[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome to Pixar Parenting, the podcast where we explore how to raise kids in a world full of screens using science and curiosity. Today's episode is about how speech and language develop in children and how screen time, technology, and our own habits as parents shape that journey. We will learn what speech therapy really is, the surprising ways it goes far beyond fixing sounds and what the latest research says about how digital media influences language and emotional growth. We also get into practical tips, how parents can make screen time more interactive, the role of modeling our own tech use, and some of the most exciting advances in assistive technology that give kids new ways to find their voice.
So I'm very excited to welcome Denise Ford to Pixel Parenting. Denise is a speech language pathologist and executive director of the Child Development center of Marin. Also known as Speech Marine. Denise brings deep expertise in childhood apraxia of speech and in integrating technology into therapy. So welcome, Denise. I'm so glad to have you here. Thank you. Thank you for your time.
So let's start by explaining what exactly is speech therapy? What do you actually do in a speech therapy treatment or session?
[00:01:28] Speaker B: Absolutely. So we as speech therapists, our official name is speech language pathologist or speech language therapist. And so what most people think about when they think about speech therapy is maybe a kid can't say their R or that they have a stutter. And really what we do is we work with children, yes, that have stutters or that have articulation delays or disorders. So that's a sound error. But we also look at, like, the phonology, so how children are acquiring the rules of our sound system. So that looks at, like, the way that sounds are made, the way that syllable shapes are used. If you think about the German language, which I do not speak German, but I know that if I saw a bunch of consonants together, I would think, oh, maybe this is German. And in English, we usually only have two, at max, three consonants together.
So learning those kinds of rules, that would be appropriate.
We also look at motor planning, so the brain to the mouth, the signal that's happening there, whether or not there's any weaknesses, and then we go into language. So language development, language loss after an accident, such as a brain injury or stroke.
We look at social pragmatic language, so how we interact through gestures, through body language, our social language that we use, such as slang, greetings, turn taking, the rules of conversation.
And then we also work on memory, cognition, problem solving, as well as swallowing. And so that's one that people don't normally think of when they think of A speech teacher, but we work on feeding with children who are picky eaters who have a swallowing disorder.
Adults also, but I'm a pediatric speech pathologist. I'm thinking about this from the, the realm of pediatrics. So children who may have disorder in their swallow function, disorder in their ability to organize the bolus in their mouth pre swallow.
So we have actually a very wide variety of things that we work with in speech therapy.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Indeed. Yes. I didn't know about the swallowing. Yeah, it's. Yeah, but it makes sense. Yep. So because, you know, the podcast is about screen time and technology. So let's, let's tie it up and I would love to hear your experience on and what you know about what the research says on how does screen time affect speech and language development?
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Whatever.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Yeah, you know about that.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
So in language, we work on not just verbal language. So what we hear and understand and what we say and speak, so that's receptive language and expressive language, but also that written form. So what people don't realize is that we are also experts in reading and writing because reading is going to be that receptive written form of language and writing is going to be that expressive written form of language.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: And does that include like telling stories and storytelling and structuring the mind for that or that's.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: So, yeah, absolutely. That would be about language organization. So if you think about, you know, verbal storytelling, we have the ability to use the right syntax, the right grammar, use the right, like story elements, be able to use the vocabulary for sequencing, all of that. So that can be done verbally or it can be done written as writing, expository, writing a story, a little narrative.
So those are both areas that, you know, telling a story verbally or telling a story in the written form are areas for a speech language pathologist to work on as well.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: Okay, super interesting.
So, yeah, how does screen time affect children's speech and language development?
[00:05:37] Speaker B: So there's more and more research coming out about the screen time and how it's impacting children and their associates, their speech and language development. There are two different ways that I'm going to talk about more so. And one would be the social emotional development.
And so I was looking back and getting ready for this and trying to find some studies just so I had real meaningful information.
