Bonus EP10-Dinalynn Rosenbush-Transforming Parent-Child Connections Through Communication

Herb: 00:00:17

Today I have the pleasure of introducing Dinalynn Rosenbush.

Denalyn is a consultant and parenting coach speaker, 30 year public school speech language pathologist, international best selling author and creator, host of the top 2% podcast, the language of Play. Dingalin helps parents understand how children communicate so they can connect more deeply with their children.

She empowers parents with practical daily strategies for building speech and language skills during normal daily activities. Welcome, Dina Lynn. It is a pleasure to have you here today. Thank you for joining us.

Dinalynn Rosenbush: 00:00:54

Thank you. I am honored to be on bringing education home. I'm so glad.

Kristina: 00:00:59

It is so awesome having you because we love having heartfelt experts just like we were getting to know you and knowing that you are here to help families. Right.

We are trying to really make sure that they have the tips, the tricks, the things that they need to know to really develop their child into the happy health system successful child that we know they can be. So go ahead and tell us a little bit, the beginning about why this passion. What took you into speech pathology? What took you into teaching?

Dinalynn Rosenbush: 00:01:26

All right. I'm so glad to share that. And I want to say that it's a.

It was a journey that wasn't expected at first and I just was interested in the topic and I started taking so many classes that the professor said, why don't you make this your major? And so I did. You know, it was just truly that's how it started. I went into this school to help children. Of course that's what we want to do.

We go because we want to educate kids. Over time, our caseloads became very large and so I needed to change the service delivery model.

And fortunately I worked in a school system where the administration was super supportive and I was only asked, is it good for kids? I said yes. And so he said, go ahead. And that was quite literally it. So I was given a lot of freedom to do what my gut said was really good for kids.

I started inviting parents to come into my classroom with me once a week to work with me with their kids. So they would see exactly hands on.

What is it that you do when you have a child that isn't listening, that has a speech sound problem, that is stuttering, that is working on vocabulary, sentence structure, whatever it is that they were not getting right. So then the parents would learn what to do. They would go home and practice and then come back the next week.

And in that experience of the parents that were willing and able, I saw enormous leaps and bounds and that makes total Sense to me, because the way the brain works is we want frequent, short exposures, don't we? And they come into our classrooms, which is great. We get them where they need to go, but it takes longer.

But when I can send it home with a willing and active parent, they can do 5 to 10 second practices all evening, all morning. And, and I teach parents how to.

Let's do certain things at bath time, let's set up certain things at dinner time so that you are incorporating your speech and language development and practices at the times you're doing those activities anyway. So you're not just taking another worksheet to the table, but rather you're incorporating communication, where communication happens.

In my practice in the school, though, it works, we do have the situation where a child is disabled with their communication.

They come sit with me in an isolated experience with some other kids and then they need to go out into the rest of their world, their home, their bus, the classrooms, and try to incorporate their learning in a disabled area by themselves, with other people. And that is a very difficult model for the kids.

And so part of my change in service delivery model was to go into classrooms and, and run a lesson for the teachers in their classrooms so they could see how to differentiate a little bit differently for the kiddos that have an impairment in communication. And the teachers were fabulous. The teachers have a beautiful heart for wanting those kiddos to grow and, and they would do those things. Yeah.

And so that was really this big foundation that caused me then to say, okay, now I want to start a business that really focuses on parents. How can I do this business to, to give the parents the parts that I really liked in the, in the school system setting.

Because I loved working with parents, loved working with kids. I didn't like the paperwork, I didn't like sitting inside all the time. You know, there were, there were parts of the job that I didn't like.

But I always loved working with kids and parents. So I developed a business where I get to work with kids and parents and I can teach the parents how they can do a lot of this at home.

Now, this doesn't mean that if your child gets speech and language therapy in the schools, keep doing it, they need it.

And working with me is not something that would be in opposition in any way because we would be working together to build forward and give the parents insights in what they can do at home.

Kristina: 00:05:17

I absolutely love that.

And you know, some of the things that you said, first of all, that you had supportive administration and the wonderful teachers that you know, I taught with for so many years as well. We always were looking for how can we help our children. Right. Unfortunately, like you said, things have happened.

Things are crazy out there right now, and some schools are having more difficulty doing that kind of stuff.

But like you said, whenever you brought the parents in to see the lesson and then how they could take that home, I found that same silver lining during COVID whenever I would be online teaching and I would see the parents watching. Right. How is she doing that? And then those parents who really jumped in really made a difference for their children.

