5 Well-Meaning Habits That Delay Speech - And the Simple Fix (Part 2) Ep 148

Last week I introduced the first two habits quietly getting in the way of your toddler's speech.

This week we go deeper.

In Part 2 I'm sharing Habits 3, 4, and 5 - and these are the ones that tend to stop parents cold. Not because they're complicated. But because nobody told them these things mattered.

We start with the neuroscience - and I mean real neuroscience, the kind that completely changes how you see your child's developing brain. 

Your baby arrived in this world already wired for language. Not for any specific language. For all of them. 

Once you understand that, everything else in this episode lands differently.

Then we talk about the pacifier. Who it's really for. And why the transition is almost always harder for the parent than the child.

And finally - screens. After 40 years in this field, I have a clear position. I'll share it plainly, without apology, and with the clinical evidence to back it up.

In this episode:

• The neuroscience of the developing brain — and why flashcards at 18 months are knocking on the wrong door
• Citizens of the world — what this term means and why it changes everything
• The pacifier question nobody asks honestly
• What I really think about screens — and what I told families back in the early nineties that still works today
• The thread connecting all five habits — and what Marcus taught me about what children actually need

Missed Part 1? Start with Episode 147 first — it'll make this one land much deeper.

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These are FREE, one-to-one conversations designed to help determine what to focus on first - and whether a focused 6-week parent coaching format would be helpful for your family at this time. Not evaluations, not therapy - just space to reflect and be heard.

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The Top 10 Essential Skills Every Baby Needs Before Talking

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DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: contact@HyerLearning.com
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

Transcript

0:03

Today we're picking back up on the five well-meaning habits that may actually stop your toddler from talking. And today we're gonna start with habit number three. And the truth is I enjoy sharing this the most because once you understand what's actually happening inside your child's brain. Everything that we talk about starts to make more sense. If you haven't listened to the previous video on habit number one and two, you can always go back. There's not any specific order of these five. All five have a common thread and are related to one another, but you can listen to them separately.

