77: The One About Stuttering with Nina Reeves

Today, we are joined by award-winning fluency specialist Nina Reeves. In this episode, we discuss fluency assessment and treatment, what not to say to a child who stutters,

“and why you should not write percentage goals for children who stutter.”

You're listening to the speechy side-up podcast. This podcast will cover the flip side of traditional speech and language therapy, so you get inspired and learn from experts in the field. Here is your host, author, A.A.C. Specialist, and Machete Lover, Venetal Look Back. She and her guests are serving up some informative and fun topics in speechy side-up.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the speechy side-up podcast.

If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming.

This podcast is produced every week for your enjoyment. You can also follow along on Instagram @speechysideup. All links are in the show notes. Now, let's get into the show. Today, I'm joined by an award-winning fluency specialist Nina Reeves. Nina currently serves as staff fluency specialist for several school districts near Dallas, Texas.

Her private practice is dedicated to children and adolescents who stutter, and she travels extensively, presenting training workshops on topics related to fluency disorders. Nina's contributions to service delivery in the schools was recognized by the 2013 Rowland Bend Hatham Award for contributions in the schools from the American Speech Language and Hearing Foundation. Welcome, Nina. Thanks so much, Venetal.

It is such an honor to have you on this show today for anyone who is not familiar with your work.

“Can you tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do today, and how you've got there?”

Oh, yes, you bet. First of all, thanks for so much for inviting me to chat with you. About working with students who stutter. I've put an SLP for a really long time, but in the interest of brevity, I'm just going to break your question down a little. I basically started as an SLP in the cornfield to Villanoi, but I'm currently a school-based therapist and private practice clinician in the verbs of Dallas. I will tell you that I actually became a speech pathologist

because of my own experiences with speech therapy. I was in speech therapy from about three years old till about eighth grade because I had a class call it when I was born. And so misprints,

my full speech therapist was such an important person in my life that I always knew I was going to be

in SLP. Interestingly enough, I had no intention of getting into fluency disorders. I basically, when I first met my, when I met my first student who started in a rural district in Illinois, I kind of knew pretty quickly that I didn't know enough to be helpful for him. So I jumped into learning and I went to everything I could get my hands on and I read and it was

“kind of like that black hole that just sucked me in. It stuck. And now that's what I do and I continue”

to learn and grow every day in that one area along with trying to make sure that I don't become a one-trick pony. But you know, now I do all the things you described in my bio, but I'm also an author and a co-owner of a publishing company with my writing partner, Scott Yaris. And we're

always busy trying to do, trying to help SLPs be a more comfortable and competent with studying.

Well and you've definitely accomplished that. Your story is just amazing and thank you for sharing about your history with attending speech therapy and how you kind of got into the area fluency. I would like to talk about the assessment for fluency and the test that you recommend for SLPs who are screening and assessing young children who exhibit disfluencies. Oh yeah, that's a good question for us to start with. I feel like the best assessments that we

can use for students that we suspect have a fluency disorder are really the ones we're familiar with and the ones that can encompass the entirety of the disorder. I really like to make sure that I obtain a really good thorough case history first and I have some go-tos and they include this sort of combination of what IDEA lets us have, which is portfolio documentation. So that would be things such as transcriptions of language samples to determine not just how often they stutter, but what

kinds of stuttering they're exhibiting and what kinds of non-stutter disfluencies we see. Lots of

communication environment as well as my own observations. And then I combine that with both

“normed reference and criterion reference assessments. Things like and this isn't an exhaustive list in”

any way. The talks, the test of childhood stuttering or the SSI-4 and those are helpful to to measure what we see on the outside and I say that with emphasis because so many times just what you see on the outside the moment of stuttering that you can see is definitely not the entirety of the disorder but those two tests are there for us to help us in that area. I also like the behavioral assessment battery which includes the communication attitude tests and some other checklists and

questionnaires that help us get at the thoughts and feelings of the child as well as these stakeholders surrounding the kiddo. I like well and of course I guess without fail for students over the age of

“seven I would always use the oasis and of course that's something my co-author did with his co-authors”

the overall assessment of the speakers experience of stuttering and at the districts where I work it's not considered a complete assessment unless you've got that oasis if it's appropriate for that child's cognition and age. Very, very helpful. Thank you for sharing all of that. I was actually going to ask if you included a behavioral assessment which I'm sure you do. I'm trying to think of the professor that I used to have at UCF it was Van Brutham or but they created a you know I'm

talking about I do and I can never pronounce her last name either but she was she worked with Dr. Brutton