And that is one of the things that I absolutely love about those parents who want to be empowered in their child's education, be involved in their child's education, and really make sure that it's moving forward.

Dinalynn Rosenbush: 00:06:07

Yeah. That's what your podcast is all about, is for the parents who do want to take the education home and who do want to do it themselves.

And I love that parents want to do that. And that's the parents that I serve, too. I did notice that during COVID we had.

Well, prior to Covid, 10% of the student population roughly needed speech and language therapy. At some point in time, up to the age of 10, you know, about. It was just under 30%. Sorry, just under 10%. And when the pandemic happened, then we had.

Right after that, we had 30% of our kids qualified. So that's a huge jump in communication struggles. So not all parents are like the parents that are listening to this podcast.

So for those people that are really integrated and they want to bring education home, what you're doing is giving them the tools and actions that they need. I think that is really, really good.

Kristina: 00:07:04

Thank you.

And, you know, one of the biggest hopes of this podcast and, you know, many other podcasts, is that they would share it with other people who might need the information. Right. So hopefully, audience, as you're listening, if you know some.

A family who's like, oh, you know, their kiddo speaks a little bit differently, and I wonder if they know that they might need some intervention or help with that. Right. So share this podcast. Share the information that you get. And so that was going to be my next question.

What is, like, one or two things that are key indicators that a family really maybe needs to have their child's speech checked or the. That really helps them notice that something's kind of off and they might need to. Yeah. Get it checked out?

Dinalynn Rosenbush: 00:09:20

That's a really good question, because it's blurry for a lot of families. The first and Most obvious one is, are there speech sounds that are messy and you're not really understanding, but you're kind of understanding?

And then there are developmental charts you can look at. But I'm going to say that even if your child fits those charts for speech, you can always help them more.

Leaving something to develop at its own rate, in its own time, in its own way isn't always the best way to do it.

Because if you give them kind of like, let's say your child is stirring something in the bowl in the kitchen and they flick the spoon because their motor skills aren't that great, and we need to remind them, keep the bottom down in the bowl. It's a motor skill to be able to do that. You go hand over hand and you help them with that motor skill. Speech is also a motor sk.

You know, you are using the muscles in the mouth. So we can learn how to tell our children in very positive, affirming ways, oh, make the sound this way.

And whether or not they are on the chart or off the chart. So I'll say that about speech because that seems to be the thing that parents notice first and the most.

The second thing parents talk to me about is my child isn't listening. The reason children don't listen, of course, we sometimes have deliberate disobedience. Of course that's there.

But when we are talking about a child that has a speech and language delay, we need to consider how well they are processing auditory information. If they have a speech sound error like we just talked about, we know they're not processing auditory information fully and correctly.

The other thing you can do is ask your child to repeat the direction. If they can't, they did not process that auditory information correctly.

Kristina: 00:11:09

Yep.

Dinalynn Rosenbush: 00:11:10

If they look at you and smile and do the opposite thing, that's not willful disobedience. Something was missing. Right.

So if we can learn how to read our children's behavior as their communication, it gives us a window into knowing, what did they miss? Or what can I fill in the gap on? So those are two things, but there's lots of other things. Let's say.

Let's say your child is speaking and their past tense is always wrong. Or they say, her do it instead of she did it or she does it. You know, like they're getting the pronouns wrong.

Let's say they aren't able to use plurals correctly. Any of those little indicators. You can be pretty sure that when they listen, they aren't catching everything.

If you see any of those indicators, because they haven't developed their, maybe their understanding of language yet or maybe they're a little behind in their development. Whether they are behind or not, we know that it's not quite developed.

So it does not mean that when they don't listen that they were willfully disobedient.

Kristina: 00:12:17

Yeah, and I absolutely love that because, you know, as, as new parents, lots of times, you know, they weren't given an owner's manual and we talk about this a lot, but then parents are like, oh well, you know, a two, a three, five year old can do like four things at a time. And it's like that's not development appropriate at that age.

A one step direction then graduating to two step, to a three step direction is appropriate as they get older. So that's another part of that. It's not disobedience. They can't process all of those steps lots of times if they're a really young age.

Dinalynn Rosenbush: 00:12:49

Right. That's a great one for an example.

Because parents will ask me, you know, like, how come they can do this four steps to get their shoes on and coat on and go outside and get buckled in the car. But when I tell them to do whatever else they're not able to to, and what I'll say is how much of that has been memory, you know, even muscle memory.

