If you want to learn how to help a late-talking child, visit the website for Waves of Communication.
Emmalou Penrod 0:00
I’m talking to Marci Melzer today. She is an Intuitive Speech Language Pathologist Consultant with 30 years experience. She’s also the author of, If It Isn’t Fun, It Isn’t Fun: Teach Your Child to Talk Faster than Speech Therapy. Marci, welcome.
Marci Melzer 0:23
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so happy to be here.
Emmalou Penrod 0:26
And I am so excited to have you talk to us. Because, you know, when your child doesn’t start talking at the usual age, parents start worrying. And sometimes I wonder if that added stress and pressure does more harm than good? And I would love to hear how you got into Waves of Communication.
Marci Melzer 0:58
All right, well, thank you so much, again. You know, it was a journey, you know, kind of like everybody. Language facilitation consultation, as a speech therapy consultant, it’s not the typical way that therapists work, especially nowadays. You know, we go through school to play our role to be that supportive person, you know. You were a special ed teacher, so you know the role of the speech therapist is to fix the kid’s speech. Parents, drop them off at the therapy or sign them up for the, you know, on their IEP at school and stuff, and they expect the therapist to somehow help their child who is stuck in nonverbal communication. Because all kids are communicating with their parents from birth. They’re crying, they’re making noises, they’re moving their bodies, they’re looking with their faces. So they start communicating at birth, even before, right, with moms. And so parents get at home, real used to just interpreting those nonverbal messages. And then they hire a speech therapist to teach their kids to talk. And there’s a disconnect there, right? If we understand what’s happening in the brain, and we know that the brain naturally learns from experiences. Especially they start learning from experiences with their parent from the very second they’re born, we’re talking about communication, right? So the baby and the mom, from the very beginning, the mom is worried about what does the baby need? What does the baby want? Is the baby happy? If the baby’s unhappy, what do I have to do to make the baby happy? And it’s all about making sure everything’s going along. And you’re right, the very minute they start to see either behaviors that aren’t heading in the direction of speech, like, more nonverbal behavior, because like I said, they will communicate. And as they get older, if they don’t have speech, they’ll start dragging the parents around and bringing you things and using other ways to communicate. So, I realized when I was working with parents, so I worked for 27 years as a speech therapist, and working with these parents, especially in the early intervention population, those kids are zero to three. It’s real easy in those times, to get parents on the right track to demonstrating and teaching speech the right way. And it makes a lot more sense for a parent to learn the natural talking when they’re little. But what I was finding was, this worry, that you’re talking about, was literally overtaking the parents feeling that they even had the capability of helping their child who’s late talking, for whatever reason, can be any reason from screen addiction, which has absolutely nothing physiologically wrong with the child, all the way up through seizure disorders, and you know, and autism spectrum and all of those things in between. Because, you know, like, you were a teacher in high school, those kids if they’re still in special ed in high school, there’s something going on with them that has caused them to have challenges where they can’t learn like other kids. And parents don’t like it when their kids can’t be like other kids. It reflects on them and their psyche and, and all of that. And you’re right what ends up happening, and so much of the time, is it reflects in their behavior with their kids at home. And they either want to be like the therapist and become a therapist at home, 24-7. Like I’m going to dig in and teach my child myself. I can do it better than the therapy. I can do it whatever like that. Or they just tune it out and farm it out. And then they have the victim mode, right, where they’re “My kid is, I’m an Autism mom who can’t do anything. My kid is impaired.” Because that’s what they hear over and over again from the people in their world. When they go take their child for an evaluation, they get a list of what’s wrong. They don’t get a list of what’s right and what you can do to help your child and where the blockages are. So over the course of 27 years, what started to happen more and more and more because of this worry systemically, this autism diagnosis started happening. Because they started this earlier identification, and it really is soothing these parents, “Oh, my child has a label now. And there’s services that go with this label.” And then they’re on this path towards help for them to solve this problem. But once again, the system is encouraging them to give up that problem solving role to the school, the therapist or whatever. And earlier and earlier and earlier before, kids are even two years old, they’re being identified. And so it’s starting early. And it’s been going on now for a decade. So now these previous early identifiers, more than a decade, actually, back since the 90s. It was happening early 2000s. Now these kids are 10, 12, 20 years old. And they’ve been in this system where their parents never understood or accepted their responsibility and role in teaching their child. And so as a result, you talk about programming of the brain, right? These kids brains get programmed to think the speech therapist makes me say words, and they reward me for that. So that’s where I talk. I talk in the therapy. And at home, I still use that nonverbal communication, right, that I developed from the time I was a baby. And so I realized, and that’s why I call it waves of communication, this intuitive communication that babies started at birth, and they continue to use at