Creative Speech Therapy Methods with The Singing SLP

In this episode, we learn about speech therapy methods with speech-language pathologist Kevin Simmons, the Singing SLP.

Specializing in working with children with disabilities, Kevin shares his unique approach that combines play-based therapy, music therapy, and interactive techniques to help children have a great speech therapy experience.

We talk about:

• Play-Based Speech Therapy: He shares about how incorporating games, toys, and imaginative play can engage children with speech delays, making therapy fun and effective.
• Music as a Therapy Tool: He talks about how rhythm, singing, and musical instruments can stimulate speech and language development, particularly in children with autism and other developmental disabilities.
• Sensory Haircuts:  He shares about why he gives some of his clients haircuts and gives some tips for parents if their child has a difficult time in the barber chair.

Whether you're a parent, caregiver, speech therapist, or educator, this episode is packed with practical advice to support children with disabilities on their communication journey.

Follow Kevin on Instagram @singingslp

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Transcript

Rhandyl: Hey y'all, we're back with Raising Disabled this week, and we were going to catch you guys up on how our last few weeks have been. So we have not done a lot, to be honest, , the last few weeks. It's, we've done a lot, don't get me wrong, but like nothing that's, yeah, out of the ordinary, I should say.

What about you guys? 

Deonna: We didn't do a whole lot of crazy stuff. It was chill, but those are sometimes the best. I mean, You're not going to go do a bunch of stuff. . We had told my son that we were going to take him to at least one high school football game this uh, I don't know how people go every Friday.

I'm like, Oh my gosh, some people do this. And that's how I grew up. I was at every Friday night football game. Like my son can't even relate to that. Like I'm like, I was there every single Friday for like 18 years. He's like, what? We went and so that was cool. Me and my husband and Cole went and Allie stayed home with her little nursey friends, but it was good.

Like just to get to go out with him by himself. There's all this stuff about how the non disabled kids, like the forgotten child. And I, yeah, I don't really like to say that because obviously we haven't forgotten Cole, but , we just don't get some of that time alone or whatever.

Yeah, so for sure we watched and it was so funny because we left like after the third quarter because we wanted to go get some Brahms ice cream and apparently it was like this really close epic amazing ending and they were like oops oh well whatever but we got ice cream which is more important than that so 

Rhandyl: that's funny.

Deonna: It's just been football, like Cole's playing and so those, I'm sad that's coming to an end. He has one more game this next week and then, maybe he'll make the basketball team but. 

Rhandyl: I can't even believe it's it's not even cold here. I can't even believe it's almost the end of football season. How is that even happen? 

Deonna: I know, for them it is. It's been super fun, but I am glad it's coming to an end because when I'm sure it's yeah, it's like it takes up your life. But the thing is Allie Can't be out in extremely cold temperatures.

And so I'm glad that now, we don't have to worry about bundling her up because spinal cord injuries don't have good luck with weather and heat and cold and stuff like that. So, No, 

but the big thing with us is Allie got her wheelchair completely revamped. We didn't realize how Much. She had outgrown it. It was crazy. And so that was good. That's like an all day long process. It's crazy. I don't know if it's like the custom molding and custom molding and new little armrests that are squishy and have three different ways they can pivot and go back and forth and all this, like new headrest, new foot rest things.

And it's nice too, because. Her legs shake a lot, like she has clonus, which is just these crazy spasms where her legs will shoot up in the air, which will then cause her head to fly forward, like it's, it looks like she's having something bad happen, like a seizure when these happen. But her little footrests have little buckles, so you can buckle her feet down. And so Oh, good. She was self conscious of that, like, when she would shake. And she was always worried about shaking in front of people and stuff. So, , That'll be nice. 

Rhandyl: That is helpful. , Remi doesn't have any of the custom molding seating, but I've worked with some. In my job. And so it's really cool , how that works and how it all comes together. And it's perfectly fit for her body. And that's exciting. 

Deonna: Kind of it's like a back brace in a way because she does have scoliosis, it'll help prevent it getting worse , as fast.

But, and I think for kids who shift their weight a lot on their own or moving, it wouldn't be a probably a great idea, but yeah, for kids who do not move, at all. It's really nice and it prevents pressure wounds. It's just the way they do it is so weird. I should have taken a video, but we also, my parents were here helping me out a little bit while my husband was gone for work and stuff.

And we went to go see the wild robot and that movie was so good. 

Rhandyl: I've heard it is. We haven't seen it yet. 

Deonna: Oh my gosh. It is so funny. Funny, like it has really dark sense of humor, which I feel like most parents of disabled kids love but it has all these funny jokes about death and things, which sounds really morbid, but , it brings up these thoughts of life and death and my kids were cracking up, but it also had emotional parts too. I, it was one of my favorite movies I've seen in such a long time. If you get a chance to go see it in theaters, it's so pretty and just, oh my goodness. So yeah, we went and saw it this past week. And then. We bought it on Amazon Prime already and already watched it again. So we love it. It's so good. 

Rhandyl: Yeah, we'll have to do that. My husband and I went and saw Beetlejuice. 

Oh, yeah. Together. Yeah. I randomly had some cancellations one afternoon and he had just gotten off work and I was like, Hey, do you want to go watch Beetlejuice?

And so we went to the Alamo and watched it and it was fun. 

Deonna: That is so funny. I remember that back from the nineties. 