Brutton. Yes. Yes. They are the behavioral assessment battery peeps. Okay. Wow that kitty cat and the cat are the attitude test. Those are now boxed inside the behavioral assessment battery. Okay. Right on. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. It's like coming back now. I mean I don't know if you know but my area nowadays like you said try not to get too patient hold but it's more AAC but I love fluency and I would say that's probably like my second favorite area of speech if I didn't get so far

down the rabbit hole with AAC but it was because of that that professor. I mean she was very

influential and I just I love treating it in the clinic. So I I always call her Martín V because I

could never get her last name right so I just call her Martín. There you go. Yeah. Yes. That's her. Wonderful. So just to kind of summarize you said like a case history different transcriptions behavioral assessment battery that SSI for questionnaires observations and then the OASIS for

“older children, right? Uh-huh. Okay. And yeah and I think that's a great summary and the reason”

and there's other assessments I use like the A19 scale and this and that so they're all available. So I don't want to say that those are the only ones but when you look at those ways of assessment with getting questionnaires and interviews with students, you find out that you're not just assessing how often they stutter. It's how they think and feel about their stuttering which is there it's all within the ICF model, the the the World Health Organization's classification of functioning where we

make sure that it's not just what you see on the outside but there are reactions which are their thoughts and feelings and the things they do in relation to having a fluency disorder, the environment and making sure that we get plenty of information about how the environment perceives stuttering and reacts to it and then of course the impact which is where we in the public schools that's where we live is how does having the communication issue impact this child's

communication in academic non-academic or extracurricular settings which encompasses if you think about it social, functional and academic communication it's all of it and we want to make sure that we're getting a multi-dimensional assessment that that hits all of those areas. Yeah absolutely. All right well thank you for sharing that so there was I was reading one of your blog posts

percentages for fluency of speech. Can you explain why that is? Oh yes it's it's such an important

“question I'm so glad that you brought it up because it is one of the things that confuses us”

as professionals when I bring this up when I'm doing presentations and Scott and I talk about this

you saw probably two posts on that on our blogs and we always talk about it in our books and

everywhere else because we see the fear in the faces of our of our speech pathology colleagues when we discuss pulling back from that because many times in our profession it's what we were trained on in the past and someone told us this or somehow we assumed we got the message that we were supposed to make kids stop stuttering or you know we're talking school school age therapy and so sometimes that message flows over into well let me see if I can just get him to be more fluent

and and the reason that we need to have that shift happen is because we know that stuttering is

a neurologically based disorder and so there's the data that has been gathered on the speakers experiences of stuttering the more data we have about that the more we realize that what the listener sees on the surface is a very small part of the overall experience of someone who's stutters and so if that's all we're looking at and that's all we're basing our goals and objectives and our progress in therapy I like to call it chasing a grease page and and and this is why

“you know I I think we all know maybe Joseph Sheen's famous iceberg of stuttering where you can”

visualize that the the 10% of stuttering is what you see on the surface and all of the other clinicians and scholars that have outlined the complexity and the variability of stuttering over the

decades let us know that as we always say the most the only consistent thing about stuttering is

that it's inconsistent and so think about that let's take that down the line if stuttering is variable at its core then writing a goal for a percent of fluent speech is going to simply make us be asking to be frustrated and to lend that frustration to the children who stutter and their parents these are the types of goals that in my opinion create a due process waiting to happen and I'm going to illustrate that because I want to I want to make sure that no one

misunderstands what I'm trying to say it's let's take the scenario of a student who stutters who stutters at a certain percentage let's say on the SSI4 while he's reading aloud but he stutters at a different percentage on his description of a picture and yet another different percentage of stuttered and non-stutters speech in his description of a remote event so with all the language load and with all the differences in those speaking situations

not even the things that you counted that were on the surface are consistent and so if you try to do a percent of fluent speech then you bring a key at the end to one time when you're going to take data and maybe he makes that percentage in a certain speaking situation and you could do it the next day in the same speaking situation and maybe he won't make that percentage not does that mean he's not doing what he needs to do or you're not doing what you

need to do it really has nothing to do with your therapy at that point it has everything to do with the fact that stuttering is variable at its core wow that is so good thank you for