Because let's say every single time that you brush teeth, you're doing the brushing for the child and then eventually you just say you do it yourself.

But never along the way was there the motor skill of unscrewing the cap and how hard do you squeeze the toothpaste tube and do you rinse the spit down the sink? You know, like there are things that are not part of the communication.

When we pass off an instruction to them that we need to remember, there's a lot more steps.

And so if you say to your child, brush your teeth and get in the car, but they are, they only have the, maybe just the brushing part that they've been doing, but they don't know to put it away or whatever.

We can, we can set our kids up for the, the actual things that we're judging them as doing wrong but not really realizing that we actually set them up for it. And to explain like this four step thing, we're shifting attention.

It's not necessarily a four step or do four things at a time, it's shifting attention at any given moment.

So if your child is watching TV and playing Legos and tying their shoes, whatever, you know, like doing all these different things, sucking their Thumb. Their attention shifts between the things that they're doing. And so when we give them tasks, we learn how to group a task into a cluster of tasks.

So you have a sequence of tasks, then eventually you call that one sequence brush your teeth. But the sequence is the memory and learning work that kiddos with speech and language delays sometimes need to have spelled out in pictures.

Sometimes if they're a little bit older and they can use writing, you can write out the tasks, and then eventually that becomes memory. And then when it's memory, you take down all those visual supports. But if you don't have the visual support, you need to do a lot of reminding.

But if they're not understanding auditory information, your reminding is going out into the wind, and it's going to be a lot more work for you. So those visual supports are tremendously helpful as parents to just say, oh, I see that you're missing the third in the sequence.

Let's practice this one.

Herb: 00:15:29

Yeah. So a really big one there that I see that a lot of parents have problems with. My parents did was the whole clean your room.

So clean your room is a one thing, but there are so many steps, so many different parts that, you know, they would say, clean your room, and I would go in and it's like, well, it looks clean to me. What are you talking about? So it wasn't, put the books away, make the bed, do this, do that. It was like, my room is how I like it. It's clean for me.

It doesn't look dirty. It might be messy. So that's kind of. That's a big step right there. That's like, clean your room is not a one step, one step command.

Dinalynn Rosenbush: 00:16:06

Exactly. And learning how to take a task that you want your child to do and to break it down so that it's doable is really a skill.

You know, it's not a fault of parenting. It's not a bad parenting thing. It's not a bad person thing.

To be able to break down a task like clean your room, like you just said, is something that as a parent, when we learn how to do that, we break it down into make your bed. Then we break down make your bed into, oh, there's the flat sheet. Oh, wait, there's the fitted sheet, then the flat sheet.

And then I've got a blanket and then a comforter. Oh, wait, the pillows on the floor. Oh, wait, the stuffed animals. Where do they go? Oh, and then there's the special blanket and the lovey.

You know, like, making the bed can be Broken down too. Can it. So each of the steps and we forget that our kids really need to learn all the steps.

And when we take it down to the little pieces and put it back together, then your parent will be able to go into the room and say, you did a great job on making your bed. Now I want you to pick up every book and you go in and 70% of the books are picked up. Great. You picked up, you picked up books. Good job.

Now can we find any more I Spy? Can we turn it into something playful? Where we are, we are looking for where did they do it right? And where can we expand on where they do it right?

Because if we jump to their willful disobedience or they don't care and they're resisting us, which I'm not saying doesn't happen because it does, but if we jump to that, we set them up to do that. Yeah.

Herb: 00:17:40

And one other thing that I would like to say is if they get it right once, it doesn't mean they've learned it. It means they got it right once. It takes more practice.

Because it's like, even in sports practice, if you run a play right and you get it right once and it's like, that's awesome. But then you get it wrong a bunch of times and then you get it right again, and then you get it wrong a bunch of times and you get it right again.

So it's a building process. So once they get it right once, don't expect, oh, you got it, you're good.

And now when I tell you I expect it all to be right, you know, it still takes touches, it still takes practice, it still takes learning to keep continually doing it correctly.

Dinalynn Rosenbush: 00:18:15

Exactly. And in my practice, we look at 80% accuracy, and that's when we call it mastery.

So when I am working with a child and I like, let's say I work with a child twice a week and once is with the parents and once is me, the stuff that they are 80% at, that's what I train the parents to do. And they take that home. And you know, the kids that are in my program are going to be needing more than one thing, right?

And so then I'll take the hardest things and we will work on those to get the harder for the child things up closer to mastery. And then a piece of it will be right and the piece of it I'll send home so that it's practice on what they do know.

