r/slp

Just as the title says! List your favorite niche and a strategy you consistently use/find very helpful! I’ve been an SLP for 8 years now and I’m always looking for new strategies and techniques to use with my clients!

Ex. Articulation- /k/ and /g/ sounds, I have my students use the “magic finger” by sticking their index finger in their mouth, in hopes that they don’t close their mouthes. I also find the Nancy Kaufman gestures very helpful for articulation therapy. i wish I found them earlier!

No judgment please, but I honestly don’t enjoy speech therapy like I thought I would. I’m brand new CF in an elementary school and honestly couldn’t care less about my caseload. I find the paperwork, population, students, co workers, “theme spirit days”, “fun” speech activities, etc, all super annoying. I truly want to get my kids in, take data, and want them out. I know I’m horrible for that too because they deserve a fun SLP. I come home from work and purposely dont think about work again until Tuesday morning. That’s the ONLY pro of this job… do I just hate a school system, working, or speech therapy lol?!

Currently working with a client who is 5. He is diagnosed with level 3 autism and is not currently in ABA. Getting speech with me in private practice and with the SLP at school.

I was comparing his communication skills to the ASHA communication milestones charts, and his current skills are consistent with those of 4-9 months. In speaking with his other team members, they see the same things.

For some context, he’s been getting services with me for about 8 months and is just not really demonstrating any differences.

I don’t know what to do with him in therapy anymore, and I’m getting burnt out. His family is very adamant that he get an AAC device, but he has almost no intention in communication.

Has anyone else had experience like this and just taken a break from services? I just don’t feel like we are really getting anywhere and I can tell that his family is getting frustrated with me that he isn’t using a device yet.

I know there’s no “prerequisite” to AAC and we use it every session. He has yet to really even look at it reliably.

I’m a relatively new SLP and I work for a private practice. I’m a part time independent contractor (not an employee) but I am constantly getting texts, long voice notes and even phone calls after hours. I never truly feel off the clock and there is this constant expectation that I am available at all hours of the day. I’ll sometimes even get messages from the clinic owner at like 10:30pm (on a Sunday!) or I’ll get a call at 7:30pm. I also went on vacation this year and the owner had agreed to not contact me until I returned but then ended up reaching out twice about scheduling clients, new intakes, transferring clients etc.

More often than not, the reason they’re contacting isn’t even urgent and can absolutely wait until the next day or even week.

My question is: is this expected and typical in the private practice setting? I’m wondering if anyone else has ever experienced this. I tried my best to set boundaries and express my preferred communication style but I don’t think I’m behind heard and I’d love to know if other private practices are like this too. Thank you.

Hi!

I have a student I was only supposed to see 3x monthly, somehow I got him mixed up with another student so I have been seeing him 6x monthly. Parent reached out concerned about his speech minutes (parent is a teacher at the school). I don't know how I messed up this bad but here we are! I am worried that this is a violation of LRE, well I know it is, but I am not sure where to go from here. We missed a few sessions from Aug-Oct due to meetings so some of these can be considered comp minutes. I am only in my second year and I am making a lot of stupid mistakes :( I am in constant fear of losing my job or getting in trouble, so I am under a lot of stress just generally. This seems like a pretty big F up on my end - I am not sure how to triage it. Kid has perfect attendance so he's been at every single scheduled session.

Edit: thank you for all the responses :) it's comforting for sure! i work in a district with a lot of "high profiles" so i'm always worried about worst case scenario as i'm actively dealing with a worst case scenario. luckily this parent was super gracious with me and she said she has noticed a difference in his speech so the extra sessions really helped but he is struggling in class which she is concerned about. i don't think this will be escalated any further though but i still do feel awful about the whole thing and when parent works at the school it adds to the pressure to want to be perfect but it is what it is. appreciate everyone's responses thus far and it's weirdly nice to know others mistakes and that they are still living to tell the tale lol. i have anxiety disorder so i have a very creative imagination about these sorts of things... now i'm mostly worried about billing as i did bill for this student. i'll have to take a look at just how much i billed for and see if it all evens out but i'll probably just not bill for a couple of our future sessions.