Rhandyl: It was cute. It was good. So really the biggest things Remi's really been improving a lot in her therapies lately I was trying to think before we recorded I was like, we haven't done a lot But yeah, I haven't talked a lot about how she's progressed lately in all of her therapies So for example in speech she's using her AAC device, and she uses LAMP for those that are familiar. , 

Deonna: is that just like a software that goes with it? 

Rhandyl: It is. It's yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's a software. It's very complicated, and I don't know how to explain it very well, but it's like a muscle memory. If you're using LAMP, that program. You'll use it for life. And if you use another program, typically that's how it works because you add on to the language and it's say for example, a keyboard, when we type, most of us don't have to look at our keyboard because it's muscle memory. We know where the letters are. Same thing with her device. It's similar to that, but it's way more in depth than a keyboard, but yeah. 

 So some of her goals have been in speech is to use Two word utterances is what speech therapists call it, which is fitting for our episode. that's coming up. So basically, she can say one word, she'll go in and push and what movies she has 20 plus movies on her device that she can go and choose from and that's like what her favorite thing to do, but We're trying to get her to say watch Mario watch, whatever Oh, just not just yeah and so or just two word utterances basically, so then so the other day in speech at school the speech therapist was telling her bye and She went in her device independently all by herself said, come play. She was like, I'll see you later. And then she was like, come play. And I was like, Oh my God. And her nurse took a screenshot of it and sent it to me. And I was like, Oh, I'm so proud.

And then yeah. And then for example, the other night. She doesn't have any Halloween movies on her device. I mean it's a whole process for me. Like I have to manually put these movies in, put pictures in, it's a whole thing. I was wondering if it's like a pain. I don't usually, I have the main favorites, Disney favorites on there. She's been obsessed with Mario lately. She goes through this and she's obsessed with one movie at a time but she has this routine after she eats dinner, she gets to pick a movie. The past few weeks I'm like, okay, we're, we've watched Mario during trach care. So we're going to put on a Halloween movie. And so the other night I put on, the nightmare before Christmas and she crawled over to her device and put in no, finished. And, so I was like, okay, I heard you. But you're not going to watch Mario again, so you can pick another movie on your device. And , she did. 

But then the other day, the funniest thing, she, or, for me, I was like, aww. So a few weekends ago, we were calling it Football Saturday. There was like tons of awesome, College football games on and yeah, we have a game room in our shop that has two TVs, a pool table.

And we'd been talking for the last few days leading up to that, that we were going to go out and have Saturday out in the shop and watch football. And Remi crazy enough. She absolutely loves football. She has loved football since she was little. She will Sit there and watch an entire game of football. She loves to watch it and she even claps appropriately. We're like, man, this is crazy. We even joke around. Cole and I'll joke around. That is crazy. We're going to start making bets whenever she's older and she can tell us like who to bet on or like fantasy team. Like she's obsessed. It's so cute. 

 . So that morning Cole and I were cleaning out and just sweeping up the room out there just cause it's a shop, but it's climate controlled and everything. So we were cleaning it up. Yeah. And so she was going to be out there. The kids were going to be out there crawling around and stuff. And I was like, We're getting this room cleaned up and then we'll, we're going to go out there and then I back and then the nurse sent me a picture of what she put on her device when I walked out of the door and she went in independently and went to play mom. She went in and it takes like Multiple buttons to get to those. So I immediately, when I got the text, I ran in there and I was like, okay, like it's clean enough. You can come out here. I was like, 

Deonna: that's so cool. That she was saying, like she wanted to be with you. That's so cool. 

Rhandyl: It made my heart so happy!

 But the one I didn't get a picture of is. Was the funniest one of all. I feel like her PT, her name is Whitney. She's like Remi's best friend. Oh yeah, she's funny. Remi got really mad at her during a visit the other day. She did not want to do what she was having her do. She was throwing herself around. And , I went and grabbed her device and I told her, You need to tell us why you're upset. She went in there and she just started you could tell she was so mad. She was just pushing buttons and she, I thought, I was like, who knows what she's going to say. Cause she's out of control, like trying to tell us something. And she she went in and she said, finished Whitney.

Bite and I'm like Remi. Yeah, like you can't bite Whitney and then she just died laughing. I'm like, you're such a brat But anyway, she was doing this stuff independently and it's so exciting and I love it so much 

Deonna: That's a game changer though, because it really is Continues happening. 

Rhandyl: I know I'm so excited about it 

Deonna: Yeah, it'll make her life and y'all's life so much better and easier. That's so exciting. 

Rhandyl: Yeah. And OT, she started zipping her own jackets up. I'm like, what? And then, , and her little Billy shoes, she'll try to zip those. And she's also learning to bathe herself, but it's funny because we have these, little shower markers and we got them for her to obviously draw on the bathtub, but she likes to draw on herself, which in turn, so she's colors all over her body. And then we're like, oh my gosh, then we give her the wash rag and we're like, okay, clean it all off. So it's actually it works. It helps her. Yeah. 

Deonna: It's probably hard for kids to like have a concept like I'm dirty. If you see that you're dirty, you're like, oh, I have to get that off of my skin. Exactly. Yeah. That's smart. 

Rhandyl: So, It's fun, but something that happened actually this evening, it made my mom a heart really happy and I had to share, both Remi and Barrett were eating dinner and Barrett asked me, Mommy, can I go ride my Jeep after supper? And I said, sure. And so he got this little Jeep for his birthday. And he said, Sissy, do you want to go ride the jeep with me? When you're done? Oh my gosh. And then Remi started clapping. It was the sweetest thing. I'm melting. I'm just like in a puddle of mush. I'm like, okay, you guys hurry up and eat dinner so we can go ride the jeep.

