Ask Us Anything: Listener Questions and Answers | Season 8 Episode 10

In this episode, the topics and questions came directly from the Unbabbled Listeners. Unbabbled hosts Stephanie and Meredith answer questions submitted through social media and email by listeners, Parish School families and even one former student. Topics covered include strategies for supporting children who struggle with homework, social events like birthday parties, why a child may be referred for a speech-language evaluation in elementary school, what’s the difference between speech and language and what is the average amount of time a child receives therapy before being dismissed. These questions were thoughtful and ones we hear often from parents we work directly with. We look forward to hearing more from you on what questions or topics you would like to hear more about. 

Stephanie is the co-host of The Parish School’s podcast, Unbabbled, which strives to help parents, caregivers, educators and therapists navigate the world of communication delays and learning differences. She earned a BA in Psychology from Butler University in Indianapolis in 2005 and a MS in Speech-Language and Hearing Sciences from Purdue University in 2008. Since joining The Parish School in 2008, Stephanie has worked as a Speech Language Pathologist in the Early Childhood, Primary and Elementary classes. She has also worked with individual clients at The Carruth Center, the school’s onsite pediatric therapy clinic.

Meredith is the Director of Special Projects/Assistant to the Head of School at The Parish School. She earned her BS in Communication Sciences and Disorders from the University of Texas in 2006, and her MS in Communication Disorders from Texas State University in 2008. Meredith came to The Parish School in 2008 and has worked as a SLP for the Early Childhood and Elementary classes, as well as for The Carruth Center, the school’s onsite pediatric therapy clinic. She also led groups for the school’s Social Learning program and attends Camp Social Superheroes every summer. Among the many hats she wears at The Parish School, Meredith is also the co-host of The Parish School’s podcast, Unbabbled, which strives to help parents, caregivers, educators and therapists navigate the world of communication delays and learning differences.

Transcript

Stephanie Landis:

Welcome to the last episode of Unbabbled for this season and we're doing something a little bit different this time. We ask our listeners to send us questions that they had and we're going to answer them. So no guest, just Meredith and I, but with your questions. So let's get it started. How are you today, Meredith?

Meredith Krimmel:

I'm good. How about you?

Stephanie Landis:

I'm doing well. I'm really excited to answer these questions. We have a lot of really thoughtful questions.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah, I'm excited too.

Stephanie Landis:

So the first one that we got is from a former student who wanted to remain anonymous, but they ask if the parish school would ever do a collaboration or do things or if Unbabbled would ever do a collaboration with some other specialty schools in the area such as Gateway. And I'm happy to say yes.

Meredith Krimmel:

We

Stephanie Landis:

Have. We have. We've had many people from other specialty schools within the Houston area on our podcast. We love collaborating. We love bringing them in and sharing their expertise as well as our own. And so yeah, if you are a listener and you have somebody specific in mind or an idea in mind, just like we ask for ideas for this episode, we would love to have those ideas for further episodes. So we are always open and happy to have collaborations with others.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah. Let us know your ideas. We'd love to expand to other collaborations if possible.

Stephanie Landis:

Our next question seems like it came from a parent and not a student because it's about homework.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah, I'm sure.

Stephanie Landis:

They said help. Homework can be so stressful. What tips do you have for helping with homework at home?

Meredith Krimmel:

Such a good question. And I'd have to put on my therapist's hat to answer this because as a parent, we also struggle in my home with homework. Sometimes kids are tired. They've had a long day of learning. So I get it. Homework is definitely a struggle.

Stephanie Landis:

Yeah. I actually am the reverse and I had to put on my therapist hat at home. So now I'm going to put on the parent hat of what I learned as a parent when I tried to balance both. And mine was just like what you said is that every time we'd come home before homework, I would schedule forced sensory break. And so instead of just jumping right into the work, it would be like go read, go outside, go color, go play with Play-Doh, go do something. My daughter's favorite thing was to swing. My son would just want to sit and decompress and read or color. So whatever it is for your child that helps them just decompress, I would say start with 10 or 15 minutes of that before jumping into any homework. Even if it's not the first thing you do when you come home from school, which for me it always was.

