Someone once asked me if I was being pretentious when I said I was a Speech Language Pathologist. He wanted to know why I didn't just say Speech Therapist. Well for starters that is not my title. Yes SLPs do speech therapy, and we are called speech therapists quite often, but that is not our true job title. I am sure you are thinking I am just being snotty. I promise I'm not. I don't care if someone calls me a speech therapist. In fact sometimes I call myself that just to make things easier. The reason we don't go by speech therapist is due to what our job encompasses. Speech therapist implies I only work with speech (like stuttering and articulation), but that is a small part of my job. SLPs work with articulation, language, pragmatics, swallowing, feeding, voice, etc. Language especially makes up a huge amount of our casework. Language includes anything from working with children who do not communicate verbally to an adult who has had a stroke or Traumatic Brain Injury. It also includes working with children who have difficulty with grammar and vocabulary. My best friend works with individuals who have had their larynx (voice box) removed and now use a prosthetic, patients who have had strokes, and she works with babies and adults who have disorders in swallowing/feeding. Other friends work in schools like me. We help children with something as simple as making their "wabbit" sound like "rabbit" to helping a student with significant developmental delays or complex diagnoses learn to communicate without words. The point is we are all called SLPs, but we have jobs that are quite different.
Unfortunately, lately I have spent a good deal of time complaining about my job because of paperwork, policies, state regulations, scheduling, meetings, etc. All of this often takes up more of my work time than I would like. Special Education can look like quite the obstacle course when looking at ARD paperwork and listening to a flood of acronyms.
All of the paperwork, policies, state regulations, scheduling, meetings, etc are in place to help a student succeed; however that doesn't make the paperwork enjoyable. Even with all the not so enjoyable parts of my job, I can without a shadow of doubt say I love being a Speech Language Pathologist. The great really does outweigh the bad. In honor of Better Hearing and Speech month I decided to make a list of just a few of things I love about my job.
1. Hearing a non-verbal child's voice for the first time. I have had the privilege of working with a few children this year who did not speak. The first time one of them said "no" was one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard. Working with someone for 6 months and then suddenly hearing their sweet voice is amazing, even if it is to protest.
2. Kids say the funniest things. Kids are hilarious. They come up with the craziest things. Most of the time they have no idea how truly funny they are.
3. Watching someone do something they couldn't do before. For example, hearing a child call everything a "him" and then suddenly you hear that same child use all their pronouns correctly is very exciting. Grammar can be quite exciting.
4. Themes. I love themes. In graduate school I had a clinical supervisor insist we use themes in our therapy. I didn't like it at the time. I thought themes were silly and time consuming. Now looking at my theme calendar I think themes are the best. I even have my students asking me what the theme is for the week. It makes therapy fun and gives me structure. When you can dedicate a whole week to pirates and accomplish a great deal in speech therapy you know it is going to be a good week.
5. Hearing a parent say they can understand their kid better. When a parent tells me, "Hey this speech stuff is working, I can understand what my child is saying" it is pretty great. Knowing the child isn't struggling as much to share their thoughts and knowing a parent is less stressed because now they understand their child is nice to know.
6. What other job gives you the opportunity to crawl under a table to retrieve a child. Yes there are days I am trying to get a child out from under the table and thinking, "Really kid." Makes me wonder what is so exciting about that table. And of course those days often have me saying things like "not again" or "I chose this". When I am comfortably sitting in my chair at the end of the session, thinking "boy that kid looked happy under there" its not so bad. Plus it is a good way to burn a few calories.
7. Eating. No, not me eating, helping others eat. I haven't had the opportunity this year to work with feeding/swallowing difficulties, but when I was in the nursing home for a short time I did. I had one patient who couldn't drink without having it go down into her lungs. We figured out if her drink was thickened to a certain consistency she could safety drink. Seeing how happy she and her family were when I said she could thicken her coke (or even wine) and drink safely was great. She was so happy to be able to have something she had been without for awhile. Being told you can't eat and drink, especially as an older person is a really hard loss and helping someone regain some of that normalcy is exciting. I hope to someday work with those disorders again.
8. Other forms of communication. Watching and teaching someone of any age to use a different form of communication is one of the most rewarding parts of my job. Being able to see someone communicate effectively with pictures, gestures, facial expressions, or even iPad is such a special experience.
9. Crafts. I do a lot of paper activities in therapy so kiddos can take it home and work on it for practice. I love paper crafts. In other words it is awesome that I get to make stuff at work.
10. Therapy materials/toys or lack there of. I like puzzles and kids are like little mini puzzles. SLPs and families often do not have access to a variety of materials. Finding ways to make therapy fun with a pencil or paper cup is a puzzle. Creating a language rich environment anywhere and everywhere can sometimes be a fun challenge. Nerdy perhaps, but fun.
There are some not so great things about my job, but there are so many wonderful things that make it all worth it.
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