And it was such a sweet moment. I got a video and her arm was around him and it was all sweet. And then not even me. Three minutes later, she's yanking his hair. He's crying. They're both in trouble. And it's over. But it was such a sweet beginning. 

Deonna: Just forget about that part. He wanted to include her in it.

Rhandyl: No, it was, no, and he, because he knows she loves it and she rides with him a lot in it. And it was so sweet. He initiated the conversation. It was so sweet. Oh my gosh. I'm like starting to see these little brother, big brother moments and it just melts me. 

Deonna: I know. It's like he's little brother, but he's going to be big brother in a lot of ways. He's going to have a big brother role. Yeah. Yeah. That is exciting. It sounds like she's doing really good. Like sometimes it's hard. They plateau out on something and you're like, oh man, are they going to improve? But it sounds like she's really , breaking through. 

Rhandyl: I know. I don't usually like. This is so weird, but I feel it's like taboo to brag about her progress because anytime I do, it's probably just me being superstitious, but then when I do, it's oh, we're going to take a few steps back, so I hope that's not the case, but that's, so anyway, but yeah, I'm just proud of her and. I just had to brag on her. I don't know how good she's doing. That's so cool. 

Deonna: I know. We're so superstitious. That's like a whole episode in itself. I would love to do an episode on what we do or say that's superstitious because I'm sure some parents do some crazy stuff. Yeah. 

Rhandyl: That would be fun. We should totally do that.

Deonna: Yeah. That'd be a fun one. But that sounds like she's doing really good. 

That's just what we've been up to in the last couple of weeks. We like to give you guys a little insight so you can just know what we're doing on a day to day basis and kind of relate to us a little bit and see where we're coming from when we talk about these subjects with our guests or by ourselves.

We have a really fun episode this week. If you want to learn a little bit about what speech therapy is like and some of the cool new things that people are doing, we had a great conversation with Kevin and so we will see you guys there. 

Rhandyl: My daughter Remi has had the same zing stander for five years. These standers are made with kids in mind and are made to grow with them. The Zing line of standing products provide up to 30 degrees of independent leg abduction to promote hip socket development.

 Zing standers feature anatomically correct hip abduction pivot points located directly behind and in line with the pelvis. Proper offset on the leg supports allows for the entire leg to abduct without the need to adjust the knee or the foot supports, use wedges or any other position modifications.

You can learn more at zingstanders. com 

Deonna: Hey y'all, welcome to Raising Disabled. So today we are super, super excited. We have Kevin Simmons on and , I recently saw a couple of videos from him on Instagram. He's a speech language pathologist and I just started seeing like more and more videos and all these other moms were sharing his videos and I'm like, wait, who is this guy?

And so I go follow him and I'm just Cracking up every day. Like, I don't know, you shouldn't be laughing at speech language on Instagram, but it's just so funny. The way he talks with his patients and integrate so many fun. In my opinion, just so many fun like components into therapy because we all do these therapies like physical therapy and O.

T. and speech and sometimes they just become so like boring and predictable and so it's so fun when I see your videos and these crazy things you're doing with these kids to make them come out of their shell and do what you are trying to teach them and so we're super excited for you to be here so can you just tell us a little bit about yourself before we get going?

Kevin: Thank you for the introduction. For everyone, my name is Kevin Simmons, AKA The Singing SLP. I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. And ironically enough, I didn't know anything about speech until the age of 22, 23, when I graduated undergrad was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do, took five years, like the typical college student, and long story short, I shadowed a speech therapist and fell in love with it.

And I remember that day I immediately applied to schools that offered a leveling program I could take the pre reqs and then get admitted into their grad program. So yeah, skip ahead. And now I'm a speech therapist. I work in private practice and I do sensory haircuts. I know we'll talk about that, but yeah, it's been a fun ride to just learn and grow with these kids.

It's my passion. 

Deonna: That's so cool. What did you get your undergrad in? 

Kevin: Exercise science and psychology. 

Deonna: Oh, so you really like turned in a totally different direction. 

Rhandyl: I have an exercise sports science bachelor's degree as well. And then I had a few years and then. Decided, okay, I want to go back to school and do physical therapy. Yeah, that's, that is a big turn though. 

Kevin: Yeah. Biomechanics. I mean, I love the human body, so I think that's another reason to why I talk about playing detective with a lot of language components oral motor just like all of that good, fun stuff. And understanding where the problem is coming from and then what's a fun way. To target it instead of just like doing cards like . Oh yeah. You know what I mean? So I love the human body. I think it's so interesting to blend. Yeah, it definitely is. 

Rhandyl: It is. Okay, Kevin. So I know you mentioned you shadowed a speech language pathologist, and then you immediately fell in love, but is there anything else that inspired you to become an SLP? Yeah. 

Kevin: Yeah. In that story, when I was shadowing the SLP I had actually shadowed an occupational therapist talked with the physical therapist, my sister's a physical therapist, so I had that health background And it wasn't that I was not driven towards them. It just wasn't clicking. And then also too, I knew I had to go back to school and retake some classes. And one, I didn't have the money and two, I wanted another year to do that. 