home with their parents, and even their caregivers, if they’re not with their mom all day. They’re with teachers all day, or caregivers, whoever, they learn, they set up some kind of non verbal system to be communicating with those people, because they have to get through the day, and they don’t want meltdowns and stuff, all that. So they figure out some sort of nonverbal way, and they get stuck in it. And so what I’ve been able to do is help parents understand, use those waves of communication that they already know, and take the responsibility to actually teach their kids with these strategies that I provide on my website and my YouTube videos, and in my book, and everywhere. I just want to equip and empower parents, because that’s what they need. That’s all they need. Because remember, just like it used to happen in the long go before there was autism diagnosis and early intervention, and all these things, parents taught their kids. They taught them no matter what was going on. They looked for the best things in them. And they taught him how to use those things, to overcome the things that were challenging that. And they didn’t call it things. In fact, they tried not to label it and call it things, right? They didn’t want their kids labeled. They wanted their kids to learn and be functional. And that’s really what parents want, isn’t it? They just want their kids to be functional in life, and speech helps them get there where nothing else will.
Emmalou Penrod 8:25
I absolutely agree with that. I love what you said. I love the part about the labels, the harm they do. And the part that the parents should be, you know, that was my concern. My observation as a special ed teacher is that, quite often the school system is sending this message to the parents, “You don’t know enough. We’re experts. Just hand your child over to us and we’ll hand them back at 18.” No, it starts with the parents. And I love two scenarios you portrayed. One is they just accept this is the way, the only way my child can communicate with me. Or, and I don’t know that much, I was never a speech therapist. But my observation was it was mainly focusing on specific sounds or just bits and pieces of communication.
Marci Melzer 9:29
I think that’s it. Because remember, the way the system is moving nowaday is data, right? So there has to be all the RTI, if you know those analogy terms and stuff, they have to collect data to prove that kids can benefit from services all comes down to money, really. If it looks bad enough, then you get more money. And so they make these kids look really bad. I learned how to do it in school. You know, learn how to write those reports so that the kids look bad enough to still get special ed. So ultimately the kid can get, the principal can get more money for the school. Because they’re getting it from grants, they’re getting it from the government, they’re getting it from everywhere, right? As long as you’ve got more kids labeled with certain things, autism, primarily, you get funding for school or clinic or whatever insurance is paying for it. As long as it’s called autism, insurance is paying for it. But what I’m trying to help people understand is, what do you need that for? You don’t need those services, and those insurance, all that stuff that those people are paying for. Like you said, you don’t want to drop your kid off and pick them up at 18. You don’t know them, those people don’t know your child. You know, your child, the best way ever, and you can bring out the speech. And what’s been remarkable about it, is it’s helping more people than even I thought. I’ve been at this three years online. And I thought, you know, just like first, like I said, the little kids, you know, that don’t have very many bad habits in place, like they haven’t been in ABA for 10 years, and that kind of stuff. I thought those kids will be easier to help. But in fact, here’s a really interesting thing about this process, the older kids do better, because they have more language in them. And this process, instead of pulling words out, like, you know, say “cookie” to get the cookie, you actually facilitate this language. That’s why I call it language facilitation. And I train parents and caregivers to be language facilitators. That’s why I call myself a consultant. I don’t do speech therapy anymore, because, like you said, speech therapy is all about single words and letters and sounds and making kids do things over and over and over. So you can collect data, so you can get your funding, so they can come back. See you next week. You know, “Drop off your copay, and I’ll see you next week.” For decades, they do this with these kids, especially the ones that have real issues, you know, real physiological issues. And so it’s just really important, I think, for parents to understand that the older the kid is, the faster this can go. It’s the actual opposite of what we were trained. And you can appreciate this as a teacher of high school kids, when you found the way in to their, what you understand now is like a resonant connection where you’re on the same wavelength, right? Your kids are getting you. It’s all those words that are vague, and they don’t have data, right? But as a high school special education teacher, I mean, by these kids, they have burnt out on all the fun and games bubbles, you know, Cookie reward stuff. And they’ve been probably working on manipulating their environment for years. You know? And and by the time they get to that one high school teacher, I think it was probably you was like trying to figure out what makes these kids tick. What do they love? How can I reach them, and talk about the things that they already know about? Because they’ve been on the planet for already more than 10 years? They’ve been hearing a lot of speech. They’ve been watching videos, they’ve been watching movies, they’ve been reading books. Most of them read and do math better than they talk, especially by that age. But these kids have tons of ideas and brilliance in their head. And they’re called imbeciles, really, because they can’t talk very well. And when they can’t talk, it’s not great. You know.
