work out there and sort of our history sometimes can cloud that work.

Or again, like you said, a whole other podcast and certainly something that we will be discussing in this podcast and sort of brings us to what inspired us to start this podcast.

Brittany: 00:15:20

Yeah, Love it.

So we were so inspired to start this podcast because, you know, like you said, we've both been working in this field now for over 10 years, and we find that professionals are working together, but often they're still working in separate silos.

And so, yeah, we're kind of doing work, good work, and we're doing together, but other than our clinic, I don't know a lot of other people that SLPs and BCBIs are actually working together in a truly collaborative approach. And so we wanted to share that information.

Shawna: 00:15:49

Yeah, exactly. I think what we're doing is pretty special. And we're trying our best to kind of bridge that gap that comes from different professional silos.

And I think the more that we understand the gap that exist between our two professions, we can better understand gaps that exist with other professionals too. And how to navigate those in a way that leads to client centered care.

Brittany: 00:16:13

Right.

Shawna: 00:16:14

And better care. Really? And treatment for the individuals that we're supporting.

Brittany: 00:16:18

Yeah. You know, another name could have been bridging the gaps. We're talking about bridging the gap between speech pathology and aba.

And then we're also talking in this podcast about bridging that research to practice gap. So what does that mean? It means that there's, you know, we're trying always to have the evidence behind what we're doing really guide our decisions.

But there's a pra. That gap is between what the research says and then, you know, how to implement that when we're on the floor with a child with autism.

And there's a significant gap there. Right?

Shawna: 00:16:48

Exactly. So much research to practice gap. As a clinician, things almost never go the way that they went in their research study. Yes.

All of my learners are so unique. And so what I really, something I'm very excited about is when a new article comes out and then thinking about what's my spin, I can take on it.

So I've been a clinician now for a while.

I'm able to then take in the research, digest it, figure out what are the scientific principles at play that are core to this treatment, and then what are the aspects that I can tweak?

Like, I'm looking then at, okay, this child uses AAC to communicate, so maybe we're gonna use a gesture instead of the vocal words that they use in the study.

And what are some of the ways that I can make this research study fit the individual that I'm trying to serve instead of, I think 10 years ago, we were kind of doing the reverse, making the client fit into the research study.

Brittany: 00:17:40

Right.

Shawna: 00:17:41

And right now, what I'm really passionate about as a mom of young boys, like, I see that they don't really always do the things that I'm expecting they're going to do. And certainly as a behavior analyst, my children are not perfectly behaved. And I see, I'm like, oh, the research suggested I do this.

I've done that three times now, and that's not working. And so what's the tweak or what am I missing?

Sort of in this intervention train package or in this treatment package that I've designed for my children to support them in developing a skill. And so how can I customize this really to my family? And I'm seeing all the time the researcher practice gap in my real life too.

Brittany: 00:18:14

I love that. And you know, we talk about, we're Gonna have real talk in this podcast. So Shawna and I are both moms. We've both got little kids.

Mine are five and eight. I've got two girls and I've got.

Shawna: 00:18:24

The two boys there too. And four and a half.

Brittany: 00:18:27

Yeah.

And so another reason behind this podcast and one of the things that brought us together when I was a not a young parent, but when my kids were young, I remember texting you all the time and saying, how do I do this? Or having tantrums. What do I do?

And I feel like this is some of the information that we really want to share with parents and also with professionals. As a young slp, I did not know how to help my kids that I was working with in speech sessions. If they had a tantrum, I didn't know what to do.

And I remember from early, early days when I was trained by another completely separate ABA therapist, it was like, well, just ignore them. They're trying to get attention. And as a mom, that didn't always feel right either. And I knew there more, but I didn't know what to do.

Shawna: 00:19:07

Yeah, I certainly.

I'm so thankful really that I'm a mom now for many reasons, of course, but clinically, I think it's made me like such a stronger clinician because I appreciate that compassionate lens more and have much more of an empathetic lens because with my own children, I feel the same. Right. Like, I thought for sure, pre having children, I would definitely sleep train them.

Brittany: 00:19:29

Right.