Yeah, 

I was on my last go round. I was shadowing the SLP. And there is this girl, she was an autistic child and about 10 years old working on pragmatics conversation. And the speech therapist was like, Hey, Kevin this girl has, a pretty traumatic past. Like she's probably not going to talk to you, just stay in your corner and I'll write notes, whatever. And the session gets close to the end and the speech therapist is like, Hey, so and so, you know that there's someone else in this room. Do you want to say hi? Do you want to say anything? 

And she's like facing forward, not looking at me and she's just like, hi. And I was like, all right, all right. I think that's cool. Yeah. And so I saw she was wearing a Marvel shirt and I love superheroes. I love Marvel. I just exclaimed, I was like, Oh my gosh, I love your shirt. And you can see her open up her chest. Bronze up and she's like, yeah, yeah. And I ask her about the latest movie and then finally she starts to like, turn my direction. And we just have a five minute conversation. 

Deonna: Oh my, that's gosh. 

Kevin: And so the session ends, the speech therapist takes her back out to her mom and it had taken about like 10 minutes. So it was a long time just to talk to the mom. She comes back and she's like, Kevin, I am so sorry that took forever, but I was talking with the mom and she just broke down in tears because that was the first time she was ever talking to a guy in three years because she just had that traumatic past and so it was one of those clarity moments where. I was like, oh my gosh, I just made a impact. She made an impact in my life. 

Deonna: Oh, for sure. 

Kevin: Yeah, it was so clear. And that was the decision for me

Rhandyl: that's so cool. 

Deonna: . I love that.

Rhandyl: So how long have you been an SLP?

Kevin: Two years. So clinical fellowship for a year. And I've been practicing with my own license, no supervision for a year. 

Deonna: So tell us about what made you want to start sharing all of your stuff on Instagram and sharing these live therapy sessions. Like I, the first video I think I saw of you is where you were saying, I'm the black speech therapist and it was just cracking me up. Like everything about that video, I was like, Oh my gosh, that's so cool. Probably so true. 

And I think that's the first video I saw from you, but what made you, decide you want to start doing this? Because a lot of people I've not seen doing something like this, , and then also like, do you have to just ask the parents, like how does that work? Cause of privacy and all this stuff, how's that work? 

Kevin: So I'll answer that question first. With my vidoes. I have two protections, one, my own under The Singing SLP LLC. I've written a waiver. And then also for like speech videos and parents before the haircut, they signed the waiver indicating consent for me to post pictures of the hair if they don't consent. And then also the place that I work at right now, they have a waiver as well. And we can see, okay, you consent. Three forms. And then I verbally asked him like, Hey, is it okay? I'm going to post this video. 

And the cool thing about it. I do get a lot of questions about wait, how do you do that? , is that appropriate? The cool thing about it. A hundred percent of the time the parents will be like, Oh my gosh. Kevin jr. Loved watching himself, and he just watched it over and over again. Yeah, it's a learning experience and to the kids I think have more confidence to Just verbalize if it's following directions But they love watching themselves. Like I have kids just look in the mirror just checking themselves out. Oh, yeah We get it. We get it. You're cute. 

Deonna: That's so funny. Yeah. It made me wonder if sometimes if the kid knows they're being filmed, if it makes them feel like, Oh, I want to perform today. I want to do well because I'm getting filmed if it like makes them do better in speech or not. I didn't know if that would impact that, but why did you decide to start sharing these things?

Kevin: So when I first started the page, it was about a year and a half ago. Just out of grad school, I knew I wanted to provide resources for three different arenas, one parents, two grad school students and then three speech therapists, and there's really no like main focus. I want all the arenas to be. Honed in on like, humor for parents, even looking at grad school advice, like that's great. I just want to provide that for them. 

So when I had finished up the first couple of posts, I was like, man, this is so bland. I'm just going on camera and my other friends, my other speech therapists, like they're so good with Canva. And they'll just like create a post and I'm like, Oh, that looks so good. But that's not my expertise. I've always wanted to be a YouTuber. I just love entertaining people. There was one point, I think I was two months in, I was like I just need to film myself. , I love making videos. Let me just film myself. I don't know what to look like. 

 And yeah I saw a lot of traction with grad school students saying Oh man, I appreciate I'll do like grad school videos on where to attend cause. I know that. I had these same questions. I know that I can help the next grad school student, have their license. 

And then lastly, the biggest piece for me is when I go on social media, when I go just even where I live in Gainesville, Georgia, , there aren't a lot of people that look like me. And one of my biggest reasons I created the platform is to show the diversity and to help with recruitment because I had a black pediatrician. And I honestly believe he changed my trajectory to go into healthcare. I , every time I would go to the doctor. We never want to go to the doctor. We don't want to go to the dentist. It's not fun. It's like someone's in your face, but I just feel comfortable. I was like, Oh my gosh, this guy gets me. He understands the black experience, like specific things. And I just thought okay, there is another black person out there. That doesn't know about speech therapy. I talked about how it took me 20 years to learn about speech. There's someone else out there that doesn't even have the resources I have. And, I lived in a fluent. community. So to think of that, , that's what drives me to continue to make videos, to continue to help with recruitment. Cause yeah, our field is it's what, 90 percent white females. 

Deonna: Oh, yeah. I was gonna say, I've never even heard of a guy that's a speech. Until, it was just all women here. That's like it. And there are definitely all white too, oh man. That's cool that you're thinking of all different groups and reasons because then your reach and your impact is. Bigger, but I know like I was looking at who else following you that Follows us as well.