Emmalou Penrod 13:49
Yeah, what broke my heart is when they bought into the label. They just accepted that they were disabled. They didn’t expect to have a career or a successful life. They just accepted, “I’m damaged. I’m no good.” That’s what really broke my heart. And the other thing that really concerned me is, I’ve been in IEP meetings when the focus was on the student, but we weren’t talking about, like you mentioned, what he can’t do. They were talking about what he can do. And when you have an IEP like that, things just fall into place. You come up with a program that the student excels and does more than anyone thought he could. But that was the exception. More often, I saw the IEP meetings where parents had lost trust with the school system. School System didn’t want to hear what the parent had to say. And it became this contest of adult egos. And the best interest of the student was totally forgotten. And that was heartbreaking, too.
Marci Melzer 15:04
And I think those were the situations that cause people like you and I to leave the education system. You know, leave working within that environment because I was feeling, and the whole reason I started Waves of Communication and doing this online when nobody else ever did it before me, you know, I was like, “Well, I don’t know if people are going to buy into this.” And now, just because I’m talking about it so much, and I have so much more information out. And I just encourage people to try it. They are and it’s working. So if there’s one message I want to share to any parents out there, doesn’t matter how old your child is, what their label is, what anybody else has ever told you about them, you know what your child knows. You know, you do. And you have the capability to bring that knowledge out in speech, real speech. It doesn’t have to be on a tablet, or a picture board or any of those devices. Because I think that’s another thing, like you said, people feel like they’re told so many times you can’t talk because you’re past a certain age. And if the child is anywhere in the vicinity, while the adults are talking back and forth about he can’t do that. So he needs this, he can’t do that. So he needs that. And both the parent and the school are talking about what the child needs, you know, not again, like you said, what’s great about them, that affects kids.
Emmalou Penrod 16:33
Oh, yeah.
Marci Melzer 16:34
And it affects their their willingness to try. But when you do find the way in. You find the things they like. It’s really that easy. You find the things you like, and you listen to them, and you give them language instead of prompting them to do everything. And that’s the other problem I think that happens with the older kids is they become prompt dependent, because they’ve been literally handheld, hand over handheld, through their entire life to get stuff done. And if you know, at any age, really this hand over hand teaching is not effective. The only thing that is going to help a child learn how to do anything from talk to tie their shoe is practicing that skill.
Emmalou Penrod 17:26
Yes, we called it learned helplessness. We’re teaching them to be helpless and to just sit there and wait for some adult to come and rescue them. Now, this is exciting to me, because you are offering your program that to me is the ideal setting for parents of children with special needs. You are accepting that they are the experts on their child. They understand their child better than anyone else. And you as a professional, are just giving them the benefit of your 30 years of experience in the techniques and the methods to use to get their desired outcome. It’s brilliant.
Marci Melzer 18:08
That’s right. I think so too. I think so too. And you know what, it’s working so brilliantly. And the results are even better than I thought. You know, even better than I expected.
Emmalou Penrod 18:21
Well, and it’s key that you said you thought first it will just work with younger children. But you’re finding all ages.