And then we could do homework or other things. Maybe you come straight from soccer practice or whatever after school activity, jumping straight into homework is like their brains are shifting focus too fast. They just need to decompress.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah, I think that's really good advice. I also think knowing your child, like you said, different activities for different children, but I have the child who needs to decompress. I have the child who can't jump right in. Even the 10 or 15 minutes is probably not enough. And then I have a child who needs to walk in the door and do the homework immediately because once they unplug and disconnect from school, it's done. There is no getting back to it. So I also think there's knowing your child. So what activities would be a good brain break, sensory regulation activity, decompression activity and also when you should do it. I think it really depends on the kid because we were trying the 15, 20 minutes that wasn't working. So we're like, maybe we need more time, 30 minutes, an hour. And then we found, you know what?

The shifting out of school back to school was too hard. So now we walk in, we sit down, we knock it out for one of my kids. So in my house, we're doing homework all night, just different times with different people.

Stephanie Landis:

Yay, homework.

Meredith Krimmel:

Having empathy, right? They've been working so hard all day. They have been at school all day, keeping it together, focused, learning, writing, things that might be hard for them, reading. So having a little empathy and knowing that it's okay if it feels hard and trying to meet them where they are.

Stephanie Landis:

I think that's fantastic. The other thing that really worked for us is getting out the timer or a clock and I would just color in and be like, all right, we're only going to do it for homework for this long. Even if you're not done, which usually it was long enough that they would be, but having a forced endpoint instead of like, because at first sometimes two problems could take us 20 minutes because we were just whining, complaining about it. But it was like just work really hard for these 15 minutes or this 20 minutes, whatever's age appropriate for your child. And then just starting and getting in the groove would help. And then I would just cut it off. Luckily, my children were in elementary during that, so they had really compassionate teachers that also were like, "Hey, if this is all that they can do, the homework's not fully graded.

It's just for practice, then just do what they can do. " So that would be my second tip is talking to the teacher and working with them on standard expectations. Is this something that they have to be doing? Do we really need to do all 25 math problems, especially if they are showing that they mastered it or can we really do 10 or 12 of the 25 and showing their mastering? What's the point of this? How long can we do? This is what we can handle as a family.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah, that's great advice to talk to the teacher because homework really, I think most teachers, most teachers feel that homework shouldn't be a huge battle every night. So I think a lot of teachers will work with you in a way that is supportive of the student and the child, but also reaching the goals or the things that they're working on with their homework. So I think definitely open communication with your school and your teacher is

Stephanie Landis:

Important. And if homework is so hard, not just because of the kids are done and they don't want to be doing it, but because they're struggling with the material, then the open communication with the teacher is important too. Because having been in the classroom, I wouldn't want somebody struggling at home because then they really don't understand the concept and there's no point of them going home to practice a concept that they don't understand. Then I'd rather step back and have them practice something that they do understand and work on that in the classroom.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah, a good point. Really the feedback to the teachers not just to help you with homework, but also to let the teacher know maybe the teacher doesn't know how much that concept is a struggle for that student, your child. And so the communication can help the teacher maybe scaffold and take it back and teach some of the basics behind the concept before sending the homework home.

Stephanie Landis:

Sounds good. And if anybody out there listening has other helpful tips for parents on homework, then let us know and we'll go ahead and share them.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah, maybe a snack before too is always a good ... A lot of times my kids come home so hungry. So snack's important for anything, really any activity once we get home. Got to eat first.

Stephanie Landis:

Eating first is pretty much my life motto.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah, no joke. I live my life that way too.

Stephanie Landis:

It's like a Snickers commercial in our house. Are they hungry? They got to be hungry. Just eat something.