Shawna: 00:19:30

And that's what I was going to do. And I did sleep training for five months minutes and then adjusted my approach. I still ended up kind of gently sleep training my children.

Brittany: 00:19:40

Right.

Shawna: 00:19:40

But because I was a behavior analyst, I was then able to think, okay, what are the key components here? What can I do to tweak it and how can I make this feel really good to me?

Whereas most people, of course, are not don't have a master's degree in behavior analysis. And so that's a hard thing to navigate.

I'm just like reading a whole bunch of blogs and making short little notes about the important treatment components and what could I tweak. And so I think as a mom, I've certainly seen that ignoring them is like maybe an option sometimes if I'm very overwhelmed or something.

But for the most part, it just doesn't really feel good to my heart.

Brittany: 00:20:12

Yeah, exactly.

And you know, as a speech pathologist too, then growing up with little ones, it was like magic to me to watch my kids go through all these different developmental milestones and, you know, I'm a mom, but you can't pull the SLP out of me. So I was sure using all those language strategies with my own little ones.

And I love now being able to share some information with parents that, you know from the evidence, but then also from my own perspective as a clinician for over 12 years, but also as a mom and, like, what worked and what was realistic. And then, you know, I remember again, before I was a mom thinking about, okay, you got to do homework. It's got to be 15 minutes structured play.

Whereas now my goal, I think, for both of us is like, here's how to do it at bath time. You know, here you. If your child is under two, you're likely right there whole, you know, watching them in the bath and supporting them.

So might as well throw some language strategies in or at meal time or those parts of your day that are happening every single day. And that's where we really want to build in the practice. What. Whatever that looks like.

Shawna: 00:21:10

Yeah, I think that's such a good point, too. Right.

Is as both clinicians and mothers, and certainly with this podcast, we're hoping to give you real, practical, usable tips, because we've been there pre having children as a behavior analyst, we, like, take all this data and fill out this form for me, and then I'd see them in a week and they wouldn't have done any of it. I'm like, what the heck? Why can't you fill this out right now? As a parent, I get it. Like, I don't have two extra minutes to fill out this data sheet.

And so I think from that perspective, like, we understand in a session with a child what you're working with, what are the variables, what are the challenges? And here's some really simple strategies that we use. And same as parents.

Brittany: 00:21:48

Right?

Shawna: 00:21:49

Like, I get it. I've only got, like, bath time. That's it.

I don't know where the night goes, but I have no time to do anything else with my children, like homework or any sort of extra teaching time. Our time is, like, spent eating, bathing, getting dressed, I don't know. And then the night's over.

Brittany: 00:22:05

Exactly, exactly. Otherwise, we're all really tired if we don't get to that bedtime.

Shawna: 00:22:09

Exactly. And that's where I think, like, we're hoping with this podcast is to really come with, like, practical, usable advice.

Brittany: 00:22:17

Awesome. Yeah, I love that. Perfect. That brings us to the next part about why we feel it's so important to bridge the. The gap between SLP and aba.

So, again, I'm a speech pathologist, you're a behavior analyst. And, you know, we'll go to conferences and people will actually say, like, hey, you guys are up on stage together. You actually like each other.

This is shocking.

Shawna: 00:22:36

I know. It's so true and so sad, really.

Brittany: 00:22:39

And so, yeah, we actually do like each other. We hang out sometimes on the weekends.

Our kids know each other and love each, you know, and we really feel like bringing the best of both speech pathology and ABA is. We're our place, you know, and we're so happy to be in this place. And we wanted to share that with everyone.

Shawna: 00:22:56

Yeah, exactly.

I think there's so much turf wars or some sort of, like, disagreement going on between our two fields in particular, and potentially because we serve the same populations and have similar scopes of practice. Right. And that for some reason, one professional feels like they need to own the treatment, whether that's BCBAs or SLPs.

Brittany: 00:23:20

Right? Yeah. I think it's in our title, Speech and Language Pathologists. So a lot of speech pathologists think, hey, we own communication, we own language.

And I think that is not true. You know, I've worked with you and other ABA professionals now for so long, almost since my career started.