Marci Melzer 18:30
Right! Well remember, it’s all about the parents, right? The parents see my videos, and then, “Wait a minute, I have an older child. Or wait a minute I have a child with this going on. Or wait a minute I have a child with that going on. Can that help me too?” And, inevitably, because I didn’t know because we hadn’t tried it yet. They had enough confidence in me through the videos that they saw and what I was doing to give it a try. And it turns out, like I said, the first kid I worked with was you know, there, I didn’t work with the child at all. I just work with the parents, by the way. And I train the parents and their child was two, and they talk super fast. Usually within a week, the two year old starts saying more words, but remember, their overall language is limited. These older kids, the four year old that I started who was doing nothing but echolaic talking, “Old McDonald’s, Old McDonald’s”, screaming in the store, throwing things off the shelves, you know that kid. This kiddo in two weeks, changed from that situation at the grocery store to asking for 13 different items by name, spoken language within two weeks.
Emmalou Penrod 19:39
Wow.
Marci Melzer 19:42
Because, and what the mom said, and this is what I love about this, is that my kid was waiting for me to figure out how to teach her. Because these other ways that she’d been taught, this is a four and a half year old who been in the system for a few years already. And it had gotten no farther than extreme anxiety and “Old McDonald’s, Old McDonald’s”, you know, and was refusing the iPad, was refusing the packs, was refusing all of those other things because she’d already hit that three to four year old threshold and still wasn’t using spoken language. But this mom got her kid talking. And within two months telling stories, okay. And older kids who are older than 10, for example, and they’re using some talking, there was a lot of mumbling, there’s a lot of anger, there’s a lot of that frustration and stuff where it’s really locked in there. With this strategy, these kids are telling stories in weeks. I mean, it’s not perfect, of course, but it’s their own. It’s not prompted. It’s not scripted. It’s not I want x. It’s their own language. That’s why it’s not great because, you know, parents are programming in with these tech systems and tablet systems and stuff, this robotic language. And it’s almost more disheartening to hear your 10 year old child say, “You want a cookie.” when they want a cookie, you know what I mean? Because they’ve been programmed so much by these questions and prompts and whatever, and you’re like, “Man, my kids older than 10, is he ever going to get speech right?” And then you blow it off, and you’re like, “Wow, we’re just one of those autism families. And we’re always gonna have this.” Because that helps you get through the day, it helps you get through the day, and feel better about yourself and whatever, but I’m here to tell you, it can be better.
Emmalou Penrod 21:44
And I can see what this would do for the child’s self esteem. My observation as I taught special ed students, students with special needs in high school, is that we have this core curriculum, all these requirements, and I felt the most important thing I could teach them is to believe in themselves. And you are teaching them to believe that they are capable.
Marci Melzer 22:14
Yes, I’m teaching the parents to believe that they’re capable. And I’m teaching them, too. When I equip and empower the parents, I train them to equip and empower their kids. And when you’re equipped and empowered with confidence and language knowledge, you’re gonna talk, especially if you’re a kid. Because like I said, they don’t stop communicating. They start communicating from the second they’re born, they start communicating, it’s just not speech yet. And that’s why instead of speech delay, or speech disorder, all that I call all these kids late talkers, because they’re just not talking yet.
Emmalou Penrod 22:49
Which is really, and and I love that, not making it a problem.
Marci Melzer 22:57
Right? It’s not a problem. They’re just late talking, doesn’t mean they can’t, doesn’t mean they won’t, doesn’t mean they don’t have 100% potential to get there. They just need the right equipment and empowerment to get it going. Because they were late walkers. I mean, you know, a lot of them. They were late potty trainers, they were late eaters, they were late other things. And parents work through all that stuff. Why can’t they work through speech? And it’s because I think of that inability to accept responsibility, number one. Because they, you know, it’s programmed by the system, give up, give us your kid and we’ll teach them to talk, you know, there’s that. But then there’s the other thing of, they just don’t know. Nobody’s helping them. You know, there’s that drop off your kid. I’ll see you next week. You know, my number one recommendation for any therapists who are listening to this is cut your therapy sessions in half. Spend a little bit of time with the kiddo cuz they love you and you’re fun and you’ve got bubbles or whatever you’ve got. But spend that time teaching the parent. Listen to the parent. What problems are they having? Because they’re leaving your session, and they’re crying in the bathroom at night because their kids not talking. And all you’re offering them is, “See you next week.” And they need more. They need help. They need support. They need coaching to get through the struggles of their daily life with these nonverbal kids. And when they understand how to do that and give them language for those things. They talk. They do.