And one study was showing that, again, these are newer Studies show that TV exposure between 6 and 18 months of age was associated with emotional reactivity, aggression and externalizing behaviors. It also showed that children that had higher screen time usage at four years had lower levels of emotional understanding once they got to the age of six years. So if we were implementing at four years of age, over those next two years, we saw that there was less emotional, social emotional growth that was happening. And then the same thing that prolonged from six to eight years, those children at eight years of age were showing less levels of emotional understanding.
And specifically in gaming, we're seeing that it impacts that emotional immaturity as well. But more so for boys than for girls. It might be that there is a heightened interest in boys for a certain kind of gaming versus girls. So it didn't really go into, you know, what the girls were playing versus what were boys were playing and how that might have impacted the social emotional maturity. But you know, as I said earlier, part of our realm is working on that pragmatic language so that social language and being able to understand and be able to relate our emotions appropriately. So while that also goes into psychology, language is super.
I'm like, they're matched together very, very highly. They're very intertwined is the word I was looking for. So that's just a little bit of information about that social emotional development.
Another piece would be that even if there is a highly stimulating activity on the iPad or on the TV, a lot of people love to have Ms. Rachel on. They think Ms. Rachel's great, that's fabulous. But we also need to have a caregiver watching with us. So that way we can relate it into the real world as well.
So we want them to understand. While Ms. Rachel might give a pause time and try to get the kids to interact and, you know, Dora will say, now it's your turn. You say it. It's teaching that back and forth, which is really wonderful. But if we don't have somebody right there with us, we might start making that relationship and not transferring it over into the real world. So having a caregiver participate in screen time makes that screen time so much more beneficial for them.
People say, you know, wait until two years of age and then maybe a high quality television program would be appropriate again. So Ms. Rachel or going into those Dora or, you know, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is a lot of that call and response.
Those kinds of interactive programs are better programs.
They're going to help support that cognitive development.
They're going to, a lot of times encourage imaginative play. I'm thinking like a little bit older. There's Gabby's Dollhouse, which is really getting into, into that imaginative play.
So that can be really enriching for their social and language skills.
However, that needs to then be parlayed into their real world.
So it's going to always be best practice to be integrating these things into the real world as well. So particularly for children who are living in poverty or have other disadvantages, the TV is going to be bigger and higher boost for them because they don't have the ability potentially to have those experiences in their day to day life. If they have the ability to have those experiences, it's best to go out and get those experiences in real life. Because interacting with a person is much different than interacting with a screen.
Now, diminished interactions between the caregiver and their child can negatively impact the language development. So if the child's always watching the screen, even if there is a back and forth and the parent is, and the parent is not interacting with them, they're not going to get anything beyond what that TV show is doing. So one example that I give to parents a lot of the time for children who might have decreased expressive language so they don't have as much verbal output as I was walking down the street with my daughters when they were like three and there were crumpled up leaves on the ground and you know, it's the fall and one of them said, mama, that one's broken, why isn't that one broken? And the TV isn't going to say like, oh, walking down the street, guess what? You might see some leaves and some might be crumpled and some might not be. And so at that moment we talked about, oh, how these ones must have just fallen and these ones have been down here for a while and they've been stepped on. And so therefore they've gotten crumpled up and they're breaking, you know, and when I'm walking down the street, I'm not thinking about these little differences, but our kids are thinking about these things and they're seeing the world a different way than we are because they are new, it's all new to them. And they have these questions.
And so if we are always doing this just facilitated language and not allowing them to express and come up with things and ask questions, we're going to stunt their, their growth in their language and being able to draw connections and draw meaning.
So I say that not to shame my parents whose kids can't say as much. I say it because when we think back to our own, when our children are infants and they're not yet talking, a lot of times we as parents will narrate what we're doing because that's what we've been told to do, is if we narrate and we talk through the process and we just talk to them, they're going to be getting that language.
However, as the kids get a little bit older, we stop narrating everything that we're doing and we start responding to them.
And so sometimes our kids might need a way to.