Meredith Krimmel:

That'll

Stephanie Landis:

Make life better. It's

Meredith Krimmel:

Always a good first step.

Stephanie Landis:

All right. Our next question was asking how long kids are typically in therapy. I'm assuming for this they mean maybe speech and language therapy. They didn't specify. And so we can talk about speech and language therapy. We might not even be able to kind of dip a toe in what we've seen with OT or PT, but our main experiences with speech and language therapy. That's

Meredith Krimmel:

Such a tough question because every child is on their own journey and their language needs or their speech needs or they're finding gross motor needs. They're all very specific to the child. So I don't know, in my opinion, if I could say there's an average number of years or an average amount of time as a parent who has done a different type of therapy with my children, we've done occupational therapy, we've done play therapy, each child responded differently and their needs were different. So they were each in therapy for a different amount of time. I will say it's often not a quick fix. It's often not an in and out kind of activity, but I don't know, do you have a thoughts on an average time? My experience is it's really personal and everybody's journey is different.

Stephanie Landis:

Yeah, I think it really depends on what the child's needs are. My own child who went into speech therapy twice once it was when they were really little and did feeding therapy and we were there for maybe eight months. And then again with just some articulation stuff and that was like a year and a half, two years. But I've also worked with some children who have some pretty severe motor speech difficulties and they were in therapy for years or other children who had both speech difficulties and underlying language difficulties. And again, as language complexities increased when they got older, they still had some maintenance therapy that we're doing. And other children who I've worked with who just needed a little maybe like a year, two years to boost up their early language concepts and then they went on their way. So that is a really, really tough question.

Meredith Krimmel:

You kind of see it all. And I think you brought up a good point about doing speech therapy at different points in your child's life because sometimes you might quote unquote graduate or be dismissed from a therapy because you've met your goals and then things change and you might find yourself back in therapy. I also think that's really normal. Not everybody's journey takes them that way, but I do think there are a lot of families who have revisited a therapy that they did in the past because the need arose. Or even families who maybe took a break from therapy for a little bit and decided to go back when they felt that the child was needing that support again. So very personal journey and not one size fits all for sure.

Stephanie Landis:

This next question kind of ties into that because it's along the therapy route, but somebody asks what the difference between speech and language is

Meredith Krimmel:

Such a good question. How often do you get asked that stuff all the time? All

Stephanie Landis:

The time.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah, same.

Stephanie Landis:

I actually just

Meredith Krimmel:

Explained this to a friend the other day. Yes,

Stephanie Landis:

Especially when I talk to people and I'd be like, "Oh, I'm a speech and language pathologist." And they'd be like, "What do you do during the day?" And I'm like, "A lot of language therapy, a lot of pragmatic language." And they're like, "Oh, I thought it was just ours." And I was like, "No, that's speech." And I do mostly language.

Meredith Krimmel:

Right. Because most people's experience really is more with the articulation and the speech side of therapy, I would think, or most adults that I speak to, that's really where their connection is.

Stephanie Landis:

Yeah. So what's your go- to elevator pitch for what's the difference between speech and language?

Meredith Krimmel:

Okay. So speech is articulation or how the sounds are produced or put together for the vocalizations for communication and language is how we understand and use language to communicate with the others around us. So Rs, S's, THs, the things you hear that people often say they want to speech for us kids, that's speech, that's articulation and languages maybe difficulty with pronouns or conjugating verbs, past tense, irregular past tense and regular best, things like that. Pragmatic language, which you touched on, the understanding of how we use language to get our needs met or to communicate our ideas. What's your go- to answer?

Stephanie Landis:

That's pretty much it. The speech is the physical movement of making it and the motor planning and then the language side is everything that's you're understanding it and then re-expressing it without them even with the motor part, but the understanding the verbal expression. Yeah.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah. Reaching into the back of your mind to get the words that you need to put them in the order that you need to put them in to communicate the message you're trying to communicate. So that would be expressive language and your ability to understand how people or what people are saying to you and what they mean when they speak to you, that would be the receptive language. So different and not all kids need both speech and language therapy. Some kids just need speech, some just need language and some need both.

