What does it mean to “play with purpose?” Pediatric speech-language pathologist Emily Cohen shares her best tips! In this episode, Ayelet sits down with pediatric speech-language pathologist and blogger, Emily Cohen. Through her blog series, “Playing with Purpose,” Emily helps parents explore how to convert play and everyday routines into activities that are both fun and beneficial for their child’s language skills. Emily and Ayelet discuss what “playing with purpose” is, the small tweaks parents of infants and toddlers can make to get the most out of play and interaction, and specific tips for families with infants and toddlers to use in play (with concrete examples!) to maximize the developmental value. QUICK ACCESS TO LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE: The Hanen Centre Hanen’s “It Takes Two To Talk” Program Emily’s “Playing With Purpose” blog series Mr. Potato Head (affiliate link) Clear plastic bins to store toys (affiliate link) Learn With Less podcast episode discussing visual supports Fisher Price Piggy Bank toy (affiliate link) Learn With Less podcast episode discussing play with bubbles to promote development Learn With Less blog post on kitchen items as unique gifts for a 1-year old Emily’s recent favorite book on play: How Babies Talk: The Magic and Mystery of Language in the First Three Years of Life (affiliate link) CONNECT WITH US! Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest Emily: Website / Facebook / Pinterest TEXT TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE Ayelet: Welcome to episode 47 of the Learn With Less podcast! Today, I’m speaking with Emily Cohen, a pediatric speech-language pathologist, former special education teacher, and owner of Tandem Speech Therapy. Emily is passionate about helping parents explore the ways in which they can convert play and everyday routines into activities that are both fun and beneficial for their children’s early language skills. Emily, welcome! Emily: Thank you for having me! Ayelet: We’re glad you’re here. So, I’ve asked you today to come onto the show to speak a little bit about this term that you are calling “playing with purpose,” which I love, but first, let’s just hear just a few minutes about you, and what brought you to the kind of work you’re doing today. Emily: Sure! Like you mentioned, when I went to undergrad, I studied special education, and I taught for three years in the public schools in Michigan, which is where I’m from, and then decided to go back to graduate school and get my Masters in speech-pathology. So, I graduated about 10 years ago with my degree, and eventually ended up in Austin, Texas, where I live now and where I have my private practice (which I just started about 6 months ago)! Previous to that, I worked in a bunch of pediatric clinics with OTs [occupational therapists] and PTs [physical therapists] doing all kinds of fun play-related stuff in therapy, and over the course of my few years as an early speech-language pathologist, I was exposed to SLPs [speech-language pathologists] who are trained by The Hanen Center, and their “It Takes Two To Talk” program. And I was really fortunate, about 5 years ago, to bring the program and have SLPs in Austin trained, along with myself, and that just really informed how I practice as an SLP now, and in watching my friends have children, and start to raise young kids, really seeing how valuable play can be, and how fun it can be for parents when they really get involved, as well. Ayelet: Exactly! Yes, it’s so true. So, tell us about what it is to play “with purpose.” Emily: Sure! So, I have to give credit to my girlfriend, Shira, who gave me the idea. She, when I was starting my private practice, was like, “you know, you have all these really great ideas for me, for the toys that I play with, with my son, why don’t you create one of those subscription boxes where you mail parents toys and you give them ideas!” And there are fantastic SLPs who have had that idea, which is great! Ayelet: We’ve had some of them on here, actually! Emily: Yeah! That sort of piece of business wasn’t really interesting to me – running a subscription company – and so, I morphed her idea and decided to write a series on my blog about it. Really, the idea is about… you know, I think we hear a lot in popular culture about being intentional about our everyday lives. So, it’s really about focusing in and being a little bit more intentional when you’re playing with your child, and some little small things you can do to really focus in and build speech and language skills, doing things that you’re already doing. Without having to go out and buy anything new, or do all this reading and have to learn a lot of new stuff, but just kind of tweaking what you’re already doing! Ayelet: Yes! Exactly. Emily: I know parents are super busy, and don’t have a lot of extra time on their hands to be thinking and figuring out and planning a ton. Ayelet: Right. And I love what you said about how it’s just – it’s using the things that we’re already doing and already have at our fingertips, and then just making these minor changes. So, tell us about that. What are some specific little tweaks that parents can make to their interactions to make them more purposeful in their play? Emily: Yeah. So, I think that a really beneficial thing that we teach parents about in the Hanen program is about trying to sit and engage with kids when they play, face-to-face. We know kids learn language and speech from a few different things. And one of the things that they have to do is be able to watch us! So, when we’re sitting face to face with kids, they can watch us and see our mouths, and how we’re forming words and putting words together, and that’s going to give them better acoustics for listening, which is also a really important component for learning language! But the other important thing about it is that it lets us tune into what our children are doing. And lots of kids can communicate much more subtly than we might be conscious of, and so, it allows us to pick up, as a parent or a caregiver, on maybe some of those more subtle pieces of communication, like looking at an object like they might do when they don’t have the word for it, and then that allows you to give the child feedback. It sets up that reciprocal exchange that we have. They’ve done something, we respond, they do something again, we respond. Ayelet: Which is exactly what a conversation is! Very nice. Ok, so, great! That’s a wonderful place to start! What else can we do? Emily: So, I have some of my stuff that I brought with me here. So, some of my favorite techniques that I teach in the Hanen Program are ways that we can “contrive” and adjust the situation to provide more opportunities for kids to communicate. One of the other things that we have to do is provide kids with lots of repetition, especially when they’re learning a new skill. So, let’s see. I brought my Mister Potato Head, which is one of my favorite toys. If you go to my blog, you’ll see my first Playing With Purpose blog post is all about him! So, one of the things that I love to do with my toys is keep everything in… you know, these are clear boxes that you can buy wherever you like to shop. This helps with a couple of things! So, first of all, this is going to help with organization and cleaning up (which is, like, a really nice thing for you as a parent!), but it also allows us to control the situation a little bit more while we’re playing with young kids, but still gives them access to the toys and the things that they want. Ayelet: So, I just want to clarify for the people who are listening and not watching this video, we have Emily showing us a big plastic bin (or small plastic bin) in which a Mr. Potato Head type toy – or really, it could be any toy! – but this is a great strategy with something like Mr. Potato Head. There’s a little plastic bin that has a lid, and it’s closed. And you’re saying that this is a great way to sort of… that the child can see inside, that they can maybe be “incentivized” I guess you could say, to say, “ooh, I like that toy, I want that toy!” but you’re saying that when we have it inside the box, we can have a little bit more control over it. Right. Please continue! Emily: Yeah! And the other thing, since we’re describing what it looks like, in this case, (for SLPs watching, I have a Boardmaker image on here), but what I like to tell parents to do is to have a photograph of the toy, or maybe cut out a piece of the packaging and reuse some of the packaging that it came in, and affix that to the outside of the box. That’s going to help us both with cleaning up and with helping our kids request. Ayelet: I like that – this is the specific place where it goes, that everything has a home. Also, you can recognize it – it’s a visual support, which we talk a lot about on Learn With Less, as well. Emily: Yeah, and I think the photographs are often better for most kids… this is just how I have mine organized. So, what I like to do – like we were saying, this box happens to contain Mr. Potato Head, but I think any kind of toy that has a lot of different parts is going to be great for doing something like this. So, a shape sorter… another favorite toy that kids I work with love to play is that Fisher Price piggy bank that has all the different coins. So, again, that’s going to provide you with lots of opportunities for repetition with either the same vocabulary or the same skill, or whatever you’re trying to work on. And so, what I would do in that case… I would most likely keep the b
