We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alexandra Princiotta Lowe. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alexandra Princiotta below.
Alexandra Princiotta, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We love heartwarming stories – do you have a heartwarming story from your career to share?
When I lived in Europe, I worked as a speech therapist at a school where speech therapy and special education was not as well known as it is in the US. I started working with an adorable boy with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) who often sat in the corner of his kindergarten class all alone. I trained the teachers and staff to help him with transitions, where he would not retreat to the corner alone as often. We used visual schedules and sentence starters and this helped the boy in school tremendously. He lit up when he saw me! During our time together we did things that were within his capabilities but were also challenging for him, such as following a recipe for making lemonade, where we would check each item and instruction off of a list we had made together. Later that year, the class put on a school play, but the teachers thought that the boy would not be able to participate. I ended up accompanying the boy on the stage during a dance and both he and the class were ecstatic. His parents were so grateful that I helped open the teachers’ minds and advocated for their child. Though accustomed to ‘following the rules,’ the teachers privately thanked me for modeling advocacy for children with special needs. Without realizing it, I demonstrated that when working with children, inclusivity and a welcoming heart are the most important ways to draw out their engagement, not having them sit quietly completing worksheets or memorizing lines in a play.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I was originally a school-based speech pathologist but the large caseload (often more than 50 children!) deterred me. While I gained great experience working collaboratively with teachers, I knew I wanted to use more of my knowledge on early language development and speech sound disorders. I started working for agencies, providing speech therapy in the homes of families after school. That’s when I encountered my true path; working directly with the families in the children’s natural learning environment provided me so much joy. Fast forward to today, I solely work for myself, providing speech therapy in-person and via telehealth. I am confident in the therapy I provide at my private practice, AKP Speech Therapy, because I am able to hone in on the niche pathologies that I am passionate about. In regards to my clients that are children, I am interested in language delay, autism, speech-sound disorders, and feeding problems. Having completed a rigorous myofunctional therapy course (AOMT), I confidently treat children with lisps and other speech sound related issues. Myofunctional therapy looks more in depth at the anatomy and physiology of the individual’s mouth and it has been amazing collaborating with doctors treating patients before and after tongue tie releases. Have you ever heard of a child in speech therapy for the /r/ sound for years and years? They likely need a speech pathologist with a myofunctional background. I am grateful for my experience learning about myofunctional therapy because it also has helped me provide more efficient feeding therapy. Additionally, I work with adults who have aphasia (people who suffered a stroke). The flexibility in having my own private practice allows me to specialize in disorders I will never stop learning about. If I don’t feel confident in treating a certain pathology, I refer to trusted colleagues.
I am proud of the recent publication of my first parenting/children’s book, A Day with Daisy: Learn 10 Strategies from a Speech Language Pathologist WHILE Reading to your Child! I wanted to create something for parents and caregivers that exemplified the strategies SLPs use with their clients in a way that was approachable and easy to absorb. The beginning of A Day with Daisy has the explanation of the 10 language facilitation strategies parents are able to implement in their daily routines. Then comes the story of Daisy, a 2-year-old girl with a language delay. Her parents use the strategies with Daisy throughout the book; the speech bubbles are meant to be read aloud to the child, while the footnotes on the bottom stating which strategy is being used are for the parents.
I don’t tell people this because I feel like no one would believe me, but my own daughter said one of her first words, “uh-oh” while we were reading A Day with Daisy! The feedback from ‘Daisy’ fans has been positive and what I was hoping for. I wanted to demonstrate what speech pathologists do during sessions and how families can do it too! A particular review from another SLP said that, “The early intervention world needed a book like this!” Of course this book is not to replace speech therapy, but to act as a tool for families in conjunction with speech therapy. One can also use these strategies with typically developing children to support their language development. It has been fun and inspiring to create ‘The Daisy Speech Books’… oops, yes look out for another book coming out soon!
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Many SLPs my age can probably attest to this – unlearning what we were taught regarding goal-setting for neurodivergent people. As speech pathologists, we work on pragmatics, or social language, so many goals for our clients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) would be something like, ‘work on eye contact,’ or ‘greet peers/teachers and participate in a conversational exchange.’ What we didn’t realize was that these goals are not very accepting of neurodiversity or how different brains operate differently. We thought we were helping children with ASD read social cues by teaching them about eye contact, but recent studies show that maintaining eye contact may actually spur an uncomfortable overstimulation of the brain for people with ASD! It is important to create pragmatic goals that are designed to prioritize the needs of neurodivergent people, not having them conform to neurotypical social behavior. Not all neurotypical people feel comfortable entering a room and greeting everyone, why should we expect anyone to have to do this?
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
My ability to connect with children, and with people in general, has helped me build my reputation and create long-term relationships, receive referrals, and have wonderful rapport with both my child and adult patients. My mother tells me that I was great with young kids as a teenager and I received the same feedback from my advisor in graduate school. Connection is truly important in speech pathology for it is both an art and a science. Mutual trust, vulnerability and that connection (the art) is essential to drive measurable results with patients’ communication skills (the science). To truly know when to push and challenge my patients, I must know them as a human being – their likes and dislikes, their personality – and develop a friendship. It’s an intimate relationship – we often spend upwards of an hour together, either online or in their home. Connection is crucial to make progress because both the therapist and the patient need to want to be there. Progress happens when we are enjoying our time together, regardless if my patient is 3 or 83. I am able to easily make strong connections with people because I come from a big family, spent my teenage years babysitting, and worked as a dance teacher to toddlers for many years. Needless to say, I had a lot of experience working with children before I was even in graduate school. Humbly, I’d like to think that my sense of humor also helps create lasting connections, and comes in handy on days when my patients are feeling down or discouraged.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.akpspeech.com
- Instagram: @akp_speechtherapy
- Facebook: AKP Speech Therapy PLLC
- Other: Amazon to purchase A Day with Daisy https://www.amazon.com/Day-Daisy-Strategies-Pathologist-Development/dp/B0CGL4GSMV/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=a+day+with+daisy&qid=1704470507&sr=8-1