And I think there's such a place for Aba and BCBAs in communication.

Of course, another thing that you always remind me of is, you know, a speech pathologist, I'm trained across so many different areas, so absolutely, communication is part of our foundation. But I'm trained in all these different aspects and across different populations.

You know, we look at everything across the lifespan, for sure, but then also all kinds of different communication disorders and differences and even things like swallowing or stuttering. And we're, you know, we learn so much where everything that you learn really is about autism and neurodiversity, right?

Shawna: 00:24:12

Yeah, exactly. Like, from early in my career, I feel like I was just living and breathing autism. And that's where I spent a lot of my professional development time.

It's where all my conferences are focused on learning about that. And there's some really unique aspects to being autistic that come into.

Where a behavior analyst can be really helpful is looking at their learning patterns and how they learn, looking at what are some of the things in the environment that aren't serving them well and really evaluating some of those error patterns. Patterns to better figure out what the actual issue is and treat the issue rather than just coming at it from a pure language perspective.

Brittany: 00:24:54

And I think also that actually brings up a point about how Some speech pathologists where we've had clashes and meetings, or, you know, parent either like meetings with other professionals or school meetings. We've definitely had some tension in school meetings with other professionals.

And what I'm thinking here is that in speech pathology, again, if you read some of our journals, we're looking at populations, not just autism. And so certainly, you know, there are treatments that show some encouraging evidence to be used across a number of different populations.

But when you look at that, how many of those children or people in the study participants were autistic? And often it's none.

And I think that's where again, speech pathologists think, oh, no, I'm using an evidence based practice method and you'll remind me. But hey, is that actually the best treatment method for someone with autistic?

Shawna: 00:25:41

Yeah, exactly.

Like I said, there's some, like, kind of unique things that we want to think about when it comes to communication and language goals for autistic individuals. And that's where we, the research does, like the population does matter, not a hundred, like, it's not the only factor that we want to think about.

But then I want to think about, okay, my learner or the individual that I'm thinking of, what's their profile like, you know, and bringing those two things together. And so again, that research through practice gab is not a clear line.

It's not that anything without research on autistic individuals is definitely not going to work, but it gives me some good insight into, like, what are sort of the prerequisite skills I'd be looking for for the individual to possess, to benefit from this intervention.

Brittany: 00:26:25

Yeah, such a good point. All right, that moves us on to.

Again, another reason why we wanted to start this podcast was the need for real evidence based conversations about neurodiversity. So we want to balance that scientific rigor and lived experience. And we really need both to have this conversation.

Shawna: 00:26:41

Yeah, for sure. Because no one fits in a cookie cut and none of no two people are the same.

And so it's great to get good demographic information from the research studies and see who they, what their population was, what were their learning profiles, what diagnoses did they have, et cetera. But it's not going to give me something that's 100% going to work with this individual in front of me.

Brittany: 00:27:04

Yeah, exactly. All right, and then we want to talk. You know, we mentioned evidence based practice and conversations.

We also want to address in this podcast the risks of misinformation. So we're both on social media at Elemental we're really passionate about sharing good information and good tips with parents and other clinicians.

But we also know that we have to be really critical consumers because there are others in our space that are sharing information that sometimes is on the side of pseudoscientific. You know, they're not using evidence. It's pseudoscience.

Shawna: 00:27:36

Yeah, exactly. And I think something we'll certainly dive into is sort of the risks of pseudoscience. And some things sound really nice.

Like as the way that they're packaged, it sounds like, hey, I want my client to do that, that or I want my child to do that. That sounds amazing. But then when we dive in deeper, it's like, oh, there's like some flaws here or some things missing here.

And that's again where that clinical judgment comes in to be able to figure out, okay, could I make this. Is there some like learning principles or some aspects of this that do align with current research or is there too many method. Methodologies.

Methodological. Methodological is thinking about, is there too many flaws? This. That I really can't bridge that gap.

And I think that's something that becomes very challenging as a clinician.

And certainly when I was young in my career, I wasn't able to navigate all of these different steps that would be required to figure out if something is pseudo scientific. Totally actually meets evidence based standards.