Erin 0:45

Hello and welcome to Talking Toddlers where I share more than just tips and tricks on how to reduce tantrums or build your toddler's vocabulary. here our goal is to develop clarity because in this modern world, it's truly overwhelming. This podcast is about empowering moms to know the difference between fact and fiction, to never give up, to tap into everyday activities, so your child stays on track. He's not falling behind, he's thriving. Through your guidance, we know that true learning starts at home. So let's get started. Before I walk you through this habit, number three, I want to share something that I think reframes everything we've talked about so far and honestly everything we'll talk about for the rest of this episode. Here's what neuroscience tells us about the brain your baby was born with in the first three years of life the right hemisphere of the brain is dominant, not partially dominant, not sharing the job dominant. The right hemisphere is where emotional regulation lives, where sensory processing happens. Where nonverbal communication, the reading of faces, the feeling of a voice, the sense of safety in a room that's all decoded and stored in the right hemisphere. It's the hemisphere of human connection of being in the moment with somebody else and really feeling the experience. And here's what I find breathtaking about all of this. As a clinician and a person of faith who has spent four decades watching this design unfold in real children, your baby arrived already wired for human speech and language. Not any specific language, but all of them. In the speech science world and in neuroscience, we have a term for newborns that I have always loved, deeply. We call them. Citizens of the world. A baby born today could move to Japan tomorrow, be adopted into a French speaking family next year, grow up hearing Swahili or Spanish or Mandarin or English. Their brain would wire itself fluently to whatever language surrounds them with warmth and compassion and consistency and love. That is not an accident. That is extraordinary. Design the right hemisphere. Dominance in early childhood is not a limitation waiting to be overcome. It's the foundation being laid. Emotions first, connection. First, safety first. And then around age three or four, the brain slowly and purposefully begins to naturally shift toward the left hemisphere engagement. They have collected enough data, enough life experience to code their native language, the language structure, logic, sequencing, processing, the architecture that will eventually support verbal communication, even reading and writing and mathematical thinking. that is the job of the left hemisphere. But that shift can't be rushed. It can't be forced either. And yet in the 21st century with every passing year I've spent in this field, I have watched the pressure to do exactly that, rush it, force it, accelerate it. I've watched that pressure grow louder and more relentless in the schools, in the medical community, in the parks, at homes, at teachers' meetings. I've watched that pressure grow flashcards at 18 months. Letter recognition apps for two year olds. It's all over the internet. You know this, and I know this and I'm not denying that some kids can develop sight words early or word recognition at a very young age, but that's rote learning and at what costs. We're talking structured academic readiness programs for three year olds who should still be deep in the business of play, of exploration, of imagination. That right hemisphere. Now I get it. And I assure you that I understand where that pressure comes from. Parents, you love your children and you want them to succeed. And the culture out there tells us earlier is better. and the market sells to all of us, the tools that promise a head start. But here's what I need you to understand, and I, I want to say this as clear as I can. Pushing academic input letters, numbers, structured learning before your child's brain is developmentally ready for it is not giving your child a head start. It's knocking on the wrong door. That left hemisphere door, the one that isn't fully opened yet. It's still collecting data. And while you are knocking on that door, the right hemisphere, the door that is open is wide open and hungry, and ready and eager. Is waiting for something entirely different. Is waiting for your face, your voice, your unhurried pressure, the feeling of being seen and responded to and delighted in. That is what the brain is actually asking for in these early years. That is what wires the foundation that everything else is built on. So with all of that introduction, this brings me to habit number three itself. That's kind of the backdrop. Some homes are simply quiet, not cold, not neglectful, just quiet. Parents who are naturally introverted or perhaps they're exhausted or simply moving through the day with their heads down, getting through the to-do list, they often unintentionally create a very quiet home and the toddler moves through their homes in a kind of language light environment. remember, I'm always using the phrase, a language rich home environment, but in these quiet homes, it's language light. There are two techniques I have always taught parents that us speech therapists have used for decades, and they may be familiar terms with you, but their parallel talk and self-talk parallel talk means narrating what your child is doing as they do it. Oh, you are pushing the car up the ramp crash, boom. Self-talk means that you narrate your own actions. Mommy's cutting the apple. Hmm. I need to find my keys. Let's look under the table. There are small descriptions attached to real actions in real time. What they see and feel in their space, your attaching words to. But here's what I want quieter parents to understand, because I don't want you to hear this as pressure to perform. This is not about talking more. I rarely say that it's about connecting in the moment with language woven naturally through it. A comment, a pause, a smile, a look that says, Hmm, I see you. I'm here with you together. These moments