Stephanie Landis:

And research is finding more and more that some kids who started off needing speech end up also needing some language as they get older. Some of those kids that might've been graduated early and then they come back.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah, absolutely.

Stephanie Landis:

This one also then ties in as somebody's that ask more of a statement type question, but that they have a second grader who their again, speech is doing all right, but they were being referred to a speech and language evaluation because they were starting to have a lot of academic difficulties and they were wondering why that might not pop up until around second grade. Why hadn't any of this been happening before and why would they need a speech and language eval as a second grader? So my guess in this is that what the people are seeing is more the language side is a difficulty than the speech.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah,

Stephanie Landis:

Absolutely.

And it is also very typical in elementary years that in the early elementary and like kindergarten first and even some of second, their focus is really on teaching you how to read and then building some very basic language concepts. And then once you hit like end of second, third and above, the classroom stuff really starts to become more abstract, more higher vocabulary, more abstract language and you're also needing to read to learn. So if you're having some receptive language difficulties, which is what reading comprehension is, it's all receptive language or if you're struggling with writing, which is all expressive language, that'll start coming out on higher levels once you're hitting that second and third grade and you're having to write more to explain your thoughts instead of just verbalizing them or you're having to read entire paragraphs or pages or like a chapter in a book and having to comprehend it more than listening to your teacher tell the story and having the oral and receptive comprehension that way.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah. I think a lot of kids in kindergarten and first grade who have receptive language delays maybe would fly under the radar because they're using a lot of context clues of their peers in the classroom structure to follow directions and follow tasks or complete tasks. I would see how in second grade that might start to fall apart a litle bit as directions for activities and assignments get more complex and multi-step and the ability to use your neighbor or your peer in the context of the classroom starts to get harder. And as you mentioned, language gets more abstract. So if you actually maybe have some gaps in your vocabulary as well, you're trying to do a math problem or reading comprehension and you're not understanding all the words or following the directions of the activity, that becomes much more complicated in second grade and above like you mentioned.

I think a lot of kiddos are really good at masking at the younger levels. That just

Stephanie Landis:

Gets

Meredith Krimmel:

So much harder the older you get.

Stephanie Landis:

Yeah. And you mentioned being able to use context clues. I mean, so many early readers or even just their science materials have pictures in them that are giving them so many visual cues that they can use instead of just having to read entire text. If you're not really understanding the words that are showing the character's emotions, you can look at the picture and the picture is beautifully designed to give the setting and the character's emotions and all of the background information that you need instead of just relying on your receptive language

Meredith Krimmel:

And your vocabulary

And just the complexities of vocabulary. I think about second and third grade, the reading material changes using a lot more multiple meaning words and things that just are much more specific to the task, vocabulary specific to the tasks. So I would not be surprised if someone told me that their child was asked to get an evaluation in second grade. It wouldn't be one of those things where I'd be like, what? Nobody ever does that. That's actually not surprising. Also, if your child, maybe their language seems very typical, but maybe they struggle a little socially. I could see how that could start coming out academically in second and third grade. If you struggle with perspective taking, you're going to struggle with reading comprehension if you don't understand what character's intentions or motives or thoughts are or feelings are, it would be really hard to follow a passage and answer questions without those beautiful pictures.

So sometimes it's actually more of the social communication and the pragmatic language side that we can see that need really start showing in that second and third. I feel like third grade is really, it's a big jump. I feel like from second to third grade, that's where the language in math really increases and you're no longer learning to read. Now you're reading to learn. So you have to read a passage and actually retain and answer a question about it and really use that information to do something with it. So third grade is definitely end of second, third grade, I would definitely start seeing that happen.

