Hey there, I'm Emily!
I help parents who have children with language delays learn to support development at home so their children can start communicating more effectively.
The Secret Magic Sauce
Have you ever gotten frustrated with the progress (or lack thereof) that your child is making in therapy?
Have you felt like they should be farther along than where they are?
My first year working as a speech therapist in the public schools, I discovered something that completely changed the course of my career…
I was not the secret magic sauce that could fix all kids’ speech problems. In fact, the biggest factor in how much progress a child made in speech had nothing to do with me.
Some of the kids I worked with made amazing progress, and for others the progress was very slow.
The thing that I saw make the biggest impact was whether a child’s parents were working on speech at home throughout the week.
When I discovered this, I knew I had to change my approach.
As a speech therapist, I knew lots of strategies and techniques to help kids with skills like joint attention or using words to make requests.
But I only got to spend 30 minutes with them once or twice a week. And for most kids, that just isn’t enough.
I realized the best way to help kids reach their goals was to teach those strategies to their parents.
The Big Failure
Have you ever felt like you weren’t being supported well enough…
Wished your child’s therapist was giving you what you needed to help your child too?
Unfortunately, in the speech therapy world, it’s not standard practice to tell parents they need to work on speech with their child every day and then give them the tools they need to do that.
That’s a huge failure in our therapy system. I was guilty of it too, and I knew it needed to change.
So I went to Facebook and joined a bunch of speech delay support groups.
I couldn’t believe the number of parents who desperately wanted to support their child’s development, but couldn’t because they didn’t know what they needed to do or were missing the resources to actually do it.
To make matters worse, many of these parents had kids who were stuck on waitlists, waiting on insurance approval, or lived in an area where they couldn’t even get basic therapy services.
I wanted to empower these parents with the resources and tools they needed to support their kids’ development, so I started Moms Teach Speech.
I began showing parents simple and effective ways to practice speech therapy at home and to incorporate language development techniques into their everyday routines.
And it worked. Parents started seeing results, sometimes with the very first strategy they tried.
But something was still missing… Progress was better, but not good enough.
The Missing Piece
A few months after starting Moms Teach Speech, I got sick.
The doctors ran all sorts of crazy tests, bounced me from specialist to specialist for months, and never figured out what was wrong.
Frustrated and desperate for solutions, I started looking at alternative options.
I immersed myself in the world of functional medicine. I learned about things like toxin buckets, drainage pathways, using food as medicine, and the importance of addressing root causes.
And finally, slowly, I started to recover.
Along the way, I noticed something interesting. Parents were using that same root cause approach with their kids who had language delays… and they were seeing incredible progress with their development.
In the speech world, without an additional diagnosis, we usually say developmental language delays are idiopathic, meaning there’s no known cause (and if there is a diagnosis, a lot of symptoms get bandaid solutions because people assume that nothing can be done to fix it).
But in the functional medicine world, we know that there’s always a root cause, and when you find and address that cause, you can see amazing progress that may not have been possible otherwise.
That was the missing piece.
I realized that to help families get the best possible results, I couldn’t focus exclusively on traditional speech therapy techniques.
I needed to take a holistic approach to development that would help parents integrate language development strategies into their everyday routines and address the root cause of their child’s delay.
Using strategies to teach specific skills like making requests or staying focused on an activity are still a really important part of supporting a child’s development.
But when we combine that with foundational health and wellness strategies…
Things like improving the diet so it includes more nutrients that support gut health and brain development…
Or reducing common household toxins that have been linked to developmental problems and learning delays…
When we start supporting the whole child, instead of trying to isolate a tiny piece of development…
That’s when we create the best opportunity for success.
Are you ready to find the root cause of your child’s delays and give them the whole-child support they need?
Core Beliefs
I’ve learned a lot throughout this journey. These are a few of the things that have become core beliefs that shape my business and the work I do…
You are your child's best therapist.
That’s right, you. Speech therapists might have more specialized training, but you are the expert on your child. You know them best, you spend the most time with them, and you have the biggest opportunity to impact their development.
Therapy should be fun and functional.
Kids learn best when they’re having fun. If therapy looks like a little kid being forced to sit down while someone tells them to repeat words, it won’t go very well. Therapy should happen during play and in everyday routines (where kids will actually use the skills you’re teaching them.
Take radical ownership.
We need to take responsibility for all aspects of our lives, including the areas often delegated to professionals like doctors, therapists, or teachers. We 100% need those professionals. However, when it comes to your child’s health and development, remember that they’re a member of the team. You’re the leader.
We're designed for success.
I believe God created our bodies to develop and function perfectly. Yes, imperfect things happen. We live in an imperfect world… but that doesn’t change the original design. Our bodies were also set up for success with an incredible ability to heal themselves when given the basic foundations needed for health.
There's always a root cause.
I’ll say it again: our bodies were designed to work perfectly. When they don’t, there’s a reason. Though there are some exceptions, we can typically see great progress in health and development by identifying and addressing the underlying root cause(s).
No child should go without support.
I’ve seen too many families struggling to get support for their child. Maybe it’s because of finances, insurance issues, the area they live in – the reason really doesn’t matter. No child should go without these supports, especially when many of them could be provided easily (and completely free) by a parent.
Fun Facts
1. I planned my wedding in 3 weeks (almost all of it, anyway).
2. I love to travel… I’ve been to 7 countries so far.
3. The ocean is my happy place…
4. …even though I’ve had 2 close encounters with sharks.
5. I have an aussiedoodle named Ghost.
6. I was homeschooled.
7. I’d rather re-watch an old show than start a new one (any How I Met Your Mother fans with me?).
What are your qualifications?
– I have my master’s in Speech-Language Pathology and I’m certified as an SLP through the American Speech-Langauge-Hearing Association (ASHA) (MA-CCC, SLP)
– I’m licensed as a Speech-Language Pathologist in the State of Michigan (that’s where I’m able to offer speech therapy services)
– In progress – I’m working on becoming a Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner (hoping to be officially certified by the end of 2022)