To ask these questions if they verbally can't do it yet. Right. And so it's the same thing. Bringing it back to what I was originally talking about is if we're watching this Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episode, well, we've learned what Toodles is going to be able. What tools Toodles is going to bring for us and be able to. The kids can make a choice out of the three, which one would help in that situation. But it's not allowing the kids, when they're out and around seeing things, to be able to build on that language development if they're not having these interactions with real people.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: Total sense.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: It's the back and forth. Right. That builds human relations where they learn, especially at a very young age, but at any age. Right. Like 3, 4, 6, 8. Yeah. They come up with these questions and they need answers. And yeah, they're observing everything. And also, we'd love to hear our thoughts on the modeling because for us, it's also hard to get off the phone. Right. And we're one. We're not emotionally available because we're just checking email, looking at WhatsApp, whatever.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Then they probably stop asking.
Maybe they don't stop asking questions, but they ask less questions because we're not available because. No, we need to model that very hard thing to not be on the phone.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. We're showing that there's something that's more important for them to view as more important than that interaction with them. And I'm so guilty of this. And my husband is very good about not just having his phone in his hand scrolling through things, but I will have my phone scrolling for things. When we're watching a show together or something. Or, you know, not necessarily when we're playing a game. When we're playing a game or doing a story that I'm really there, but if it's something that I'm like, half in, you know, it shows them that, like, actually watching this movie wasn't as important to me or like, while you're doing that art project, being involved in it in some way wasn't as important to me. So. Absolutely. It's kind of modeling that we can just. If something's not as important to you, you can just Withdrawal right from the world around you.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: Yeah, so.
So it's not just about their screen time, but also our screen time, which is, in my experience, the hardest anyway.
So how is technology transforming your profession, speech therapy? And how is it impacting the children's communication skills?
[00:14:38] Speaker B: Absolutely.
So I was talking earlier about the child, like maybe not being able to ask the question about the leaves. So that brings in assistive technology.
And assistive technology can be done in many different ways, but one specifically is assistive technology device for communication called an AAC device. And so there are actual devices that you can get from companies or. Now a lot of times there are applications that you can put on the phone or on your iPad that will have icons that, as you touch them, that will speak for you. So it'll give a voice to somebody who maybe doesn't have a voice at that time or maybe doesn't feel comfortable using their voice. When I was at one workshop, there was a young man in his 20s who has autism, and he has a variety of degrees from college. And he is able to verbally communicate, but he prefers to use a device to communicate. So, you know, he has a degree in psychology. He was a very impressive young man.
But it, the autism made wanting to communicate verbally more challenging for him. And so therefore, you know, we had a whole like question and answer segment with him. And so it has given him a stronger voice and more, and he's felt more comfortable with his voice using that AAC device. For our younger kids, we might not know if they're going to be able to be verbal communicators, but while we're working on it, we shouldn't stop the language. So, you know, when we're talking about speech, we're talking about the sounds. When we're talking about language, we're talking about our ability to take those words and put them together meaningfully. And so just because a kid can't talk yet doesn't mean that there isn't language developing yet.
And so we want that language to keep developing. How that happens is through that back and forth interaction. And so we can use that AAC device to allow the language to keep expanding, allow the children to be able to ask those questions about beliefs on the street while we're working on being able to put those speech sounds together.
And, you know, we live in a world where we verbally communicate. I previously was a teacher of the deaf. Parents were always very wary of sign language, but I would always assure them, if your child is going to be able to speak and Hear and use those pieces in communication, they will drop the sign language eventually because this is a speaking world. Right? It's the same thing with the AAC device.
Most likely, you know, I give that example of that young man, but most likely the kid is going to drop the AAC device if that verbal output then increases. But we shouldn't stunt the language growth just because the speech is holding them back.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Some people may use like speaking to text, which is really great for somebody who might have, well, like an auditory processing disorder.
So I'm thinking about one of my high schoolers. He also has autism and has slower processing. So his teacher can wear a microphone that can then take his words and put it into text across this individual's computer. So that way he can also read along like closed captioning.