“illustrating that too because I think it helps to paint that picture do you have on the top of your”

head an example of a goal that might be written instead oh man I present on goals all the time in fact I'll be presenting on goals again at the Ashley Connect Conference in Dallas this summer but I want to say that if we're taught I have many different goals because it's addressing all of the

or a student have more flow in their speech or in my in my opinion have easier communication

because that's really what we're talking about and they whether it to be to decrease the the struggle that they have with a stutter or to increase the fluency of their speech so that they can feel more at ease and have flow well then that is wrapped more in the skill of a communication strategy so we would write a goal for in that area that one area for having to child demonstrate knowledge and use of a blank particular speech handling strategy okay out of this many times and so

“you'd write all of the things you need to write in a goal and how you're going to document it”

and what it's going to look like but you would do it on the basis of the skill that you're

trying to discover with a child not on the basis of a fluency count that makes a lot of sense thank you so much that was well I was saying it that it made any sense whatsoever no it definitely does and I can remember like seeing goals where it was more focused on the strategy using like you know the smooth speech or whatever strategy they were recommending for that kiddos that what you meant it is it is and and and making certain that we are we are thinking of strategies in that bigger

picture not just strategies for enhancing fluency but strategies for decreasing the struggle

with a moment of stuttering mm-hmm how I can how I can ease into my speech but how I can ease out

“of my stutters as well both sides of that are important if you're talking about helping a child”

feel like they have more agency in their communications love that makes a lot of sense man as we're talking I'm thinking about all these other questions I want to ask you but it's not fair because I've said you some questions over but you know I'd like to see this address and before we move on I'm just curious like if you have on top of your head or maybe this is something we could like talk about later or something that you could share maybe you would have a blog post about it

just like myths like common myths today that people still believe about stuttering and disfluencies that have been completely disproven oh I love it and you you didn't need to make me prepare for them okay so many of those off the top of my head you know we do a lot of discussion in trainings and in our books and in our you know practical tips and resources we have on our website that help us realize that there's the old information sticks around

you know in the zeitgeist of society because Ant Betty is you know not studying up on this

“stuff and she'll say something like oh honey you know I you know I think he stutters because he's”

talking faster than anything or I think he stutters because he had you know an emotional thing happened to him in the womb and I literally have heard these things said that IEP meetings and a lot of it you know there's some there's some cultural ones that we have to be very cognizant of the different cultures things stuttering it's it's caused by certain things and we also have to know that a lot of society still believes that it's about anxiety

that the the origin is in anxiety and it's not that has been just proven this is at a neurologically based disorder that has genetic influences for some students but it's it's it's origin is about the neurology and the complex interaction of factors that occur in a child's development and so we don't have a one-off answer to that but we do know that anxiety doesn't cause stuttering so good thank you and I should have known that you would be able to answer that on the

fly so I appreciate that I guess this kind of goes along the same lines too so another blog post that you had written about where was what to say and what not to say to children who's stutter so can you kind of expand on that for us I can one of my favorite questions

heard and nausea growing up that was never very helpful but that was well intended by the person

“they these are not things that people say to kids because you know because they want to frustrate”

them these are well-intentioned but not great over time pieces of advice that people in society give to kids who stutter and they come from not knowing what stuttering is and they come from trying to do a quick fix which everyone is looking for the easy way to do this and you know the the the thing that nobody wants to hear is that stuttering therapy isn't easy it's it's complex it's not not it's not not doable it totally is absolutely doable and absolutely can be successful

but it's not going to be a one two three and the advice that people give kids who stutter comes from ignorance of the disorder and trying to fix it in a quick way so things like my top eight okay stop slow down start over take a deep breath think about what you're going to say just relax and then when a student is trying to communicate with somebody they'll stop them and suggest user strategies it's do not like well they're trying to just talk right

and then the eighth one is everybody stutter is blatantly untrue everyone is disfluant okay we all have disfluencies nobody is fluent and some people stutter now that's the truth and so those are the things that people try to do or try to say to kids to try to help them out and they're just not that great in the long run are you looking for more high quality therapy materials published materials can be pricey and take a while to arrive digital resources on the other hand can

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“you but I think it's so frustrating when you spend money on your materials and they're not helpful in the end”