Emmalou Penrod 24:28
Yeah, yeah. I love it. Marci, this is amazing. I am so glad that you are sharing this and you’re doing this for families. So how do they contact you?
Marci Melzer 24:44
All right, so resources are available for parents everywhere. The place to start is the website, waves of communication dot com. There’s a 90 minute masterclass. You can watch there. It talks all about what language facilitation is, why things are probably blocked up in your home, and also what you can do and how to use the rest of my resources. If you’re a YouTuber, I’ve got 350 plus videos, new videos every week on my YouTube channel with practical strategies. Every single video has got a strategy. So if you’ve got no money in the world, you can go on YouTube and learn how to be a language facilitator. If you want the whole process, go on Amazon and check out the book. If it isn’t fun, It isn’t fun. And on the website, you can find the link to it, too. And then, like I said, there’s the free class. There’s the videos on YouTube. There’s a group on Facebook, Language Facilitation Resources, you can find it through the Waves of Communication web page. No matter how you want to learn. I’ve got a podcast, it’s all there. So the main idea that I want everybody to do is pick one, pick a video, pick a blog, pick up something, pull out a strategy, try it and see how you like it. And if it turns out that coaching is something that you think could benefit you, my process takes parents through, start to finish, hold your hand, support you the whole way. And I put people in a life-time program. You pay me once upfront, and I work with you until your kiddo’s a chatterbox. No copays, that’s next month and this, and you never know when it’s going to end. I work so hard with my families, I teach you to not need me right? I want you to be so good that you can teach your girlfriend how to do language facilitation. You know, like you go to the gym and you get a good workout and you’re like, hey, try this. I want to make strategies that easy, because I believe every parent can do this. And it’s my mission to help parents all over the world. And I’ve helped people in 20 different countries. Emmalou, it doesn’t matter. And bilingual, trilingual families are teaching their kids to speak multiple languages with language facilitation. It works. It’s easy, happy, safe and fun.
Emmalou Penrod 27:01
You give away a lot of free content.
Marci Melzer 27:04
I do. I do. Well, the thing is, nobody works like me. Right? Nobody is a coach and a language facilitation consultant. And, just like I said, I got into being a speech therapist in the first place to help people and the system shut me down. And I wasn’t helping kids doing you know, Ls and Rs and flashcards and stuff. This is helping me help people. And the people who work with me, as coaches, they keep the platform going, you know, the people who can afford to work with me, they help me provide the content for the people who I know can’t afford it. Because I know in the world of special needs, it’s tough financially. And we’ve got COVID and all that stuff. And like I said, I’m privileged to have the opportunity to be on podcasts like this one with you, so that you can help me share the information out with everybody, there’s a ton of it for free. I’m not one of those people who holds anything back. There are parents all over the world helping it out. So you can do it.
Emmalou Penrod 27:59
I love it. And that is so generous. You know, I have seen studies done that, you know, raising a child with special needs is like four times as expensive as a child, you know, normal, whatever that means. And so how generous to make it on any budget. You are providing help for parents on such a critical issue. And this is one that’s emotionally charged. It’s, you know, we’re using it as a predictor for success in adulthood. And you’ve made it so simple, so doable.
Marci Melzer 28:40
That was my plan. So I’m glad it reads that way. I’m glad people can get it. And you know, I just hope that a few folks listening will go check it out.
Emmalou Penrod 28:49
I hope so too. I highly recommend it. Marci, thank you so much for your time.
Marci Melzer 28:56
And thank you Emmalou. It’s been a pleasure.
Emmalou Penrod 28:58
You have a great day.
Marci Melzer 29:00
You too.