And so that helps him because having that visual input assists him in understanding. That same individual also has apraxia of speech, which makes being able to verbally output really challenging. So the longer the utterance, the more complex the motor plan for him, the harder it is. So if somebody doesn't understand him, he can pull out his phone and he can type it and then show them. So that's been super beneficial for him.
We have amplification systems for people who are hearing impaired.
So I had a microphone that would just be around my neck and I would talk and sign during class.
And each of my students would have a system that was individualized to them and connected to hearing aids. So it would take my acoustic signal and amplify it even more so in their hearing aids. So that can be really beneficial in the classrooms. I went to a workshop last year where the presenter was completely non verbal.
And so the entire presentation was done by them typing. And then it would go up on the screen and it would be automated with like an AI voice. And so, you know, we had a two hour presentation from somebody who was non verbal but with a PhD.
So it's giving amazing ways that it can help with communication skills. When we think about children with like a stutter, there's delayed auditory feedback. So they wear a little device. It slows down the speaker's. It takes your own voice and delays it, so it slows it down.
And that slowdown then gives you a, a slower rate because of that auditory feedback loop has been slowed down, which a lot of times can decrease or take away the stutter. It's not a hundred percent, but a lot of people have found that to be beneficial.
And then we have visual feedback. So like a volume meter for People who might be quieter or too loud and can't modulate their voices, there's biofeedback.
So I've actually used an ultrasound device with my students. I have an ultrasound machine at my clinic. And I had a child with a motor planning disorder, also apraxia speech, who was in fourth grade and still couldn't do A or a G sound. And I started to wonder if, like, he was even able to get his tongue back there. And. And so when I used the ultrasound, I saw that when he swallowed because our tongue does that same movement that his tongue was able to go back there. So I said, do you see where your tongue's going right now? That's where the sound is. That was the first time we ever got a G was in that same session, which was pretty exciting because we had worked on it off and on since he was two years old, and here he was in fourth grade. And likewise, I had another student who was always doing a G for a D. He could do a T, but we couldn't. The T and D are the same sound. If we say T and D, our tongue does the exact same thing. Our airflow does the same thing. It's just one, we have a vibration of our vocal folds to make it louder, the D, and the other one, it doesn't vibrate.
So he could do his T, but we couldn't turn on the voice for that. As soon as we turned on the voice, it would go to a G. So again, I showed him with. With the ultrasound machine and that session, he was able to do a D for the first time and say, daddy for the first time. And he was. I don't remember how old, but it was somewhere in the middle of elementary school.
So, you know, the ultrasound machine is not going to fix everything in one session like that for everybody.
But there's a lot of amazing research going on right now through Dr. Jonathan Preston out of Syracuse University, on using that for, like, the R and things like that that are less visual. So that way they, people, the kids and adults can see what's supposed to be happening. And then for our children with written language disorders, there's a program called Learning Ally, which will read. So basically, like, if you think about audible and you can decide how fast or slow you want it to go, but that has access to pretty much every single textbook that's out there. So every book, textbook. So kids who have dyslexia can follow along with, like, reading at school. So these. There are so many different ways that assistive technology can help or technology can help our kids in a variety of different ways. You know, typing with a keyboard for people with dysgraphia so have a hard time like writing, informing letters.
There's just so many different things.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: It's fascinating. I may want to try the ultrasound for the R because you're focused on English. But like, for instance, the R for the Spanish is so hard to do for kids.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: So are there any specific apps or resources you recommend for supporting speech development for parents?
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Yeah, there are a lot of different resources out there. We use a program all the time called Articulation Station. It's by Little B Speech. It's actually going away because now they have like a new subscription program, I think, or something. But essentially you could purchase every sound or you could purchase certain sounds. And so we had every sound and it would take it from words into little phrases. So if we were trying to get the G, it would have like go and it would have like you go. And then I want to go to the store into a sentence. And then it would have little shorter stories than longer stories. So it would kind of take it through this, what we call the articulation hierarchy.