Stephanie Landis:

I've had a few kids even really excel in reading because their decoding was so strong or they were hyperlexic when they were younger and then they even started hitting fourth and fifth grade reading comprehension stuff. And that's really when it just goes straight from regurgitating facts that you might have read in a paragraph to being like, "What was this character's intention? Why would they do this? How was this character feeling?" Give words to describe their character. "What will this character do next? "And really leads into, as you were saying, that social pragmatic side of it is that we're answering whole questions about how would the story be different if the setting was different. So now you're even treating a setting as a character and how that might interact with people. And if your brain socially is thinking in one way instead of thinking as the setting as a character and having difficulty changing perspectives of seeing that or making predictions, which is an area of social pragmatic language, being able to predict the future inferencing, that really comes into play a lot in that fourth, fifth and that's all middle school and high school.

And it's

Meredith Krimmel:

The rest of the reason reading comprehension is. I mean, really.

I think about it if I were to sit down and try to read one of my husband's geology science papers, can I decode the words? I don't know, maybe, probably not all of them, but I could try really hard. Could I read it? Yes. Would I understand it minimally or none depending on what I'm reading? It's just I don't have the vocabulary, I don't have the understanding so it would be really hard. So you think about that with our kids, they've been getting by by just reading the words in front of them and now we're moving to the next step, which is understanding what you're reading and that can be a lot more challenging.

Stephanie Landis:

And with that same thing, it goes into if they're having any executive functioning difficulties where in the past if you were only having to focus on decoding instead of decoding and retaining and with your putting it into long-term memory, now you're juggling more balls and they're getting bigger and heavier and they're throwing more at you. And again, science is now you reading the science material.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah. Thinking about this, I'm like, oh gosh, my daughter's going into third grade next year, so it's going to be a big year.

Stephanie Landis:

It is. It is a big year. It's also really fun.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah, for sure. It does feel like a big one.

Stephanie Landis:

And not knowing if this person's at a public school or a private school, a lot of teachers will try and do a lot to support them in the classroom and see if maybe that's where they can just give them a little extra support here or there before bringing in a full eval. So maybe some of these things were popping up a little bit in first grade or younger, but they were able to get by with some classroom supports and now they're thinking, wow, the load is going to get larger. They're going to need more support than just what the classroom support is offering. And so that could be why they are saying that they might need an eval to get some extra support now at this age.

Meredith Krimmel:

And I think it's scary. I think a lot of people, they hear your child would benefit from an evaluation and that feels scary and it does. I mean, as someone who's been there feels scary, but if you can try to shift your perspective, everything is just information that would help support your child and information that would help the team support your child, not just the teaching team but you or any outside therapist you have when you can try to shift your mindset a little bit that way information is good. It's a good thing to know. We need to know where the gaps are and how we can support these learners.

Stephanie Landis:

Exactly. All right. Our next question goes a little bit away from the school realm and they're saying that they have a child who struggles at birthday parties. The birthday parties are really hard and was hoping that we might have some tips for supporting at birthday parties.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah, we've heard that before multiple times from a lot of our younger kiddos for sure. Lots going on at birthday parties. There's a lot of things happening, not a lot of structure usually, lots of noises, lots of loud noises. So yeah, a lot of our kiddos can struggle in that environment for sure.

Stephanie Landis:

One of the things that I love to tell parents is to do that pre-prepping them and setting up and just even if you know it's going to be in a new place that might be overwhelming, like showing them pictures of it. Okay, are you going to a new indoor bounce place or whatever it is, like show them pictures, go over the rules or expectations ahead of time like who's going to be here, here's where you can go. This area's off limits. It's going to be expected that we take our shoes off, keep our shoes on, whatever it is that you think might be getting your child overwhelmed. Another thing that I've had work for parents if they know, again, it's going back to knowing your child, what is it that might be setting your child off that's giving them a hard time? One of our neighbors, they know that their son just does not like loud noises and so they keep headphones with them.