Brittany: 00:28:37

Actually, that reminds me very quickly, let's talk about what brought us together initially and our mentor, our shared mentor. We've got.

We have had the pleasure of being both sort of born into our professions from a professional who is both dual certified as speech pathologist and behavior analyst. You know who you are, nod to you, but we're so grateful to have had that right from the beginning.

And I would say our shared mentor also, I always felt like read articles in her sleep. She could just tell me the evidence on almost everything. And I always admired that about her.

Shawna: 00:29:11

Yeah, for sure. It is a skill. And certainly I feel like now I could cite a lot of research because I've been doing it for so long.

Brittany: 00:29:19

Right.

Shawna: 00:29:20

And again, that's when I'm able.

When I see new research articles and, and stuff, it's pretty easy to kind of skim them and read them now because they do have such a strong foundation of sort of where the research has come from.

Brittany: 00:29:30

Yeah, good point. So what can our listeners expect from our podcast?

Shawna: 00:29:34

Oh goodness.

Well, I think we're looking to share how neurodiversity is more than a buzzword and what it means in practice and how can we Bridge that researcher practice gap. How can we collaborate better to meet the needs of the individuals that are coming to us for support?

Brittany: 00:29:49

Support, yeah, absolutely.

We want to bring in what we've learned from neurodivergent individuals that we worked with and the voices of our clients, but also, you know, the community at large. Talk about what works, maybe what doesn't work.

Shawna: 00:30:03

Yeah, it's certainly what doesn't work. And I've had failures in my time too. Right. So it's not about.

I hope this podcast is something that inspires conversation and as to relook at things instead of being a podcast where we're shaming others or putting down previous practices, et cetera. Our motto at the clinic is always, we know better and we do better.

And every single day, we're trying to do, like, better work and improve the services that we provide.

Brittany: 00:30:30

Absolutely. And like we said, we feel so much better that we're working together, and we're really bringing the best of both worlds. Always.

All right, so let's address at the. As we're kind of wrapping up here, what's coming up next for us? Shauna.

Shawna: 00:30:42

Oh, I'm so excited.

First thing we have to dive into, I think, is some of the common myths about aba and looking at unpacking it, looking at the myths, looking at our history and acknowledging the history that we do have. And also talking about, like, what are the ways that you can look for a really good ABA provider?

And then for sure, our second episode has to be that we're better together. SLP and ABA in practice. Me and you chatting more about our model and really, the things that we've learned over the years on how to collaborate.

Brittany: 00:31:11

You'll have to stop me, because I get on a soapbox really fast and we talk about aba, because I want to be that person that says, hey, I live and breathe every single day working in alongside an ABA therapist. And you know what? You guys are actually pretty cool.

Shawna: 00:31:24

Thank you. Thank you. And I hope that we are compassionate, empathetic people that are really just looking to support individuals meeting their goals.

And so I'm excited to share more about that, too, so that hopefully other people see the value that can come from applied behavior and analysis.

Brittany: 00:31:40

Totally. Yeah. And how we're better together. So also on that, we want to hear from you.

If you've got a topic that you'd love for us to cover, send us your questions about speech, behavior, neurodiversity, find us on social media at Elemento, which is like the Alphabet, but it's spelled out at E L E M E N O E and at Neurodiversity Speaking. Or shoot us an email@helloneurodiversityspeaking.com and that's.

Shawna: 00:32:04

A wrap for our first episode of Neurodiversity Speaking. Speaking. If you enjoyed this, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with anyone who might find it helpful.

We can't wait to dive into more neurodiversity topics with you.

Brittany: 00:32:15

Thanks everyone. Before we go, we want to remind our listeners that topics we discuss in the podcast are not a replacement for professional medical advice.

Please contact a professional if you have questions.

Shawna: 00:32:26

And just a heads up, we'll use both Identity first and Person First Language to respect different preferences. We'll also see treatment and therapy therapy since we come from a clinical space, but always with respect and a focus on what works for each person.

Brittany: 00:32:38

See you next time.

Shawna: 00:32:39

Bye.