And so if parents wanted to practice at home, we would say, hey, if you want to purchase this specific sound, you know, we are working right now at the phrase level. We always want families to work at the level below us. We want it kind of like homework from school. We want it to be something that they've done at school and that they can be successful with. And so they should be able to go home and do it and be mostly successful without help. So we'll say, hey, they're at least 80% accuracy in words. We're in phrases now. So you practice it in words while we practice phrases. So you do positive practice at home. So there are apps like that that parents can use for help. There's one that is kind of just like a fun one called blah, blah, blah.
And that's a good one for maybe the kid who is a little, little bit hesitant to try to repeat after you. Our little ones are very smart. A lot of times families will say with their like 22 month old, like, they're just really stubborn or really shy. And so they won't like try to imitate when we want them to do something.
A lot of times it's that even at 18 months that we see these kids know that they can't do something and so they don't want to try because they've already kind of tried on their own. And you didn't realize it, and they couldn't do it. And so it's easier for them just to not do it than to do it, like, try and not be able to do it.
And so suddenly, as they're in speech therapy and they're. And we've gotten through past that, like, okay, I don't want. I'm not going to try into it. This is a safe place. You can try, and it's okay if it's wrong. And we're going to get it together. And once they start get it, parents are like, oh, my gosh, they weren't shy at all. No, no, they weren't. They just. They couldn't talk. So the blah, blah, blah app is just a little silly one that has, like, little faces, and when you start making sounds, it moves along with you and does it so that, you know, it's just reporting for the child.
There are obviously, like, the different apps for the AAC devices, and those would be trialed with a speech pathologist. Having you take those home and try them and see what's working for your kid. That should always be trialed for, you know, a few weeks and seeing whether or not it fits with your family. Try a new program and see just what. What is working best for your child in your life.
There is a program called Speech Blurbs, and that's kind of like the articulation station where it has different levels. I believe that they also have, like, a homework program now where they can.
You can say, like, okay, I'm gonna assign this to the families to take home.
As far as, like, language development, I really love the Toca Boca apps. That's a.
That's a company. They've got, like, hair salon and hospital and all these different, like, imaginary play worlds where you can do different things.
I wouldn't say, like, don't have your kids do these things by themselves, because doing it by themselves, they're just dragging and dropping and moving things around. But really, these are meant to be used to encourage language. So, you know, like, oh, let's make her hair long, and you can make the hair grow, and let's change the color. Let's make it wavy, or let's make it really short so you can get different vocabulary words in. And, like, do we like that? We don't like that. And even the.
The customer at the hair salon sometimes will be like, oh. Or like, big smile. Like, oh, how did they feel about it? You know, they seem surprised by it. Or they'll have, like, big smiles and hearts and Stuff. And so what part, you know, we just did something. What do you think that they really liked? And so using these as ways to expand language, not just putting them with the applications to your first. The same at the beginning. Exactly, exactly the same thing with like ABC PBS kids. Those are just online platforms and not apps. But you know, going to those are always really great because again they have like interactive games that you can do with your child.
There's a program called Boom Learning that has Boom cards. And so those can have.
So like I make them and then I can say to a parent, hey we've been working on these. You can do this for positive practice at home. Look for this deck. And so it could be you know, putting sentences together or understanding like tensions of verbs or you know, some of them are as easy as just asking like who is it for a kid to start asking questions. So one of them is like there's a door and you can click on it and it goes knock, knock, knock. And then you say who is it? And then you move the door and it's a different animal on each page or whatever. So you can then say it's blah, blah. What can we say to blah blah blah. So there are different, different decks in that that you can go and find that have been made by speech pathologists, by teachers, things like that. And you can look for, you know, preschool age or toddlers or school age and find ways to support your kid.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: Love it. Super practical. And I'm gonna add all those links in the show notes so people can just go and click. And also I want to let the audience know that this is what you use and this is non commercial. We're not advertising any of these apps.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: No, no we're not. Yes, that's true.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: So yeah, that's super practical and I may use some of those for voculary, especially in English since we're lacking that at home.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: So another way that we integrate is using like for home practice we I have the children record themselves. I think that video recording and video modeling is really important.