count. I'm showing you how it works through my actions and my words. Spread across the whole day at the changing table in the kitchen, on a walk, folding laundry, whatever you're doing. Those moments accumulate into something substantial because remember what the right hemisphere is hungry for. Emotional tone, facial expression, felt connection. The words you attach to those moments are important. That's the coding of their native language, but those words, they ride in on the back of the relationship that you're building. The warmth and connection come first. The words follow. Now, I wanna also say this, the flip side to that, because this is as equally important, the opposite can be very real. I have worked with plenty of parents who talk constantly. They're wonderful, engaged, deeply loving parents who flood their child with commentary and questions. And sometimes it feels like from the moment they wake up to the time they go to bed, and what I have observed consistently is that that child eventually tunes out. They go quiet, they stop attempting. Remember speech and language. It takes work. They find a way to exit a conversation that never paused long enough for them to jump in. I worked early in my career with a little boy. I'm gonna call him Eddie and his parents. They were great people, both literally brilliant, high energy litigators, both attorneys as a part of their nightly routine. They would prop Eddie up on his learning tower there in the kitchen while they cooked and fixed dinner together, right? Pulling him in to the food prep, but they would actually take turns firing questions at him. How was preschool today? Tell me, what did you do? Did, did you play with Joey? What did you do in art class? Was Mr. Smith on the playground today? I like Mr. Smith. Hey, how long did you nap? Did you read any new books today? Question after question after question. I kid you not, Eddie. Who was actually quite verbal in most settings, had gone increasingly quiet at home. And that's why the parents called me. They were worried. He'd begun answering in single words, and quite often he wouldn't say anything at all. He would just look at them. When his parents watched me through my one way mirror and saw how much more Eddie talked, when I simply stopped and gave him room, they were stunned. That was their natural communication style. That was who they were or who they became to be as professionals. And it served them beautifully in a courtroom, but for a 2-year-old, or this guy was, you know, pushing three even. Whose right hemisphere is still trying to process emotional tone and find safe openings to contribute or to make a comment. It was like trying to merge onto, you know, the 4 0 5 freeway in California, which is one of the worst freeways of the world, I think it never slows down and you can't merge with ongoing traffic like that. And that's how Eddie felt. When any child is bombarded with language, they don't rise to meet it, to actually step back from it. So here's the question. What are we actually aiming for? We're looking for a rhythm, a heartbeat, a slower dance, make a comment, then wait. Not an anxious expectant wait, but a warm, open, genuinely curious one, a smile, a shrug, a look that says, take your time. I'm not going anywhere. Fold the laundry and say, huh. One sock, two socks. Then go quiet. Keep folding, peel an orange and say, smell that. Then hold it out in front of their face, in front of their nose and wait. Wash hands and say soapy. And then pause. See what comes out. These moments don't need to be engineered. They don't need to be educational. They need to be genuine because your child's right hemisphere, that extraordinary world ready, open to everything brain, that right hemisphere is not looking for a lesson, is looking for you. Human connection, human modeling. So now let's look at habit number four and it's all about discomfort. And before we dive in, let me ask you something because I'm going to add a clinical piece here. When your baby fusses, what's the first thing you reach for? For most parents, both in the US and Europe, the answer is typically a pacifier. And I understand why it works most of the time it's instantaneous and it's beautiful. It's reliable. And not all parents will, but a good 85% of parents will use a pacifier in these early years. And when that happens, the fussing typically stops, the tension in the room drops and everyone exhales else. But I want you to sit with a question that I think is worth asking openly, Who is the pacifier actually for? Because here's what I've observed over four decades and what I think the modern parenting industry would rather you didn't examine too closely. we have been sold the idea by well-trained pediatricians and they've been told what to say, right? So they're well-trained by baby product companies and by a culture that is deeply uncomfortable with infant distress that the moment a baby fusses something has gone wrong and we need to fix it immediately. I see this all the time. A fussing baby is not a problem to be solved in my book, A Fussing Baby is a baby doing exactly what babies are designed to do. That sound. Be it a protest or even that discomfort is your child's first language. It is the original reach toward communication and every time we plug it up before it has a chance to breathe or express itself, We send a message your child receives long before they have words for it. Your voice is an inconvenience. Here. Have this instead, sh. Now, please understand, I am not anti pacifier. I want to be clear. I've shared that with you in previous episodes, but I think it needs to be used. With intention, right? An intended purpose to help an overtired baby transition to sleep, or even just a tired baby transition to sleep pacify. That's what it means. It is legitimate and a useful tool, but somewhere along the way we move from using it as a bridge to sleep, to using it as a general solution to all discomfort, all noise, all those moments in the grocery store or at church or at family gatherings where your baby or toddler starts to express themselves