And so when we're all at birthday parties, he has access to the headphones and he just runs around with the headphones on and if he's feeling comfortable and it's being quiet, then even if it's a party at our house, he'll throw headphones on. Good for him. If we're about to sing happy birthday and he's like, "I don't really love how loud everybody is while they're singing happy birthday." He'll put his headphones on and then he can enjoy the happy birthday. So having little things where you know what might be overwhelming your child is helpful. If you're not sure what's overwhelming your child, then sit back and observe and maybe try a few things first, but pre-prepping them of where it's going to be, what the noise and levels are, what the expectations might be, bringing some sensory things to help like headphones or maybe they need some fidgets when they start getting upset, having a pre-planned place where they can go if it gets really, really loud.

I personally don't love going to, what is it, urban air? Urban air, just like it's so loud and it's dark and there's just like noises and lights everywhere. So I am like, I'm just going to go when I need to and either step outside or go in the bathroom for a few minutes and wash my hands really, really slow. So maybe you know that your child might just need a spot where they can just like, oop, time out, reset and keep going.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah. It's also okay if you can't stay for the whole birthday party, take it in steps. If maybe an environment you know is going to be really difficult or overstimulating for your child, maybe you just go for 30 minutes or 15 minutes or 45 minutes, whatever your child could handle, whatever feels right. I think most parents would understand and be supportive of whatever you need to do.

Stephanie Landis:

And they don't even have to know that's why you're leaving. You can be like, "Oh no, we have somewhere else we have to be. " Thank you so much for the invite.

Meredith Krimmel:

Thanks for coming. Here's the gift.

Stephanie Landis:

And my motto with any situation is like, we are always leaving while we're still having fun. My kids don't always love it, but I'm like, there are no tears, there are no breakdowns, nobody's whining yet, nobody's asking for even more snacks. We are leaving while we're still having fun before it dissolves. So that is a great advice of just being like, "Hey, you know what? We don't have to hang till the end if it's going to overstimulate us or we can show up late because my kids like the cake at the end, so we're going to show up an hour into it. " That is totally okay.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah. Good advice. Leave when you're still having fun. I need to be better about that. We have a hard time leaving places, my family. We like to linger.

Stephanie Landis:

It's good to be social. Maybe that's the introvert of me being like, "Oh, hey, we're about to hit our social batteries almost full. We got to get out of here before we ... "

Meredith Krimmel:

Need to recharge.

Stephanie Landis:

We need to go. It's been real. Let's get going. But I mean, that is really solid advice of you don't have to go the whole time.

Meredith Krimmel:

No. Yeah, you

Stephanie Landis:

Don't.

Meredith Krimmel:

Do what works for you, your

Stephanie Landis:

Child,

Meredith Krimmel:

Your

Stephanie Landis:

Family. And same thing, maybe birthday parties are hard because they hate the food or this or the other. Bring your own food. Unless the place is specifically like you can't bring food, then pop out to your car and have a snack. Sneak it in your purse. No,

Meredith Krimmel:

Whatever you need to do to make first step, identify what the difficulty is, where the breakdown is, where the hard moments are and then you can try to problem solve and make it work for your child. And also it's okay if every birthday party is not for you Know that birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese are a no-go for you. That's just not worth it. Y'all aren't going to go to those parties and that's okay too.

Stephanie Landis:

Totally agree.

Meredith Krimmel:

It's too loud and chucky pees.

Stephanie Landis:

It is. All of those places- They're not

Meredith Krimmel:

That

Stephanie Landis:

Old. These kid places, it's just like when we're talking about sensory haircuts, these places that are quote kid friendly are always so loud so loud, so much going on. So

Meredith Krimmel:

Loud. So much visual and visual, so much visual stimulation.

Stephanie Landis:

I agree.