And then, and then we work on mastering at 80%. We never go beyond that, really? Because this practice and experience is the other piece of it, isn't it?

Because I would say that for you, Christina and Herb, if you were to say, how mastered are you at making your bed? I think that you probably have 80% mastery, and yet you know how to make your bed. And that is fine.

You know, maybe you're 100%, but few people are 100% on anything.

Kristina: 00:19:21

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Herb: 00:19:23

We're not that tidy.

Dinalynn Rosenbush: 00:19:26

And yet. And yet. It doesn't mean you're a bad human. It doesn't mean you're sloppy. It doesn't mean you're dirty. It doesn't mean you're messy. It means that.

Okay, so sometimes you're not making your bed or. And sometimes when you are making it, you're not making it as straight as you know how because you've got other things on your mind. Our kids do, too.

You've got other desires for the time your kids do too. You care more. Some days your kids do too.

Kristina: 00:19:51

So when I work with kids a lot, especially those kiddos I know have a speech issue. You know, they're having a hard time creating the sounds and stuff.

Lots of times I like to slow them down and show them how my mouth is working so that they can maybe try to figure it out where it is happening in their mouth as well.

Is that one of the things that you kind of show parents or help parents do with their kiddos, so they could kind of help the kiddos when they need help?

Dinalynn Rosenbush: 00:20:14

Depends on the sound, but yes.

Kristina: 00:20:15

Yeah.

Dinalynn Rosenbush: 00:20:16

The sounds that are at the front, where you can see, are the ones that I do that with.

You know, you've got F, B, M, P, you know, like, you know, you've got a lot of different things right in the front, but when you've got sounds in the back, like K and G and maybe R, those are not sounds that you can just say, do it this way, and they can watch. So that is more by touch, by listening and learning. Mm.

Kristina: 00:20:42

Yeah.

Dinalynn Rosenbush: 00:20:42

Yeah. There's. There's a lot of strategies for every sound, and that is. That is one that works very, very well.

What you're saying, that works really well for our kiddos that can watch and copy.

Kristina: 00:20:54

Yeah, exactly. Awesome. This has been so much fun and such a great conversation, and thank you for the tips and tricks that you have dropped to our audience.

Audience.

This has been a thing that you really want to kind of listen in, especially if you're a newer parent, if you're a younger parent, a parent you're an only child.

That's one of the things I noticed a lot is that if there was an child lots of times, because they were so used to their speech, they didn't really realize there was a problem. And then when there was a second child or a cousin or something that came over, then Allison was like, oh, wait a second, something's here. Right?

But we are on a little bit of a different time frame today. We would love to have Dina Lynn come and talk with us on a longer, expanded show later.

But today we are on Potapalooza, a great show that helps us get to know other in guests and get to them introduced to our audience. Sorry about that. So, Dina Lynn, as we wrap up, because we are out of.

Please make sure that you share information on how parents can get to you and understand how to get a hold of you if they need some help.

Dinalynn Rosenbush: 00:21:52

I would love to. Thank you. So my podcast is the language of play.com. no, that's the website. The website that isn't published. The podcast is the language of Play.

And that would be the best place at this point to find me. My. My email is hello, the language of play.com. and my website will be published.

I've been busy with clients and doing other things, and I just haven't gotten to that website yet. So I have a link tree. And would you be able to have that in your show notes?

Kristina: 00:22:18

Absolutely. We'll go and put it down. The show notes.

Dinalynn Rosenbush: 00:22:22

Perfect. Because that is where the most recent things will be. So sometimes I offer webinars and other activities as well.

Kristina: 00:22:30

Perfect.

Thank you so much, Jina Lynn, for being here today, for sharing us your wisdom and your information around speech and helping our families understand a little bit more about how to help their children. It has been a great show. Thank you so much.

Herb: 00:22:42

Thank you for being here. Really enjoyed our conversation and I look forward to having you back so we can talk about more things.

Dinalynn Rosenbush: 00:22:48

That will be my honor and my delight. Thank you so much.

Kristina: 00:22:50

Awesome. All right, audience, that's it for right now. Make sure that you take those gold nuggets and put them in your pocket.

Take them with you, then take them out and use them when it's the right time. Okay. Make sure that you're tuning in every week.

Friday morning is when we release our shows and check us out@ranging educationhome.com or and make sure you leave us a like and review. We need some of those out there, too. All right, audience, thanks for everything. Talk to you later. Bye for now.

Herb: 00:23:15

Bye for now.