And it's just all moms and it's mostly and it's a lot of moms that I know they're Them personally and their kid is Non verbal or something like that. So they all knew about you long before we did since they've all been following you for a while 

Rhandyl: Yeah, it's funny Before we even discovered you, , on Instagram, my husband showed me a video, because he's always on YouTube, and he had shown me a video of you and the haircuts and stuff, and I was like, oh my gosh, that's awesome, and Then of course we discovered it on Instagram people were sharing and I was like, oh my gosh. Yeah, this is the guy That my husband had showed me it's been over a year ago probably but okay, so I know you mentioned Earlier that you work in an outpatient setting. Is that the setting that you've worked at since you Graduated 

Kevin: Yes, The only time I was in outpatient rehab was in Virginia back when I was in grad school, so we Rotations and I loved it. I loved working with adults But my second rotation was at a private practice and yeah, it just solidified. Why I wanted to work with kids and yeah place. I'm at Actually is my second job out of grad school. Yeah. Okay, 

Deonna: so you work exclusively with kids

Kevin: Yes, the oldest I have is a 21 year old and we're working on executive functions pragmatics 

Rhandyl: Oh, gotcha. Yeah, I was going to ask you, so I know most of your videos and things that I see, , the SLP world, the realm is so big for what you guys can do, communication, feeding, AAC, all the things, but for the most part, at least from what I can see on your socials is You mostly see kids for their communication skills, do you ever work with children with AAC I'm just curious about your typical caseload?

Kevin: Yeah I would say in given a percentage, it's like 33, 33, 33. 33 percent being language a lot of expressive language delays. The other 33 percent is articulation speech, sound disorders. And then the last third is I have some feeding. I blend that into feeding and then 

AAC actually is an interesting topic because I went into grad school. I love speech sound disorders. That's just my thing. And I remember the class I did well in the class, but all my friends. They were so good. They had a history of working with devices, maybe their sibling, the device, but it was just not my thing. Yeah, not because I didn't want to learn it. It was, it's application, right? Someone can do All the things on a whiteboard, but unless you're actually seeing it being used, like you, yourself are using it it can be a lot. It can be a lot. So I yeah, I really just like strayed away from it. In my first job, I would tell my boss Hey, give, AAC to the another person. Like I'll take language. Yeah. 

But ironically, it's funny how things work out. So now at this job I'm at I wouldn't say I'm the AAC go to guy, but I do love it. I love collaboration. I'm teaching the OTs how to program on the device. Some of the things that they're working on, yeah, and OT with feeding and conditions. So it's been a really good learning experience. And also too, having that foundation where it's I'm learning it, AAC reps will come out and I'll just be up front and say Hey, I need you to show me, because I don't know how to work LAMP. And so having that foundation, it allows me to be vulnerable to the parents and families and be like, Hey, we're going to learn this together. It really is a lot, but once you get into the routine of things and. Just showing where different pages are, now I have parents just blah, blah, blah, blah, so it's really cool.

Deonna: Oh, that's so cool. Have you guys seen the preview for that movie where the girl's using an AAC device? No. It's, It's coming out on Disney I can't remember what it's called, but I've seen all these people sharing it and I'm like, that's gonna be so emotional to so many parents but yeah, she's in middle school, it looks like. and she communicates exclusively through that in the movie.

And she's being in a mainstream classroom and everything. And I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to watch this. Like my kid's not even AAC, but. It is cool that she's the main character of the movie and so yeah, I'm excited about that to come out I think in this world, that's going to be a cool thing for it to come out, but I need to look up what it's called, 

so I love music. Like we're singing in our house 24 seven., my daughter who, doesn't go to speech, but , she went a year without speaking where she was just barely whispering cause she was trying to learn how to talk over her trach and just like all of that stuff. And her voice is all of a sudden.

Incredibly important to us because we lost it for so long and now it's back, but we're always like singing and I know how healing it is to have that in the house all the time. And I see that on your videos, you singing and you're a really good singer too, but like you singing and then your patient singing. But , what do you think about the power of music and play in a speech setting? Like you said, some speech just shows the cards or does the boring things. What do you think about those two things in your setting? 

Kevin: Yeah. I could talk about music all day, but so I actually created a PowerPoint. I had a couple of discussions about it. And if I can remember, so the music brain, our right hemisphere can activate, especially with traumatic brain injuries. We talk about . Aphasia, people's loss of words. And when that center has been depleted or is lacking our right hemisphere when music is played, those signals can be transferred over. And that's why you sometimes see what's called melodic intonation therapy. You may see that aphasic patient. Who talks like this, and it's really hard to get out, where they like, are singing, and , it's really cool, it's like they don't even have an injury. 

Rhandyl: Yes, I have seen that you bringing that up, I haven't thought about this in a long time, but I, when I was doing my clinical rotations, I did a rotation at TBI. They had inpatient TBI patients and the speech therapist would, it was really cool to see. They would struggle so much just to get a sentence out, but then as soon as they, Would start singing it or something. It was like you would have never known. It's that's so we're so cool How the brain works like that?