Meredith Krimmel:

For

Stephanie Landis:

Sure. And the other thing that crossed my brain is that maybe if your child socially is struggling to figure out the structure or what they're expected or what they're doing, again, if that's the breakdown, then go through it and take a moment and stop and help them read the room and figure out where they're supposed to be, what's the group doing, what's the expectation? If they have a fit when it's birthday present time, you can always leave before the kid opens the birthday presence or have your social story there with you of like, "It is not my birthday. It is their birthday. They get a present on their birthday. I'll get a present on my birthday." Whatever it might be that your child's ... And if you have a therapist that you're already currently working with, this would be a great thing to bring up with them and be like, "Hey, these are our specific struggles or we don't know what our struggles are.

Can you help me walk through? This is what happened last time. Let's brainstorm what the triggers might be. " What

Meredith Krimmel:

The breakdown could be. Yeah. You mentioned front loading earlier, preparing them, showing them pictures, or you can do that a lot with the structure too. Typically, birthday parties do run in a familiar pattern, you could try to structure that as much as you can for your kid if you feel like that's where the difficulty is, that they don't really know what's expected or what's happening.

Stephanie Landis:

And the other thing is no matter who your child is or what's going on, every child has had a meltdown at a birthday party.

Meredith Krimmel:

Absolutely.

Stephanie Landis:

And so it does feel like people might be staring at you. They might just be thinking like, "Thank God it's not my child." I've been there. Or like, "Ooh, I've been there."

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah, I feel like that is something that happens a lot and As a parent, your kid does something or is doing something and you think everyone's looking at you and judging you. But in my experience, I think what people are thinking is, "Oh, I've been there. I'm glad it's not me this time." It's not judgment. It's actually like- It's

Stephanie Landis:

Empathy. I'm not alone. It's not just me. Yeah. They're looking at you like, "Yep, done that. "

Meredith Krimmel:

Lived

Stephanie Landis:

That

Meredith Krimmel:

Before.

Stephanie Landis:

Yeah. So again, if you don't have to go to every birthday party you're invited to, if you're like, I don't know if these parents that well, if they would understand, then maybe don't go to that one and go to the one where you do know the families really well and they understand and be like, "Yep, we're doing our best." And they'd be like, "Yep, here, here's another piece of cake." Yeah. Sugar will help at all. Well, that was all of the questions that we had that came in. There weren't a ton, but there were a lot of really thoughtful, really great ones. And I'm kind of glad that we did this and opened it up so that we could get some things in that we hadn't really-

Meredith Krimmel:

Touched on yet. Yeah.

Stephanie Landis:

Touched on.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah, these are great questions and maybe we'll do this again sometimes. So if you're out there listening and you didn't submit questions and you have some, maybe we'll have another opportunity for that.

Stephanie Landis:

Or if you're like, I have a great idea for a podcast episode, we're always happy to hear.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah, absolutely. We want people to hear what they want to hear, so let us know.

Stephanie Landis:

All right. Well, I will not force you to answer the podcast episode.

Meredith Krimmel:

You've heard my advice. Every episode, you hear my advice. You hear our advices all the time.

Stephanie Landis:

My new advice will be very on brand for this episode. It'd be like, go get a snack.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah. And everybody's-

Stephanie Landis:

Everybody gets a snack. Snacks for everybody is my advice.

Meredith Krimmel:

That's great.

Stephanie Landis:

All right. Well, I hope everybody has a great summer and we will be looking forward to getting some new great episodes out next season. Yep. And in the meantime, if you're listening over the summer and you haven't heard all the other ones, go back and re-listen and find some maybe that you hadn't heard before or just need to re-listen and be like, "Ah, yep. Needed to hear that again." A

Meredith Krimmel:

Lot of

Stephanie Landis:

Pressure. Yep.

Meredith Krimmel:

Yeah.

Stephanie Landis:

Indeed.

Meredith Krimmel:

Absolutely.

Stephanie Landis:

All right. Well, thank you, Meredith.

Meredith Krimmel:

Thanks, Tef.