and an adult nearby shifts uncomfortably sh Honey, here take this. And so by age two or three. We've built a habit, so woven into the child's daily life that parents genuinely can't imagine removing it. Here's what that costs clinically. Speech development requires movement. Constant exploratory, unencumbered, movement of the jaw, the lips, the tongue, the airflow. Talking is actually both a gross and a fine motor movement skill. Gross means the big muscles, right? So you have to have that breath control. Sit yourself up, take in the breath, expel it slowly to fate, right, to produce sound. And then the fine motor, the jaw, the lips, the tongue. But people rarely think of it that way. I look at it that way all the time, but. Like any other motor skill, it develops through practice. Lots of repetition, drill sets, you might wanna say But through the freedom to experiment, babbling is not random noise. And I know I often say I want noisy babies, but I want them to start to do it intentionally as well to get your attention, to engage with you, to, to build that expansion. babbling is your child in the rehearsal room, right, running the lines, testing what their voice, their mouth, their breath control can do listening to themselves. 50% of what any baby or toddler hears is their own speech. That work cannot happen when something is in the way. And it's not just the pacifier in isolation, I assure you. I want, I want you to see the bigger picture here because there's a couple of things going on at the same time. We have simultaneously given our children mouth full of soft, ultra processed food that require almost no chewing, so there's no physical exercise there. And then we plug those same mouse up with a pacifier or a sippy cup whenever they're not eating the jaw, the tongue, all of those oral muscles. That are supposed to be developing through chewing and exploratory play and babbling and experimenting and making noise, they're getting almost no workout. So to me, the fix is kind of simple and I've helped hundreds of families make it pacifiers for sleep and sleep only, and then we put it in the drawer when you wake up, not in the car, not in the stroller, not on a walk, not at the family gathering sleep only. I know that's a big statement, but let's use it intentionally. Let me share a little story and I'm gonna call her Sarah because this happened several times. And so, but Sarah is to me a great. Example of what is really going on here. So she was almost three when we met. She was bright and she was getting ready to start preschool and at it would be in Labor Day. Right. And I met her in the beginning of summer, but the pacifier, and she called it her binky like a lot of kids do, but it was very much a part of her daily life. Her mom came to me genuinely worried. She convinced herself that this transition was going to be traumatic. She had heard stories, she had seen her sister go through issues. She had been laying awake, planning these different strategies. She actually mapped out this elaborate ceremony. She was gonna wrap it up in pretty box and march it to the trash can and have this whole ceremony of throwing her binky away. I suggested a gentler approach and like I do a lot of things. I tied the transition to a landmark. Sarah could feel proud of turning three. We talked about it warmly without a lot of drama. We, we set the stage that this is a natural stepping stone, and the truth is we wound it down gradually, right? We, we talked about, oh, you can use it at rest time and bedtime only then we put it in the drawer and she was in control of that. we talked about the binky as something that had been helpful when she was little, that she was growing past that stage and there was nothing about being a baby or now she's a big girl. It was just all natural part of growing. The more we framed it that way, naturally, gently, as something that she was growing out of, not something being taken from her, the more Sarah began to distance herself from it. Naturally, it stopped being part of her identity and started being part of her past. By the time her third birthday actually arrived, her mom had spent weeks preparing this elaborate trash ceremony, but Sarah had already been done with it. This, putting it in a box and putting it in the trash can. That was just a formality. She barely noticed. It was about her being three and having the partying, going to preschool. That brought her forward. afterward. Her mom looked at me slightly sheepish and said, Hmm. I gave myself so much more anxiety about this than she ever had, and that's the truth I want you to leave with on this one. On the message about pacifiers. Most of the time our children are more ready than we are. We are the ones who have come to depend on the tool, the instant silence, the reliable calm, the feeling of having fixed something. And I say all of this without judgment. I say it because it's true and because once you see it, the path forward becomes so much easier. Just like with Sarah, within a couple of weeks of making this change, most parents almost universally report the same thing. Wow. More babbling, more vocal play, more vocal attempts, more sounds, filling the house to himself, to his brother. To me, the drooling improves. Sleep actually deepens. And here's the other positive side effects. Eating broadens as their jaw naturally gets stronger. Yeah, because chewing and sucking on a pacifier are two different motor actions. All of this is a snowball, right? It starts small, but it has compound effects. It becomes a very welcome snowball. The mouth was always ready to do it. It just needed to be given the chance, the room to breathe and spread and practice. And the more we move away from our natural design, the more risk we create for challenges. So habit number five is a common one and a big one these days, and it's about the screen question, and I know that. Many of you might feel like this is a well worn territory, right? This conversation has been brought up, and I know that many of you hear the warnings, but you also live in a real world where screens