Kevin: Yeah so yeah, just I'm not gonna go down that rabbit hole, but The music brain it's incredible. But as it relates to speech and music I've just seen so many benefits when We talk about our kids attention span , joint attention is huge. Obviously we don't want to force eye contact. We talk about that, especially in the autistic community, old research was like, look at me, but even I don't want to stare at someone's eyes, me neither. Um, But just working on like joint attention, 

I'm telling you as soon as I play, I have this little ukulele. I just like strum it. Kids are like, what? So the power of music helps or supports joint intention. You're looking at one thing, your child is looking at one thing. I've seen when it comes with language, expressive language I always talk about even in my notes, I'm like therapist provided closed phrase prompts and what closed phrase prompts are they're familiar phrases That can be filled in. So if I was to tell you guys oh, McDonald had a farm EI. And then I would just stop it. You could fill in the rest. When it comes with music, we know our favorite lyrics. We know it by heart. But, a lot of speech therapists do, provide these phrases. And not only are you eliciting joint intention, but that music brain is activating and it's Oh, I've heard this song before. I've seen it time and time again, where the child may not say anything. I will , fill that word. I'll give them space, but if they're just looking at me, That's great. But then finally they'll say E-I-E-I-O so the, yeah, the music brain is really cool and impactful and play when it comes with joint attention following directions. , making a game out of Simon says yeah. Singing songs, but. 

That's why I tell families you do not have to have a great voice. You can make music talking about rhythm, where in our speech, we have rhythm, we have prosody, and with articulation, we don't want to have it choppy, right? We want to have fluid speech, so. You know, I'll sing, I'll provide the target when I talk about articulation, I'll provide the target as fire truck the child will say fire truck, then I'll be silly. All right, let's sing it. Let's do like an opera singer. The kids love it. They love it. And that's the biggest thing about speech. I don't want it to be, Oh, I'm going to speech therapy. I want this to be play. 

Deonna: I love that kids look forward to it and think it's fun. Yeah. 

Rhandyl: Yeah. I'm in that pediatric world and I just love. that you meet the patients where they are. And I think it's so important to get on their level and engage in play based therapy because, so my daughter Remi she's eight and she's had speech therapy her entire life. And out of all disciplines, speech has been our hardest when it comes to patient therapist relationship. Just meeting the kid where they are and especially at least for my child, I try to make sure and tell if it's like a new speech therapist. Okay. She's going to need something very motivating, like what her favorite things are and try to work. With that, and obviously that always seems to help, but now that she's really honed in on, she does the LAMP program with her AAC device. And we have finally in the last few years really got a good groove going. And it's just amazing to see the progress she's made now that we've found the right fit. And it is all play based and, it's not work. She used to be so bored and now she's vocalizing more, and it's funny when you said E I E I O because that's one thing that she says a lot. We'll sing it and she says she'll say E I and then we'll wait. And , that's her biggest thing. I always have to tell her speech therapists is her wait time. Like you have to wait her out because it's not only processing, but she's so stubborn. That I'm like, just wait her out, be more stubborn than her, which sometimes that means the whole session is literally, the majority of it is wait time, but she does sit and then it's, fun, 

but I just love the way that you have a natural ability to engage with these children and play and. You're just very inspirational, and I'm I'm just really impressed with you, I can't wait to see what else you do in your career, because you are, fairly newbie, and it's pretty awesome.

Deonna: I feel like play is so huge in all the therapies across the board. Like even just regular counseling therapy. Like one time my daughter went and I was like, how'd it go? And she's like, she didn't like. Do therapy with me today. I don't know why, like you said, she was going to talk to me about my feelings. We played instead. Then I find out later no, they had a full blown therapy session.

 I think she like spilled her guts about our whole entire life, but my daughter had no clue and she was so intimidated to go to this cause she didn't want to cry or, Talk about serious things, but yeah, the good therapists are good at using those techniques to, trick a kid into doing what they're supposed to be doing, like in a way.

Rhandyl: To transition, I was watching a lot of your early videos and it was geared toward graduate students that are in school. And is being like a clinical instructor something that you're interested in doing? Or do you have grad students that shadow you?

Kevin: Yeah. I've had a couple students. Come by the clinic and I can't be an instructor yet. I have to, I think Asha, our governing board requires two years post. 

Rhandyl: That's How it is here too, I think. Yeah. 

Kevin: And so like , that's after the clinical fellowship. Okay. So I still have another year. Gotcha. And then just taking continuing ed, . , I would love to. I think that's just so important to give back to our younger generation so that they know, we talked about it just recently. Our last conversation, just like how therapists are coming about in this field and speech, PT, OT, counseling, doesn't matter. , we were just driven by research and I think the power of social media that's what I love about social media. I learned a lot about play, sensory and I think I still would have been research based if not for social media and just like talking with other therapists like you all. Um, Would it had that Oh no, kid, you have to sit down. This is, 

Cause new grads were intimidated. We're like, Oh, parents want results. You know what I mean? They see their child playing with the therapist and . It seems like we're doing nothing. And not having that research to back it, it's intimidating. So it's no, let me just do what has been told. But that was my long segue to say, I really like the transition on how a lot of therapists are providing this education to parents. And yeah, honestly, I think I see faster development with play and, then just the let's sit down for a few minutes and then go home.

Rhandyl: I love it. 

Deonna: So I feel like a lot of the people that you work with are the kids. They may not even fully understand who you are and why you're doing this. I know this with a lot of my friends, kids, they don't know why this person's coming in, but they do know they love them. And if you build that friendship, it's I feel like speech is the most personal of all the therapy as far as Needing that relationship because some of these kids, like she was saying, are so stubborn, they're not going to talk to you unless they like you. And now want to talk to you. , like you can stretch a kid out all day long or something like that. But speaking to them, it's just very personal. So I do think that's good to have that relationship for sure. 

 We already talked a little tiny bit about this, but you said that you give sensory haircuts, which I knew what this was a little bit, but tell us about this because I don't think most speech. People are giving haircuts to their patients. So , tell us about that. 

