Arrow Speech Company

08/08/2025

Oh man, I LOVE all of this a ton! ✨

07/18/2025

05/26/2025

I’ve been away for the past week to celebrate this one…the one who made me a mom. She graduated last Thursday and I couldn’t be more proud!

05/16/2025

🧠 People often use the word “regulated” as if it is a synonym for “calm.”

⚖️ Regulated means your energy levels match the task at hand. Dysregulated means your energy levels do not match the task. Executive functioning skills, such as working memory, cognitive flexibility, and self-control, play a significant role in helping individuals regulate their energy levels.

🌟 Helping a child regulate can sometimes mean placing them in an environment where their energy levels match the setting. Other times, it involves helping their body meet its needs so that their energy levels align with the upcoming task. This can include strategies to improve executive functioning skills, such as practicing self-control or using tools to enhance working memory.

Being REGULATED means your energy levels match the task. It does not mean ‘calm’.
The image is by

02/17/2025

We are excited to play with our Critter Clinic, but we’ve lost the key! Any friends have a 3-D printer and would be willing to print us a replacement key? 🔑

02/06/2025

One million percent. All of this.

12/18/2024

I’ve talked a lot over the years about my autistic daughter’s scripts, and why it’s so important to understand that they often — very often, in fact — have meaning. (And that even when they don’t, they ALWAYS have a function. Hold on to that.)

Brooke’s language development was what we now know to call ‘gestalt language processing.’ That’s a mouthful of jargon that means that she learned to communicate by first memorizing and repeating chunks of dialogue rather than individual words.

To put it differently, she didn’t have the tools to create novel sentences, and was essentially stuck with the limited repertoire of phrases and “scripts” that she had on hand at any given time.

For the record, it takes incredible creativity to communicate this way, and I remain in awe of those who do.

Anyway, over the years, she not only began to build sentences brick by brick, but she started to take utterly delicious liberties with language, making up new words, combining old ones in the most imaginative ways, and making our common language dance.

But she also still relies on scripts. Most often, she uses them as a means to engage and interact (See: function 😉) They are comfortable for her, and nothing brings her greater joy than a familiar and predictable volley, repeated all day long, every day.

She also defaults to scripts in times of stress. And this is the part that I came here to share. Because this is where so often, autistic people’s communications can be dismissed when they’re actually really, really meaningful.

In the car this afternoon, we had a bit of a though time and Brooke was struggling. We had to do something that she didn’t want to do (stopping on the way home to pick up a vital medicine) and there really was no way around it.

When I told her that we didn’t have a choice, she shouted, “I’VE DONE A LOT OF STUPID THINGS IN MY LIFE!”

While that might not have “made sense” in the context of our conversation, it conveyed a lot of information.

I asked her if it was Linus’s line in “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” She told me it wasn’t; it was Charlie Brown’s.

I asked her if it was the line right before Linus lets loose on Charlie Brown, releasing all of his rage as the screen goes dark and the show ends. She said it was.

I asked her if she was telling me that she felt frustrated. She nodded.

The stress of the moment had blocked her access to words as individual building blocks, and she viscerally defaulted to her catalogue of scripts, each associated with feelings, and grabbed the perfect one to say, “This is making me feel frustrated and angry and impotent and I don’t like it one bit.”

Scripts always have a function, my friends, and they very, very often have a whole lot of meaning.

❤️

{image is one of a million photos that I have of Brooke and me mid-script. We took it at Children's Beach this summer, when it was chilly and windy. She's wearing my denim jacket backwards (more accurately, “Brookeward) and we're laughing at a Blue's Clues script.}

08/22/2024

This popped up on my Facebook memories today. 11 years ago my 6 year old daughter had a stroke. It came out of nowhere and it was scary and it was life altering and it made me who I am today. It is 💯 part of my story. While I am a speech-language pathologist, I am a parent to a young adult with a disability. I see you moms and dads and caregivers. Keep going!

08/02/2024

🏅 Had to jump on the bandwagon while poking fun at myself. 😂 Happy Friday, friends! 🏅

07/13/2024

Happy Disability Pride Month! When we know better, we do better. 🌈

July is Disability Pride Month. Do you find yourself avoiding conversations on disabilities? A disability rights activist shares ways to be a better ally and to destigmatize disability in America.

04/16/2024

I’ve been doing a little prep work tonight for one of my gestalt language processor’s sessions tomorrow. Planning to create some scenes on Canva around one of his special interests… Bluey! 💻🎨🖌️

04/09/2024

I have learned SO MUCH from Cari over the past few years! Autism isn’t a disorder. It’s a neurology and people (including kids) deserve so much to know their brain type.