And so that's a fun thing for kids to do at home. They can video themselves, they can go back and look at themselves, they can see like what their strengths and weaknesses are and make kind of goals towards things as well. So we'll use it for fluency. So that way if a child is maybe not recognizing that they have a stutter or like when it's happening. So that way they can just bring more awareness and self monitor and. And I don't want to Say that it's not okay to have a stutter because it's totally fine to have a stutter.
What we do want is for an individual to make the choices as to whether or not they want to use any techniques or not. It's their choice as to, like we want them to have the techniques and then be able to implement them if they want to. So we will use self monitoring so that way they can see when it's happening, they can understand when it's happening, and then they can go back and use strategies in the clinic to knowing that when they leave here, they're welcome to use those strategies or not. The same thing for articulation. So sometimes, like especially with the R, the W is a lot of times what people will do instead. So instead of rain, they'll say wayne. And so I'll say like, okay, you're. But you're still moving your lip. Let's try not to move our lip because your lip is taking over. And then you just go back to that motor plan of using your W.
And they might not feel that, but then when they see it, they're like, oh, wow, okay. Yeah. So being able to just in. In. In the mirror, they might not be able to do it at real time, but when they go back and actually just watch and they're not doing anything else is when it clicks. And then also for home practice, I will do something with a child and we'll do it together and they'll be really strong at it when we do it together. But then when they can't, when I'm not there with them, it's harder. And so then we'll take a video. I had just one teenager that we would say things together. This is an individual with down syndrome and apraxia speech and he was hearing impaired.
So we would literally like, we would put our hand to our throat and say cup.
And at the end where there, where there's a P, I would do this, this visual for our like lip popping. And so we go cup.
And so he would do it on himself and I would video him while we were saying it together. And then he would take it home and his mom said that he would just practice and watch it in his room and do it with it. So, so video modeling is really a huge part that is very, you know, as far as tech goes, very low tech and very efficient. And then I would say that like Zoom has been super or Google Meet or any of those. Just video telehealth has been really important because it allows us to get to individuals who might not be in an area that have a speech language pathologist or have those kinds of supports or they might not have a family member that can drive and take them someplace. And so those low income and low service areas tend to be able to get better access to speech and language support.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: In your experience, Zoom works as well as in person for speech therapy?
[00:32:42] Speaker B: It doesn't. I wouldn't say it works as well for some of my kids. It does. It depends on the child. It depends on if how and involved the parent will be like a younger kid. But I have individuals that are in San Diego and I'm in San Francisco and so they wouldn't have apraxia specialists nearby them. And so therefore I'm able to do this with mom right next to them and we're able to do it together. And that tends to be when I have the greatest success also with our written language kids so that we can do like reading and writing things just fine online because they can have it printed out.
We do that. I forget what it's called, but there is that little camera that takes what's like it views what's on your table and then puts it up on the screen so they can write and I can see exactly what they're writing in real time and everything. So we found that Zoom sessions have been really successful.
It's harder with a 2 year old. But again if we're coaching the parent and the parent is doing a good job as being like a parent therapist, which not every parent is made for that role and that's absolutely fine, then that, that works as well. And you know, if it hadn't been for Covid, we would have probably at that point I was only seeing one child via telehealth and it was not super successful at that time. But it was also on FaceTime, which was. Is not as engaging. It doesn't have all the different like bells and whistles that Zoom or Google Meet or something would have in order to draw them in and share the screen and all that stuff. So.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: Yeah, and then it was. There was a learning process during COVID so.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, but we had to learn really fast or we were, we were not going to have a business anymore.
Yes, indeed.