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stock up on some fun and engaging materials today that is so helpful thank you for sharing that so on the flip side of that what are some helpful things that people could say or therapists could say especially like you have me thinking about group therapy in the schools if they have maybe a child who centers in their group and then you know other kids that maybe are like have speech-related

goals is that a good group set up first of all and second of all like how do they address

the child who stutters their goals within a group setting great follow a question so let me let me go with the group question first and then I'll get to the things that we can do and say

“for kids and I think they'll blend nicely together the number one thing I want to say about”

grouping in the schools is that we do it every day with kids with various disorders and sometimes I think that when you say the word stuttering people get so frozen that they think oh my gosh you know maybe I can't do the same things that I do with my other groups and and I don't believe that's true I think that how you handle a group of various communication disorders with any communication disorders is how you would then handle if the kid who stutters comes into the

group you know just we're always mindful of the differences in the kids that we have in a group

working on this and you're working on this and it's all okay you know we all have different things

we're working on and if you set that environment in your groups then the child who stutters won't be singled out in a way that is stigmatizing because it'll just be the way we do therapy but we just

“have to be mindful of that and so I believe that groups can be a powerful thing I believe that there are”

certain topics in in stuttering therapy depending on the child that you may need to address somewhat separately but then bring it into the group because guess what stuttering isn't something that has to be hidden in a closet it's another communication disorder just like all our other communication

issues that we deal with and it can be talked about in matter of fact and supportive ways

I love that such a great point thank you for sharing that and thanks for the question because it leads us right into that idea of well what you know you just emptied my cup misnana like where eight things you know five of which I said to kids who said or not so you got to fill the cup back up and it literally isn't something it I can't tell you what to say but if it's because that's individualized you'll know it when you see it trust yourself as a

“clinician that you're not going to do or say something to create a problem for a kiddo I think that”

it's it's really about the messages that we sent so if we're cognizant of making sure that we're

not sending an unintended message that you're not doing something right if you're stuttering or you're not you know blank practicing hard enough or whatever it is if we are speaking and acting in ways that let our students know they're accepted and supported just the way they are stutters and all if we're acting as if it's truly okay to stutter all of it not just 10% not just this kind of stutter but not this kind of stutter if that's the environment that we're helping to create in therapy

in the classroom and at home and in extra curricular arenas then that child is going to hear what they need to hear that they're okay just the way they are because I'm still trying to figure

“out and I think you're a light-minded I saw your autism acceptance please not just awareness”

but autism acceptance yeah I think this speaks to the heart of all of us as professionals that we don't have to fix these kids to love them just the way they are we're trying to help them become effective communicators and by the way you can be an effective communicator and stutter that is so good wow thank you so much for sharing that such a good point I love that so this is going to be this is kind of cute but and funny so I am speaking from experience

when I was asking about the group setting because I went back and forth about should I be doing this in group should I be you know not doing this in group so I'm glad that I stuck with the group and you just click clear you know confirm that but I would notice that my other kids in the group had a lot to say to the child who stutter you know including the things that were not supposed to say so do you have any suggestions for that or is that just you know how kids typically talk with each other

oh yeah that's like I'm so glad you brought that up what a great um what a great experience to have or setting up a a communication environment that supports everybody right and so this is what a great learning experience for everyone to have for those each buddies to have um and for that young child who stutter or however old they were to become then the expert on stuttering and the advocate for himself over time with your support because I think it's you know setting um the

the communication rules okay is that's just part of what we do in a session um we we don't we don't point out anyone else's you know challenges or you know I don't call them the stakes please your gosh these are not the stakes kids who stutter it's normal and natural for them to have stutters in their speech we could paradigm shift that baby we could solve a lot of stigma issues but um you know so if it's okay to have you know some struggles with communication in all ways

making that sort of communication rule um is that is one of the first steps but then you know trying

to figure out you know how does that make other people feel and then talking about the feelings that might come up and not just for the kid who stutters but for the other kids in the group and so making that into a learned experience about how we accept people as they are and we are supportive of our speech buddies yeah what a great point I love the idea of setting the communication rules because and it might be a learn behavior you know maybe outside of speech the kids other kids are

hearing that and they are really doing it from a good place so they think um but it's like constantly

they're trying to remind the child who stutters to slow down you know use your techniques and it

might be that they're just hearing those you know things being said to the child and they think that they're being helpful but I love the idea of setting those communication rules because that same child is not