Kevin: Yeah. I'll start at the very beginning. I used to get my haircut by my dad. And he just gave me the typical, just one guard all the way around. Whenever I asked for a style like in middle school, ask for a fade. He would just give me like a line and I'm like, these are crucial years, so 

Deonna: I have to look good. 

Kevin: So I was like, all right, you know what? Sports clips isn't cutting it. You try to learn how to cut my own hair. I've been cutting my own hair for, honestly, it seems like my whole life for 20 years.

And so go to grad school. Then during my first job I was a new grad. I was just trying to float by honestly. And I remember this day I had this parent that was in the session. I was parent coaching and she just says out loud, she's like, man, I need to get so and so a haircut. And I was like, Oh yeah. I think there's a couple of, spots around here. Yeah. Oh, it's going to be so hard. And I was like, Why? And I still at this point, I didn't know anything about sensory. Yeah. I, , was just a new grad that just was doing speech. I didn't even know that had blended into speech.

So I said, oh really? How long does it take? And she was like, it takes a whole family, four hours. And just because I was like, there's really a cool story. So I was like four hours and I was like, I cut my own hair. You want to try it out? And she was like, Kevin, I don't know if you want to go down that route. What's the worst that could happen? I had known This OT friend of mine for a couple of months and had talked to her. I was like, Hey, do your OT thing, like help regulate. And so she had done that and we get into the haircut. And this is what I love about the haircuts and in speech, it was trial and error. And I still trial and error. There's no known recipe. There's 

things that have worked but every child is different. We gotta figure out what works for them. We were trial and erroring and I was singing songs, we were taking breaks and lo and behold, the haircut took 45 minutes. 

Deonna: Oh my gosh, that's a big improvement.

Kevin: Huge. There were tears, but , it was something that was way better than she could have ever imagined. She told me, 

Deonna: Oh, I'm sure. 

Kevin: Yeah. After that moment it was word of mouth, I just clinic that I was doing haircuts, but it really didn't explode until a couple months later and had posted on social media, giving out business I could do home visits. I can do clinic visits or whatever. And yeah, again, I'm not an expert in it, but I have educated a lot of families that don't know about haircuts that are feeling overwhelmed that can't go to sports clips because the looks that people give them. And I, I want to continue to provide this. Resource and give these resources out on things that have worked. Cause just from that moment and from a ton of other moments where families are like, Oh my gosh, I didn't think that we could ever get, my child's haircut. Like I've had children's hair that haven't been cut for seven, eight years. I'm talking like down to their back. 

Rhandyl: No way. 

Kevin: Yeah, they just haven't been able to get it cut because they can't wash it. They think it's so scary. Sure. I've learned a lot through that sensory component on how it needs to be met. So I tell parents there's a lot of strategies, but one of the main ones is identifying what is going to. Overwhelm your child. If it's clippers and we have to use the clippers, it's short hair. All right. Let's look at investing in, I have these quiet clippers. I have scissors that are clippers. You just interchange the blade. So it's like a clipper system. Okay. They like scissors. Let's look at Sheer work and watering the hair Trial and error I've noticed kids don't like the cape on them.

Deonna: Oh, yeah 

Kevin: Can I do to prevent that? Wetting the hair before we cut the hair And when it falls, it's still going to be itchy, but it's not going to be as itchy as the hair that gets on them. 

Deonna: Oh yeah. 

Kevin: So yeah, just like music. I can talk about it forever, but 

Deonna: that is crazy. 

Rhandyl: I saw you had a weighted cape on a kid that was, that's cool. I didn't know they even made those. 

Kevin: Yeah. Again, power of social media guy reaches out to me. That's his business. And yeah, that's such a great, that input during the haircut. 

Deonna: I just never thought about it. I mean, I remember taking my son for the first time and he's just like a typical kid and I mean, he cried and hated it I just never thought about that being a big issue for so many kids. 

Rhandyl: Yeah. I was going to ask you if you went to their houses for these haircuts and yeah, that's cool that you do. We have this amazing friend that cuts my kid's hair and she has always came to our house for both my disabled daughter and my three year old son so just being in that Familiar environment is also helpful, but you mentioned the cape like my daughter hates The cape. She's, she doesn't like not having her hands, , to where she can see them. Um, But really she does wonderful with her haircuts. Usually we have her a little movie on her phone, we want her to look down, or wherever, she'll follow it around. She's gotten used to it. 

 , I think that's so Awesome. I know the families are just so thankful for you. I'm sure you get a lot, there's tears and lots of hugs afterwards. Cause I, It's just something that we all have to do is get our hair cut and you're making this awareness for these families we know so many Families with disabled kids know how traumatizing and they just don't do it because it's whatever. It's just hair there's more important things to worry about yeah, that's awesome though. 

Deonna: And it's good too, cause you see maybe other barbers will see what you and others are doing.

 Like in my son's barber, the music is cranked up to level 10, these things that autistic people do. Kids do not like super loud sounds and you can't wear headphones when you're getting your haircut, things like that. Like you just, I don't think people think about that.

 So I've seen you do a lot of these videos too, where you're using humor a lot. Like you use farting sounds all the time, which I showed my kids and they like died.

 They were like, who is this guy? What? It was so funny. But how do you view the humor side of things, like letting these kids open up a little bit? 