exist, where older siblings have them, where grandma or uncle Joey has one. where a 20 minute video can be the difference between finishing dinner and a full blown meltdown. So let me be honest with you the way that I would be honest with a family who was sitting in my office across the table from me, and I would just lay it out there for them. A screen is extraordinarily good. For one thing. It mesmerizes children, and that's not a flaw in the technology. It's by design. Screens are engineered to capture and hold attention, period. The movement, the color, the sound design, the pacing, all of it optimized to keep eyes locked and minds passive. But here's what a screen cannot do. It cannot respond to your child. It doesn't notice when they look away, it doesn't adjust. When they seem confused, it doesn't pause because they made a sound or pointed to something or tried to say a new word. It just continues indifferent to them, utterly one directional. And after everything we've talked about today, the right hemisphere waiting for a face, the citizen of the world wired. To receive human spoken language, your child whose voice needs to be needed, I want you to feel how incompatible screens are with all of that. Language develops through interaction, not exposure, not content interaction. Your child does not learn to communicate by watching communication happen. They learn by doing it imperfectly, haltingly with a real person who responds, who adjusts and waits and tries again now I wanna be clear with you about something else. I have been in this field long enough to remember before cell phones, before iPads, before laptops were a fixture in every home. Back in the early 1990s when a family came to me with a toddler who wasn't talking or was slow to talk, and the television was running most of the day, right? That background hum. My best recommendation, my quote unquote intervention was simple. I would tell parents, unplug the TV this weekend, and if your toddler ask why it's not working, just say, oh honey, it's broken. The child might fuss for an hour or two, maybe even a half a day, but by the end of the weekend, they stopped asking entirely. It ain't that hard. I say that not to be glib, but because I think parents today have been convinced that removing screens is this huge, enormous, traumatic, logistical, impossible undertaking, and it isn't. Children adapt far faster than we expect when we make a calm, confident decision and hold it. What is hard, and I've watched this become harder with every decade I've been in practice, is the cultural pressure, the normalization, the well-meaning professionals who have themselves been drawn into believing that screens are neutral or educational or even therapeutically useful. And I wanna go on record here. Clear as day. I was stunned. Genuinely stunned when I began hearing developmental professionals, including speech language pathologist, suggest that screens could be a valuable intervention tool that screens and therapy sessions were acceptable, even helpful. It became a slippery slope faster than anyone will ever admit. But I'll say it here because where are we now? Most classrooms, including early childhood classrooms, daycare, preschool, kindergarten, they all have a large screen running for a significant portion of the day. We went from the TV in the living room to a screen on every wall in every room where children spend their waking hours, period. And we are watching the consequences unfold in real time in children's language, attention, social communication. I'm not willing to call that progress. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends avoiding all screens before 18 to 24 months, and I find that a very interesting comment. They give you this range 18 to 24 months. They can't even commit so what I have always said, my strongest and best clinical recommendation. Based on nearly 40 years, no screens for the first 24 months. And ideally if you can make it to 36 months, I recognize that's harder than it sounds. I get it. Especially for mothers managing their day alone or in households with older children. I get it. It gets very, very messy. And in those cases, use screens with true intention. 20 minutes when you genuinely need it, is not a crisis, but not all. Be honest with yourself about what it is. It's not educational, it's not enriching. It's like saying those boxes of enriched and fortified breakfast cereals are healthy. They aren't. You know that. I know that. So a 20 minute show is a very effective tool for keeping children occupied while you do something necessary. That's legitimate. Call it what it is. I sometimes also hear parents saying, and professionals, oh my gosh, professionals say this, but they say, oh, well I sit with her and we talk about what we're watching together and I understand what they're trying to say here. And maybe sometimes it's coming from good instincts. But actually I think it's bad advice because let's be honest, one that rarely happens. And two, and this is what I've always said, when someone would say that to me, both professionals and parents, if you're sitting together. Pointing things out, talking about what you see on the screen, asking questions, waiting for answers, sharing the moment. You could be doing all of that with a book, or perhaps you're sitting on the grass or taking a walk outside and talking about those things, or sitting on the floor with a pile of blocks following that same method. All of those environments don't compete with you for your child's attention. That's the critical piece we continually forget or overlook, or just dismiss. Remember what I said in the beginning of this particular habit? A screen is extraordinarily good at one thing. It mesmerizes children. And adults, right? But we're talking about your kid. That's not a flaw in the technology. It is by design period. Screens are engineered to capture and hold attention. The movement, the color, the sound, the pacing, all of it optimizes to keep them locked in and their minds passive. So do you really believe that you can stop the video and then try to