“correcting them on like their articulation errors or you know what I mean so I I appreciate that I think”

that's a really great tip. Well great point and and I think that this is all about um you're right that I I seldom see I seldom see people giving advice to a child who stutters in a negative way we just need to be very careful because the child who stutters may be taking it as a correction right and because they might you know they may be sensitive to that and so we can talk about it in that moment you know are you trying to help because I love that part of you that wants to help

but let's talk about what is helpful and what's not and what Johnny wants you to do and what he maybe does it. Yes such a great point you reminded me we actually had a conversation one day after like maybe the fourth session I was getting to know the kids and I asked the student who stuttered like how they felt about it and they actually were brave enough to express that they didn't like it that they wanted to try to to do like to get through their disfluencies by themselves

“and I think it did help the other kids understand I don't even know if I approached it the right”

way but I just felt like the right thing to do at that time because it didn't seem like right that they kept correcting him you know what I mean. I do and I love and one of the clues you have that you were doing some really good stuff is that he felt you said he felt comfortable he felt brave enough you set that tone in your therapy room that he felt brave enough to um to say what he needed and it wasn't going to be taken in a bad way so that's pretty cool. That's a good point

things I didn't even think about it that way but yeah that's that's very um reassuring and I I love those kids but moving on um I'd like to talk about therapy resources that you recommend to help school-based SLPs get started and use evidence-based strategies when working with students who's stutter. Oh wow so many things okay I have a ton of ideas and I'll do my best to be as brief as possible um I'm gonna forget something so I'm just gonna apologize on the outset that

“if I don't include everything that I think is cool that um I trust colleagues to go and find these”

things and and maybe I'll make a point of how to find the right things that'll be something we can talk about so that you feel more comfortable and confident as you're trolling you know the the internet for the resources that maybe you can become more of a savvy consumer of what you're looking at. I am gonna make a disclosure because obviously I'm gonna talk about a couple of the things that we've done and that we have out there so you know asha disclosure wise I make royalties and and ownership

interests and I have intellectual property and in some of the things I'm gonna talk about and not in others so obviously I think we did a pretty good job with our clinical guides

yeah we have one first school-aged stuttering assessment and therapy and one for early childhood

stuttering assessment and therapy because they're they're very different from each other in a lot of ways there's overlap in in some ways like in some of the assessment things but they're the way in which we approach early childhood stuttering assessment and therapy and school age are different and so we have some guides that take you you know from the moment you here can you come take a look at this kiddo to what's good for dismissal and I think those are very helpful to really create a

pull this from here and that from there but a cohesive look and and I think that's really important and because then you can find all sorts of other things once you feel like you know why you're doing

“what you're doing I I think that a lot of times I get asked about what about those it”

kids with fluency disorders and the co-existing issues in a ADHD and autism spectrum there's a newer resource out there because I get asked about it a lot it's called fluency plus it's Kathy Scaler Scott and it's from Slack publishers and it has different chapters on you know fluency plus other things and I think it's really helpful in many areas it's not going to give you everything you ever needed to know about all of those different areas but it'll give you a great start

and lots of resources for their learning I have my copy right next to me because I'm doing some study guides with some of the SLPs I'm working with at my district and then I think for seeing

stuttering is more than just stuttering as Scott you always says there's a couple of resources

ones from our company we're just the distributor of it because they're from England and it's hard to get that shipping from England it's called scamming scammering therapy from the inside one of the

“better books I've ever read on that sort of speakers experience I think it's very valuable”

to get past just the what are the techniques like what do I do it's like learning experiential learning which is so valid there's also another one called more than fluency and I'm trying to see it on my shelf right now I'm trying to see who published it plural publishing has that one and I think you know the idea the idea for finding the right fit for you and to have that evidence base I'd like to ask myself a couple of questions number one whatever I just picked up

are there citations in it do I know where that person got that information and who did the background of it I like to look at how older the citations that you know does the research stand the test of time has there been research on this since 1940 very important and then I really you know I learned this in graduate school I I have a friend who's a person who stutters and he's in marketing and he and I did something once called the savvy consumer becoming a savvy consumer

of of speech therapy for people who stutter we did a presentation and love that idea of that savvy

consumer and my professors always put in my head who who has done the research of what you're

holding in your hand okay if there's research how old is it has it stood the test of time and who has done it is is the only are the only people are the only research articles from the people who make money selling you what you're holding or have there been you know other researchers looking at whatever this is whatever is being proposed so those are just a few of the questions I asked myself when I'm looking for any kind of evidence based strategies with any kit I work with

