Good Neighbor Podcast: Fort Collins
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Fort Collins. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Nick George helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around Fort Collins, Colorado.
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Good Neighbor Podcast: Fort Collins
E35: Harmonizing Speech and Music for Early Childhood Development
What happens when a speech language pathologist marries a music therapist? For Chris and Kathy Baker, it sparked the creation of VoxTalk—an innovative early childhood education company dedicated to language development for children from birth to three years old. Their journey began during the pandemic when they overheard each other's virtual therapy sessions and noticed something remarkable: the powerful intersection of speech therapy and music was creating breakthrough moments for young learners.
The Bakers bring both professional expertise and real-world parenting wisdom to their approach. As parents of three children under five, they intimately understand the challenges families face. Their online course and rhyming sign language books blend speech therapy principles with music's natural engagement properties. "Music is very patterned, especially nursery rhymes," Kathy explains. "There's a lot of predictability there. For an early talker that is really powerful because not only are they anticipating the pattern, but it's also very motivating." This unique methodology addresses common parental concerns—no, teaching sign language won't delay verbal speech, and you don't need a Broadway-worthy voice to use music effectively with your child.
VoxTalk's mission extends beyond simply teaching children to communicate. The Bakers are reclaiming childhood development from digital distractions, empowering parents to become their children's most influential teachers. "In a world where we have screens and all this digital stuff," Chris notes, "take back that control and say, 'I'm going to be the responsible one to help my child grow.'" Whether you have concerns about your child's speech development or simply want to enhance your communication toolkit, VoxTalk offers accessible, evidence-based approaches that create lasting connections between parents and children. Ready to harmonize your approach to early childhood language? Visit www.vox-talk.com or follow @voxtalk on Instagram to discover how music and speech can transform your child's developmental journey.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Nick George.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Are you in need of an online education for early child development? One might be closer than you think. Today, I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbors Chris Baker and Kathy Baker, his wife with VoxTalk. Chris, kathy, how's it going? It's going well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks for having us.
Speaker 4:Thank you for having us Good Be here.
Speaker 2:We're excited to learn all about you and your business. Tell us about your organization organization.
Speaker 3:So VoxTalk is an early childhood education company that provides education and support to families with young kids. Our main focus is on early language development and just getting kids talking. We offer an online course for parents to help their child with their communication development, as well as two rhyming sign language books.
Speaker 4:And the nice thing about VoxTalk is that we're blending two things together. We're blending speech and language development, and we're also blending music therapy and how music can be used as a extremely beneficial tool for language development.
Speaker 2:How did you get into this business?
Speaker 3:Well, chris is a speech language pathologist and I am a music therapist, and so during COVID, we obviously were doing sessions from home, and so naturally, you know, you sort of heard bits and pieces of each other's sessions, and so of course, I was singing in all of my sessions and Chris, you know, after a couple of weeks you kind of get, you have to start thinking creatively, as we all did right during that time, and so I noticed that he started to sing during his sessions.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I started to incorporate more music into my sessions to keep the kids really engaged and, as Catherine will tell you, I'm not known for my singing voice, but it wasn't about my voice that was so effective. It was more so the music and keeping them engaged and attentive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so one of the things we know just about music in general, elements of music, things like rhythm and different speeds of music, different types of things like that are really engaging for all different areas of our brain, not only language development, but also memory and emotion and movement. And so on the therapeutic side, music therapists use music really as our tool to reach a certain outcome. So when you take that within the early childhood realm, specifically in language development, it's very powerful because music is very patterned, especially nursery rhymes and such. There's a lot of predictability there. So for an early talker that is really powerful because not only are they, they are anticipating the pattern, but then it's also very motivating and very engaging to them, and anyone that's worked with kids knows that motivation is step one.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's beautiful. What are some myths or misconceptions in your industry?
Speaker 4:Well, from the speech therapy and speech language pathology side, I get the question a lot of. Well, if I teach my child sign language, will they just use that and not talk? And the quick answer is no. And the reason why is because you're also using verbal words while you're teaching them sign language and the primary reason and the primary mode of communication within our society is verbal. So they're gonna be hearing words like more and please and eat all the time. So we're using the sign saying the word at the same time and eventually they look at mom and dad and say they're not signing this, they're saying this, and it's just gonna be easier for me to do that once I'm ready.
Speaker 3:And another one, I think more so on the music therapy-based side, or what we even hear from parents within this course, is what if I'm not good at singing? I'm not a very good singer. You know, I hear that I'm not a very good singer and it doesn't matter, because you are still able to use the pattern, use the tool, and the bigger piece is there's also that connection with your child, so you and your child are engaging in this play that is different than really anything else, and so you don't need to have, you know, the world's best singing voice in order for this to be highly, highly effective with language development. So I'll speak that firsthand with Chris's singing voice, but he does just fine.