I am in a district that follows the 3:1 model so iep minutes are written monthly. Our school has a life skills program and the teacher is requesting that service providers see these students on our indirect week even though all of their minutes are met. She is saying that the paras need breaks during the students therapies. I feel like admin is not supporting the service providers and is writing off some of the indirect tasks we need to do to effectively do our jobs.

Am I right to push back against this or am I being difficult?

Hello all! I am a CF at a school. I’ve been asked by a teacher to informally observe a student. Is it okay to be doing this? Or should I have this teacher contact parent to inform them of their concerns regarding the student and then getting parent’s permission for me to observe them? I’m in California

I'm almost done with graduate school, and I have truly given this my all. I constantly get praise for my knowledge and skill level, and I try to be the best I can possibly be. While I am not burnt out, I just feel like quite a bit is brought down today. My client had expressed the want to read to his grandchildren, so I brought in a series of children's books for us to read in a functional way. My supervisor told me this wasn't functional and was completely inappropriate for me to have done. I don't know whether I should explain that this was important to my client or just give up. I am honestly more hurt that I felt like we were fairly close and she believes I would cause harm to my client. He's in his late eighties, and I would never want him to feel as though he is less than because of his neurodegenerative disease. I wish she had come at this in a nicer way, but to be honest, the words she said to me really stung. For context, I am in a private practice.

I have a 10 year old who can say the majority of the sounds in a word with a motor approach. Also can read alright when done slowly. However, in conversation, they have a TON of errors. Intelligibility is low. This is new to me, any tips and tricks are welcome!

Good evening, everyone! I would love to get some opinions and ideas for a kiddo I am treating. They are nearly six. We are working on an interdental lisp (just moved from the word to the sentence level), /v/, voiced and voiceless /th/, and consonant clusters (these have also improved significantly). In the next 6 months, we will also start working on /l/ and /r/. I am using a modified Cycles Approach with great success. My only issue - the kiddo is getting much better at decreasing their interdental lisp but cannot, for the life of them, coordinate the placement with voicing for /z/ (it always turns out like an /s/). I feel as though I have tried to cue/model in every possible way. Any ideas? It's definitely not our main concern but I want to continue to work on it.

Those of you that offer feeding therapy (either exclusively, or as part of your scope of practice) I’d love to hear! I’ve been thinking about it, as I see a need for it but not many practitioners. I like the idea of being really good at one thing, instead of having to know about everything.

One of the things that frustrates me currently working as a peds generalist is not seeing progress, not knowing if what we are doing is working, not having a set procedure to follow and kinda just waiting to see what sticks. Would feeding give me more of the set protocol/tangible progress/or the more black and white that I’m looking for, or do I have the wrong idea about feeding therapy? I briefly took a class in grad school and I remember them focusing on sensory playing with food, and food chaining which seems more attainable to me. But please, feeding SLPs give it to me straight!

Hi. The school pulled me out of my cafeteria duty today to corner me into the office with all administration to query what my "Understanding of my role in Intervention is".

They had previously sent me an email during the first 2 weeks of school assigning me Reading Intervention but nobody had told me explicity, nor was it ever provided to me in writing that I was doing reading intervention. I was trying to do my file review and draft an SLP pull out schedule when the email came through to a huge group of staff. I went immediately to the Head SPED and told her my concerns and we agreed to defer the duty.

Evidently, when I tried to explain that I had spoken with the Head SPED a month ago and she agreed to defer that duty until my all my initials and re-evals were done for the month of October, the principal tried to insinuate that I was acting like I was too good for helping out and that they are "all hands on deck" and that she was "tired of (me) saying that I have tests only I can perform". Head SPED remained silent and did not offer to confirm that encounter. Also, I have to schedule my IEP meetings around the Principal's personal schedule for things such as her nail appointments during the workday.

My friends said to keep a log of these interactions, to keep my job and seem happy to help because I can't quit. I don't know how much farther these guys are going to go...I told them I had no idea why I was assigned math intervention and I was wondering what the legality of that was but they said anyone can do it including the janitor because they "care about the kids who are so far behind" and said you don't need any qualifications or credentials. What I don't like about this isn't necessarily just the lack of communication, it's more the attempt to minimize the SLP diagnostic responsibilties and indirect service time as well as the personal threats such as saying "So you aren't going to do it then"? before I can respond..and pulling me into the office with no warning. Could this constitute harassment?