“be it stood a ringer language I think you know it's important for us you know sometimes I think”

we do more research on buying a used car then we do on what we're using in therapy and I really find those questions help me mold the better evidence based strategies and resources that I take. Yeah such great considerations and ideas for resources as well thank you for sharing those. So I'd like to wrap up with a little getting to know you game and it starts with just sharing any good stories or therapy fails that you've experienced in and saying to you know you've said

even an SLP for a long time I bet you have some good stories. Oh wow yeah therapy fail the

one that comes to the top of my mind is the first kid in my stuttering therapy in the corn fields

by now I should give him free therapy for the rest of his life because I really I didn't listen

“to myself therapy fail okay I knew going in that I wasn't supposed to be doing I had some pretty”

good training back in the day I was trained by a then writer and trained guy who stutters and we I had an undergraduate course a graduate course and 25 hours of flimple practicum I know that's unheard of now in many ways for stuttering but I thought I was you know going to take the world by storm and I walked into my first school and like my brain just I just let my brain go I don't know what happened but the lady that was there before me had been writing

percents of stuttered speech goals and I thought oh she's been in the in the business for 30 years maybe maybe she knows what I don't know and so I started writing those and used them for a couple of years and all I did every year was just switched the percentage I didn't know what the heck

I was doing because the measurements never came out the data never the data never meshed

“with what I was actually doing in therapy I was I think helping him a little bit more than it”

looked like on paper so therapy failed don't you know not listening to yourself and letting other people tell you what to do that's a really good point yeah I think we can especially if there's someone we're experienced we can get a little self-conscious and not trust our gut feeling or our you know training but I love that you shared that story and your honesty so thank you for that and I didn't know that we have all done something like that at some point especially in the

beginning oh yeah I could tell you therapy fails from last week too but because it's not like I've only failed in therapy you know 30 years ago I failed I failed I picked myself up from you know moments where I go well that was an interesting idea all the time it's just a part of life um I left because during asha I created another Instagram called SLP on finished because I just keep telling myself I learn every day and I don't I don't think I ever want to be a finished SLP because then it's time to

retire yeah oh that's really good actually I'm glad you brought that up because just in terms of AAC like there's this new book that just came out and it's like hitting the you know the world by storm the SLB world by storm it's really got a lot of buzz around it and one of the things that they talked about is like how a core word of the week is not necessarily the best idea that really we should be modeling what teachers do with letters which is like not doing a letter of the

week by doing a letter of the day and up until this book which I just started reading last week like

I was advocating for a core word of the week and now I'm like oh man so yeah we never stop

learning the research isn't even like out really to compare the two approaches but it makes sense when we look at like how the letters are taught that that's probably better because they're getting more cycled exposure throughout the school year than if we were just introduced like one word per week or one letter per week oh that's cool so moving on I'd like to know what are three things you can't work with out espresso lots and lots of espresso I know you're a matra girl is that

what I read you're a matra just had one today yep I just I just mainline this stuff you know

“don't know for me just give me all of the caffeine I can have I think that's the first thing”

more of the fun funny thing the other thing I can't live without is colored paper oh we do a lot of reflective writing reflective drawing my students all have therapy binders where they are you know we're taking portfolio documentation every session not just quote and quote data I have my data separate right but this is there this is their work this is what they're learning about and then they're taking it and you know showing it to their parents or their teachers or

teaching others about studying and so I am a colored paper junkie and I know I know that's old school I know I should be doing I'm you know more more iPad stuff but my students think colored paper is

about is being open to learn from my students they teach me every day how to be a better therapist

“if I listen to them sometimes I think and this is you know our training we were trained to talk”

talk some somebody should be talking and especially in the world of losing disorders a lot of therapy is about listening and about silence and being open to that when we've been trained that we have to talk a lot is is one of the things I can't live about live without I love those and I am all about the colored paper as well are we talking like the traditional colors or like more fluorescent colors oh girl I love it that's great so what do you

enjoy doing outside of work you know I I'm gonna have to do a disclosure thing

that was a tough question for me has um I worked a lot and I'm trying I'm trying to find