Speaker 4:I think the first time she heard me singing, she said Chris, you changed three different keys. You went into three different keys during that song.
Speaker 2:I'm like well, I've learned a lot since then. Yeah, the shower fixes that, yeah for sure who are your target customers if you didn't already answer that question, and how are you attracting them now?
Speaker 3:Sure. So our target customers are parents with kids ages birth to three, and perhaps these parents have either a concern for their child's language development or just really want to learn more on how to support their child's communication language.
Speaker 4:And it can also go so. Primarily it's birth to three, early intervention, but it can go higher than that, just depending on the developmental level of that child.
Speaker 3:So and so for now, you know we are a pretty new business in terms of how long we have put this together. We have our individual practices that we do on the daily. So currently we have a social media presence and are working on a couple other projects to really get the word out more. We're doing some local outreach as well here in Fort Collins preschool, some speaking engagements, different community events to get the word out.
Speaker 4:Yeah, preschools, daycares, social media.
Speaker 2:Have you guys ever thought about doing your own podcast?
Speaker 3:it's actually in the works. So that was the one, uh one thing we've recently done some um research on, because, gosh, we could talk for hours, truly, um, about just these different uh kind of tidbits and tricks that we've learned along the way.
Speaker 2:It sounds like it Outside of work. What do you guys do for fun?
Speaker 4:So as a family, so we have three kids, three young kids, three under five, and so we're pretty busy ourselves. So we try and get them out and be active. So we go to parks, we like to go on walks when the weather's nice. Sometimes, when it's not nice, kids are like let's go jump in the rain or in the puddles.
Speaker 4:So, so fun. We like to go out to breweries. We are living in Colorado, so lots of those out here. The kids run around and we also really enjoy spending a lot of time at the family cabin, which is about a few hours south of here.
Speaker 3:So, and then, yeah, go ahead, no, go ahead. Oh, just saying that Chris and I also do like a rec league softball and golf from time to time. If we're able to do it together, great, but usually just him. And then also we used to ski a ton. So once our kids get a little bit older we'll get back to that.
Speaker 2:My kids enjoyed their first mud puddle experience during this weekend's rain. They're two and four, so that was a mess.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Been there. Yeah, we're right there with you.
Speaker 2:Let's switch gears. Can you describe a hardship or a life challenge that you overcame Either one of you can answer and how it made you stronger? What comes to mind?
Speaker 4:First thing that comes to mind for me is my ADHD, so I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was a young kid and definitely had to overcome a lot of obstacles in order to get to where I am now. But the nice thing about that is that it allowed me to focus intensely on my passion, which is helping working with kids, helping kids learn and develop and helping families become the best versions, the best unit they possibly can be, and so just gave me the opportunity to connect with these families on a deeper level and with the kids, and to really utilize my skill set to have to make a lot of progress with, with the families and with the kids. So k, Kathy.
Speaker 3:You know I would say many different ones, but the one that I think really sticks out specifically to this is you know I'm a mom of three and I have a brick and mortar therapy practice, so I run that business as well with a team. You know we have this business too, and so I would say a challenge in that is is figuring out how to be present and supportive of your family but then also pursue the business side. I love being an entrepreneur and so it's really made me stronger because it's brought a lot of self-reflection and really challenged a lot of beliefs I held about parenting and business and what was modeled to me and being able to challenge those beliefs and form kind of a whole new set for what works for us.
Speaker 2:Chris and Kathy, please tell our listeners one thing that they should definitely remember about VoxTalk.
Speaker 3:I think the first thing to remember is just that we're parents too. Like Chris mentioned, we have three young kids, and so we fully understand, really, the hard parts of parenting and for us, that is really a key motivator for us to take our skillset and be able to help parents be in charge of their child's development.
Speaker 4:Yeah, our main focus is just to help parents take charge of their child's development, because they can be their child's most powerful teacher. And so in a world where we have screens and all these digital stuff to take back that control and say you know what, I'm going to be the responsible one to help my child grow, one to help my child grow. So we're just empowering through education and through knowledge to build a stronger connection between parents and caregivers and their kids.
Speaker 2:How can our listeners living through screens learn more about VoxTalk?
Speaker 3:So you can go to our website. It is vox V O X dash talkcom Um, or on Instagram at Vox talk. I'll just one word Um. So those are the two best ways.
Speaker 2:Well, Chris and Kathy, I really appreciate you guys being on our show. We wish you and your business the best moving forward.
Speaker 3:Awesome. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.