ask questions and your innocent two, three, or 4-year-old can switch gears and focus on the screen and then focus on you, and then focus back to the screen and focus on you. They can barely do that with books in their hand because the screen is always pulling always. Even if you're sitting right there with the best intention, and I know it, but I'm just speaking the truth, this makes it hard. So, protect your child's neurological health. Create healthy boundaries. Be bold enough to stand up to the peer pressure, and you'll get it because they'll be pushing and telling you that screens are inevitable, they're harmless. A little bit here is, uh, it's fine. It's fine. I'm asking you to be the leader you were asked to be when you became a parent. So remember this. The habits you build now are infinitely easier to establish than trying to redo or undo and establish new ones later on. I assure you, the families I worked with who were always trying to recalibrate screen dependency with a four or a five or a six or a eight or a 10-year-old, that is hard road to travel on. A road that starts with one small decision made much earlier. Right now you're in the thick of it Now. Set the stage your child arrived in this world, wired to turn toward your voice, to search for your face, to reach toward human connection with everything they had. It's God's remarkable design on purpose. The screen didn't build that, and it can't nourish it. Only you can. So what's the thread that I promised you in the beginning that connects these five habits that get in the way that can interfere so let me bring you back to Marcus, the little boy at the edge of the sandbox, watching, wanting in, shovel in hand, not knowing how to take that next step. I thought about him often over the years, not as a clinical case, but as a picture, right? A picture of what it looks like when a child has everything they need, except the one thing that can't be bought or downloaded or handed to them in a box. It's the felt knowledge that their voice matters. That by reaching toward another person gets something real back in return. Every habit we've talked about here today. Is a different way that that knowledge, that understanding gets quietly withheld. James, who's pointing, worked so perfectly that his brain never needed to reach further and build those verbal words. Or how about those toddlers at the snack table who were were told however gently and meaningfully that their voices were a hazard. We can't talk and eat at the same time. Or the children in homes full of noise who learned that conversation moved too fast to wait for them. Or how about Sarah, whose mouth was occupied through so much of her day with her pacifier and with snack foods that she never had a chance to practice? So she just stayed quiet most of the time. And I assure you, an entire generation of children growing up with a screen between them and the human faces that their right hemisphere was designed from birth to seek. All of that is optional. In every case, the child's voice wasn't needed. And so like any muscle that goes unused, what happens is underdeveloped. It never begins to tap into its own potential. It waits. But here's the good news, and I mean this from the deepest place. In 40 years of watching children find their voice that the waiting is not permanent. Children are extraordinarily ready to respond. When the environment shifts, when the pause happens, when the question is left open, when someone gets down on the floor, looks them in the eye, and waits with warmth, with patience, with genuine curiosity for whatever might come, then they lean in. Almost always they lean in. Your child leans in because the design was always there waiting to be trusted. Waiting to be nourished. So where do I want you to end up after this episode? Not with guilt, not with a checklist, not with a list of things that you might be doing wrong, but with a slightly different way of seeing the ordinary moments of your day. The pause before you hand over the cup, the question you leave open at the dinner table, the walk where you put the phone in your pocket and just narrate what you see. A puppy dog, a cloud, a crack in the sidewalk and you wait to see what your child notices. Also, how about the quiet moment folding laundry when you glance over. Smile, say something about nothing in particular, and wait to see what comes back. Those moments are not small. They are in fact, everything. I know this because of Marcus. The last time I saw him, he was three and a half, and he walked onto a playground, spotted another little boy near the swings, and said, without hesitation, without a nudge, without a shovel placed in his hand, Hey, you wanna race? That is not a speech therapy outcome. That is a child who finally knew in his bones that his voice was worth using. You are building that knowledge in your child right now. In the pause, in the question, the open-ended question. In the 10,000 unremarkable Tuesday moments that don't feel like anything but are in fact, everything, language doesn't grow from pressure, it grows from connection, and you showing up, slowing down, making room, you are the most powerful language, quote unquote, intervention your child will ever have. So I want to share this. If anything in today's episode, stirred something in you. If you found yourself nodding or pausing or thinking, wait, is that what's happening with us? I want you to know there's a simple next step. I offer free 20 minute discovery calls, just the two of us where we can talk about what you're seeing at home, what's confusing you, what you can't quite put your finger on, no pressure, no agenda, just some clarity. and after that conversation, if it feels like the right time to work together more closely, I'll tell you about my coaching program and we'll decide together if it's good fit. And if it's not, you'll still walk away knowing more than you did before the call. The link is down in the show notes. Check it out. I love to hear from you. Thanks again for spending time with me. God bless and I look forward to the next talking toddlers.