“a better balance but you know to stay active I used to be a runner until I got hit by a car”

while I was on my bike and now I don't run anymore so I do a lot of cycling I got back on the bike I do a lot of cycling I like Pilates anything involved in travel especially with my husband we love to travel and experience new things but at home I'm learning to to enjoy bingeing a great story when I well I'm cuddled up with my cat and my husband just for a little brain drain and allow the brain to relax a little bit kind of fun I feel like we would really

get along because I'm about cycling as well and I'm sorry to hear that you got hit by a car that is like one of my biggest fears when I ride on the road down here in South Florida my husband's been hit my dad's been hit thankfully like they're okay I hope yours wasn't too bad that's a death okay good I'm a huge Peloton fan have you heard of Peloton I have heard of Peloton I don't have it because I like to road cycle okay it's very you know those commercials I don't know

I know I felt like I was like come on Peloton when they did that commercial and it was so controversial because I am such a fan it's like a little cult but you don't need the actual bike to use Peloton you can do it like on the app wow yeah oh you just made my day because I mean I don't see the point like I love the bike but I don't see the point of like purchasing it it's so expensive it's such a big investment when you can get like a regular bike and

I know actually another friend of mine or somebody that's on Instagram she got one through Facebook at a really good price and it was virtually brand new so nice stuff yeah all right last question what is one piece of advice you would tell your younger self well this is going to be no surprised because of how I asked the question about how I had to struggle of what I do outside of

work I would tell myself that too much of a good thing it's not always a good thing

it's got Scott Yars and I might my co-author and I have this conversation constantly because we're both crazy people with our work and we love what we do it's like it's such a good thing

“so I'm I'm always working I do it all the time and in all the different ways but I think I”

remind myself you know if I could tell my younger self to find that balance of work and rest earlier and stick with it I think you this might be a book I I feel this sort of connection across the wires but there's a book I'm rereading for like the third time whose title says it all and I don't know if you've ever heard of it it's called Present Over Perfect I knew you're going to say that I knew you were going to say that I was literally thinking at my head when you

started mentioning it well yeah yeah I made it together for actual coffee because yeah you know I think her title says it all and I think if I knew all of that earlier I could have found the balance a little bit earlier and it would have been easier to maintain but you know we love what we do and we didn't get into this profession for the money you know none of us is

want to help people to communicate because communication is so important but too much of a good thing

“can can be sometimes not a great thing yeah I like that piece of advice I think what you're doing”

is out of the best interest of the people that you serve I think if it was something that was selfish that you were doing a lot then maybe it could be really bad thing but you've just made such an impact on our field we are so grateful for the work that you've done and the impact that you've made so thank you from the bottom of our hearts and thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview

well I so appreciate that and you know we'll talk any time and maybe at maybe we'll see each other

at one of the conferences and can talk more about some of the books yeah I would love that well thank you again oh and we're can everyone find and connect with you okay well we're building more and more of a social media presence I feel like I'm the oldest lady on Instagram but I'm getting there you know I'm on Instagram at Miss Nina SLP and of course at Stuttering Therapy resources both of those places I have a professional Facebook page I don't I don't connect with my colleagues

on my personal page because you really don't need to see my cat but you might want to see some of the links that I'm reading about and that's Nina Reardon Reeves SLP and I also put those things up on Stuttering Therapy resources too we're on Twitter at Stutter Resource and we're also on Pinterest and teachers pay teachers so we're out there with websites and they can find me through

“my website NinaReves.com easy to remember it's my name and our website is it's kind of interesting”

we named our we named our publishing company exactly what it is Stuttering Therapy resources

so that it would be easy to do and so we're out there and we're always happy a lot of

you know that Scott's on Facebook a lot I'm doing the Instagram part of it and we're just really loving connecting with our colleagues and trying to help them feel more comfortable and confident with kids who Stutter because as you said it really is so important and so wonderful to connect with these kiddos and see them blossom yeah absolutely and it's so important that you guys are kind of

“meeting SLPs where they're already hanging out it's a lot of work and I think it's inconvenient to”

expect SLPs to do all this research and like you know go look for research articles but the fact that you guys are like you know meeting them on social media putting this information in front of them the information's going to be disseminated so much faster and it's going to be better for our clients overall so I really appreciate the work that you guys put into that yeah that's great thank you for thank you for having me thank you again Nina and until next time yeah before we go I wanted to

see if you like listening to these episodes every week do you want to keep hearing from these awesome guests and do you love that you can learn the helpful resources and tips for free my editor aka my sister and I spent a lot of time every week putting these episodes together so that they can be ready for you on Wednesday mornings we would love it so much if you would take a screenshot of this episode and share it on social media or leave a positive review and guess what every month I will

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