[00:34:26] Speaker A: So what new trends are you seeing in speech therapy, especially with advances, you know, like with technology and AI and all that. It's happening.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So there are some exciting things that I'm are not quite out there and they're kind of getting trialed and getting out there. My daughters were Part of this AI feedback for home practice.
So what they did is they took a ton of kids that were a certain ages and a certain number of them had to have speech difficulties. A certain amount of them had to have typical speech development and they had the kids go through and do a bunch of speaking tasks and then they used that information.
This is again, Doctor, Dr. Jonathan Preston out of Syracuse. He's all about doing the technology work and he's really brilliant with this stuff. So they took all this information and are now putting together an AI feedback program that I've like gotten like a 30 second glimpse of. And it will essentially, I believe.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: Be.
[00:35:33] Speaker B: Guided by the SLP to tell the parents what level to do. So that way maybe if they can only get into the office once a week, then they can do the home practice twice a week under the supervision of an slp.
And, and the AI will give feedback to the child as to if it was correct, what was different about it, what they should try to correct instead and give visuals.
So that's exciting because, you know, potentially it can make it easier access for, for people to get consistent practice. The downside is that these things are going to cost a lot of money. It's probably going to be like subscription. There's a lot of. When I was at the American Speech and Hearing association last year, there were a lot of subscription services for like homework integration.
There's one in Silicon Valley that is being trialed and I was looking for the name last night and I couldn't find it.
And essentially whatever we're doing, we can pick what homework and it all gets sent to the families and it's all very integrated with technology. But we're in a teaching profession in the speech and language world, so there's not a lot of money for all these different subscriptions. So while there are all these things happening with AI and you know, different devices and the apps and all the different things, there is, you know, ultimate slp, which is like a learning a whole, a whole platform that has all these games and all this different stuff that, you know, parents can use as well. But all these things cost money and it's an industry that's not very wealthy. So it'll be interesting to see kind of how all of this gets integrated.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And how fast.
Yeah, yeah. It's a change, definitely technology.
And eventually we'll lower the cost. That's what usually happens. It starts very expensive and then it starts lowering until it's available everywhere, maybe.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: A few years, or the cost gets passed through to the parents, which is also tricky. Parents are already paying a lot of money for therapy and then to take on those. There is one that was pretty cool that one of my kids is doing where he's recording his voice and he rerecords, like, every six months to every year because he has severe motor planning challenges. And so we practice this set of. Of sentences, and then when we feel like he's gotten stronger with them, he records his voice. And it takes all the different sounds and everything that's put together, and it AI then uses their voice for an assistive technology device. So previously your device would be, you know, you pick like, little boy, and then it's a little boy's voice or whatever that is talking for you. But this is actually taking your child's best version of their voice to the assistive technology device. So that way, when they're typing in or pushing the icons, that it's actually their voice, because maybe they can't put together a long sentence, but they could put together a word. So there are some cool ways that our. That technology is allowing kids to access their own real voice to be able to communicate.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: That's really cool.
Nice. Could you tell the audience where can they find you? Where's your business located? Website and all of that. And I'll add it to the show notes, too.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Okay, so we are at the Child Development center of Marin, formerly known as Speech Marin or Speech Therapy Marin. So our website is www.speechmarin.com and we are just north of San Francisco by like 10 minutes in a small town called Mill Valley.
And you can reach me from that website or denisepeechmarin.com.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: Okay, perfect. Then I'll add it to the show notes.
Well, thank you. Thank you so much. This was fascinating. Yeah, technology, it's really powerful for these kind of things. Thank you so much.
That's it for today's episode of Pixel Parenting. I hope you live with a better understanding on how children develop speech and language and how screen time can both help and hinder that growth. If you want to learn more about Denise's work, you can find her at the Child Development center
[email protected] I'll also include links to the apps and resources she mentioned in the show notes. As always, thank you for listening. And if you enjoy the conversation, please, please subscribe, share with a friend and leave us a review so more parents can join the conversation. Until next time, stay curious, connected, and keep learning.