Kevin: I think, we talk about why I started the page. There's so many reasons, but another reason I love to entertain. But also I try to find humor even in the world we live in. , we've had some tragedies but , humor helps the world go round. Yeah. Um, And Jim Carrey is one of my favorite um, yeah, and I think I try to embody him and Robin Williams. Just 

Deonna: I could see that. Yeah. 

Kevin: They brought em Bring to this world. So when it comes to the kids, I, just like with music, I've noticed when we're having fun, when we're joking when I'm on the ground and I remembered my Thursday session, this kid he was all over the place. I love him. He's all over the place, but , I just could not get his attention. And he was carrying these bluey toys. And I just got on the ground and I was like, I tried it to pretend to be like bluey. I was just like, australian accent. Yeah. But we just had fun with it. So like just making people laugh and So in that experience, it probably feels at least for me, but the next speech therapist, like we're not getting anything done. Wasn't able to target any goals, but like for those five minutes, we got joint attention. That's honestly, sometimes insurance can go away. Like we don't have to target. every single goal. My main goal out of this and out of helping kids with haircuts is I just want them to be functional members in this society. This world can be a dark place. People can for sure look at children because they're screaming. And a hair salon, but it's that's a normal reaction. Like I, I don't want somebody to just come up on me. And so with blades, right. Right. so I want them to be functional. And I think humor is the best way to. Invoke that, yeah. My favorite 

Deonna: videos that you've done was where the kid sneezed right in your face. And then you just look at the camera like, are you serious? And I was like, dying laughing. 

Kevin: Yeah, no, the plan was to film I think we were working on. Articulation and that's one of my good friend's son who I work with and yeah, like he is so funny, but I'm like, brother, 

Deonna: why would you do this?

Kevin: Wow. Oh man. 

Deonna: It was pretty cute though. 

Kevin: Yeah. 

Rhandyl: It's funny you were talking about the fart noises. That's some of my daughter's speech goals right now, I don't know we would love for her to be able to go into her device and tell us when she needs to pee or poop. And so, her speech therapist at school has this toy that you push the button and the animal poops. Oh, yeah. And then they do all these funny fart, fart songs that she has to, obviously use her device and say it, and then she'll get to hear this funny fart. Fart song and she just dies laughing. I get videos from her nurses and she's just dying laughing But it's so motivational it's a kid like it's let think that's parts are funny. Everybody. Oh, yeah, it's so humor is definitely key and just improvising because they're kids, so you just gotta figure it out. 

Deonna: And it's good for the parents too, because if your child is having to go to speech, you've been through something that's difficult as a mom or dad.

And so even that is fun for the parents, if they're following you to just laugh about what situation we're in and that our kids are even having to go to speech in the first place, we all, I'm sure you've noticed this, but all of us parents have really dark sense of humors now because of the crazy things that have happened to us.

But yeah, sometimes I'll say something and I'm kidding and I'll laugh and everyone around me is like uncomfortable because they're like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe she just said that. Yeah, we definitely have a weird sense of humor now, but you have to laugh so you don't cry, right? 

Rhandyl: Okay. Kevin. To wrap it up, how have your disabled patients impacted your personal life? 

Kevin: , I think they've helped me see how humans are, like, like the foundation of being a human. And I think. Getting out of grad school, I, like any grad school student, I was focused on Hey, how am I going to pay my bills? How am I going to and not just say, give back to charity, but truly have that heart and be like, Oh, I want to do this. I don't care about the money. But I think I was so locked into having a job, making a home, like career things. Yeah. And just like checking off. And I think my patients have just taught me the value of life and Yeah, take away the goals, take away everything about speech therapy just , in that room, having a human connection I've just seen the joy, I've seen sadness and frustration of how, something small for me of Oh, you don't have your toy. You didn't bring your toy. A couple years back, I would have just been like, all right, get over it, but huge for them. That's their way of communication. That toy is their way of communicating. And so now just have compassion, compassion in the fact that kids schedules, your schedules, understanding and appreciating, , you changing and adjusting your schedule because you have kids, and just seeing that and being slow to anger, slow to, , Yeah. but, yeah. Just had church, so it's, 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Deonna: That's a good one, though. 

Kevin: Yeah, so I appreciate that question. And I think we can all, you as moms have probably seen it, too, where it's like, after a long day it's wow, I have these beautiful kids, yeah. As tough of a day as it can be, like, just to sit down on the couch and be like, ha.

Rhandyl: We made it through the day. 

Deonna: We did it. Yeah. That is my daily thought at night. Yeah. And 

then in the morning you're like, Oh my gosh, I have to do it again. It's bad. Thank you so much for talking to us. I learned a lot , like I said, I don't know as much about speech stuff as Randall, but I learned a lot and we just, we've wanted to talk to you for a So I'm glad we were able to do this because I do think you're a really great example to for guys to get into this profession. It's such a fun profession to get into. And so I'm glad you're being that example for people so that they can do it. Think of that as a career. 

Rhandyl: Yeah. I agree. And it's obviously your passion and your calling it's what you're supposed to do and I'm so happy that you have found this and that you are such a light in these children's lives and I can't wait to see what the rest of your career looks like , we appreciate you so much for coming on 

Kevin: we'll have to do it again. This is so fun. 

Deonna: Oh yeah, for sure. If you're willing to do it, we will. 

Kevin: Absolutely.

**Disclaimer

Before we go, I wanna remind our listeners that this podcast is for the purpose of education and entertainment only, and is not a replacement for seeing a doctor. We suggest you seek out the help of a trained professional for help with your child's specific situation.