Back when I first started practicing, I found language therapy to be super overwhelming. There were so many peer-reviewed articles, books, and seminars, and it was hard to sift through it all and determine how to apply it to therapy.  These days, we not only have to sort through lots of quality information…we have to ALSO sort through lots of inaccurate information.  This can make it really hard to make it hard for professionals and parents to figure out how to support kids' language and literacy skills with the little time you have with your students. I do what I do in order to be a solution for that problem. I get hundreds of emails each month from SLPs sharing their most common language therapy challenges, and although times have changed, the basic questions stay the same. I hear things like:"Where do I even start?""How do I know what skills are most important/how to sequence/what to focus on?""How do I write good goals?" When I dig a little deeper, I usually find that people are making ONE of three common mistakes. Now it goes without saying...these are SUPER common. I know because I used to do every single one of them due to lack of clarity and info overload. So if any of this sounds familiar, you're certainly not alone. These three patterns are what informed the framework I teach SLPs designed to build the language skills kids need to support language processing, literacy, and high-level strategic thinking. I’m talking about this topic because it inspired me to create the system I teach in my online course that teaches pediatric SLPs a system for boosting comprehension and processing,  Language Therapy Advance Foundations. I’m doing some extra live Q & A sessions in the members group and also opening up some 1:1 consult availability for members in July 2022, so if you’ve been on the fence about joining, now’s the perfect time to take the leap. If you’re an SLP who wants to learn a framework that will allow you to streamline your therapy so you can show up to sessions confident you’re giving your students the skills they need to thrive,  check out our enrollment page and learn more about how to become a member here. The De Facto Leaders podcast was formerly the “Are they 18 yet?®” podcast. As of November 2022, the name of the show has changed, and we’ve shifted from a focus on parenting to a focus on supporting clinicians and educators to design effective services for kids (but parents are still welcome to listen). Episodes published before November 24, 2022 will still contain some of our old branding. 
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