We recently connected with Jen Ehrhardt and have shared our conversation below.
Jen , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?
My parents are amazing, and with every passing milestone in my life, they get more incredible. They let me be myself. They encouraged my love of reading. They stoked my curiosity about learning in general. When I was a preschooler, they enrolled me in a book-of-the-month club, so I could establish my own library, which I shared with my own children and my clients.
When I got dumped at school and called my mom, she knew what had happened the second I said, “Mom?” There was never a single time I needed my parents that they weren’t there. Becoming a mom made me realize just how incredible my parents are. And I saw the way they parented me as a young child by watching them parent my own kids.
Not only do my parents adore my kids, they have always opened themselves to anyone that matters to me. After my divorce, they demonstrated how to love without expectation and guided me through adjusting to my blended family. They also demonstrated that there is nothing I can do to diminish their love for me. And that’s the most important gift they could give.
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?
My career combines two of my favorite things: children and language. Since I was a child, I’ve wanted to be a mother. I wanted a profession that would allow me the opportunity to prioritize my children when they were little, and work part-time. In 1999 I began my private practice after working in Early Intervention for Babies Can’t Wait. I saw clients in their homes or daycares. My three children were born over five years, and I prioritized raising them. But I maintained my license and certification, and worked occasionally, performing evaluations or seeing a neighbor to provide speech-language therapy.
As my children grew older and attended school, I began to see more clients. Now they’re grown and I work full-time. I no longer do in-home therapy, because I have a. treatment space in my home. I have dozens of bins of developmentally-appropriate toys and books. I have a strict no-screen policy, and never use toys with batteries. (If I do, I take them out.) One of my guiding principles for toys is THE MORE A TOY DOES, THE LESS A CHILD DOES.
I host interns from several different colleges, and these students are learning to become speech-language therapists. They learn by jumping into my practice, and spend their time on the floor playing baby dolls and trains. Every single intern I’ve hosted has gotten accepted into graduate school and become a speech-language therapist. I love this aspect of my job.
Because I treat children in my home, I have the opportunity to enrich the lives of the children I serve through the comforts of home. This includes my vast array of toys, as well as our two dogs! Many children request time with them, and choose to stroke them or throw a ball for them during their session. My dogs have attended obedience training, and they both absolutely adore children. I have clients who began therapy terrified of dogs, and now beg to see them during every session.
I serve children with communication needs, but this looks different in every individual. I see kids with articulation delays, phonological problems, apraxia, pragmatic disorders, such as autism spectrum, voice disorders, receptive and expressive language disorders, and a combination of all of these. I love all the children I serve as individuals, and I care for them beyond their communication needs. When I serve a child, I serve his or her entire family. I grow so close to many families that they become friends for life.
My treatment focus is simple – engage the child through play, and through play address communication challenges. Connection is crucial for all relationships, and I can find a means of connection with every child I serve. Once a child trusts me, he or she can learn and grow from there. My experience as a mom of three informs every aspect of my care. I counsel moms and dads on their child as a whole person, not just their communication needs.
Have you ever had to pivot?
My private practice was thriving when the pandemic hit. I was desperate to follow the guidelines and keep my family and clients safe, but like everyone else, I still needed my income. I had one kid in college, and within two years I’d have two more there. I had to find a way to keep my business afloat.
For three weeks, I brainstormed and watched the news for updates. I was trying to figure out if I needed to change my service delivery model, or wait it out. As the Covid deathcount rose, I continued to investigate safe options that still allowed me to serve families. I paused sessions for three weeks, and completely reworked my business.
Thank goodness I had tech-savvy college neighbors who (virtually) walked me through the process of setting up and using a Zoom account. Before Covid, like many people, I’d never even heard of Zoom! My intern and I met each week in a parking lot wearing masks and carefully exchanged a bag of books. She created Google files from each page of the children’s picture books. I chose the most captivating, language-stimulating selections from my vast children’s library, which includes many from my own childhood!
After practicing a few sessions with my neighbors, I began virtual sessions with my actual clients. We took a “picture-walk” through the books, and found connection among the pages. We made silly faces. We had scavenger hunts. We invited the dogs to participate for variety and novelty. We made the absolute best of a tremendously inconvenient and difficult time.
The parents of my clients called the weekly speech therapy sessions the highlight of their child’s week. They loved our special visits on the computer, iPad, or even an iPhone in the car. I blew bubbles and sat outside. I pulled favorite toys off the shelves and reminded the kids of happier times we’d shared and would share again.
Not only was I transforming private sessions, I also had to flip WordPlay, my group communication-enrichment classes. Trying to get 10 to 12 children five and under to attend to me was like keeping the collective attention of a tree full of squirrels. They muted themselves, talked over one another, opened pop-up ads, and disconnected the sessions.
My intern and I did our best and learned from our mistakes in real time. It was messy and unconventional and somehow it worked. There was nothing I’d experienced professionally or during my six years of college education that prepared me for serving children remotely. The over-arching theme of that time was: keep going. I kept my sense of humor and I cherished the children I found on the screen of my laptop. I reminded them of their speech goals and loved them through every target word.
Eventually we phased out the virtual sessions for most kids, though some with family health concerns continued to meet over Zoom. I couldn’t believe how “easy” an in-person session felt after wrangling the technology and attention span of preschoolers for months. When I look back on that time I am most proud that I didn’t give up when I met obstacles. Because honestly it was all obstacles for weeks on end. Each session was obstacles. Each child had obstacles making the sessions infinitely harder than they would have been in person.
But I told their parents the same thing I told myself. Don’t give up. Keep going. A baby step forward is still a step in the right direction. Progress is progress, no matter how small the increment of change.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
I absolutely adore my team: my billing coordinator, my assistant, and my three college interns enable me to serve children and the families who love them. They extend my reach because the tasks they handle free me to do what I do best – to provide speech and language therapy to as many children as possible. I am also redeveloping my website with the help of two Georgia Tech graduates.
All these people on my team have specific skillsets that are different from my own. And I trust them to do what they do conscientiously and independently. After I explain what I need, I know that my team will do what’s necessary to accomplish their tasks. I don’t hamper their success by checking up on them. Nor do I micromanage their work.
If they need clarification, I’ve fostered a safe environment in which they can ask questions. They understand that mistakes are safe with me. If they do something wrong, we talk about it. We discuss what we can learn from it, and how we can do things differently going forward. Just recently we had a discussion about an issue I struggled with in my practice. I explained how I changed my mindset about an issue, and the growth that resulted from that enlightenment.
All my interns were so grateful that I shared authentically and vulnerably about my own struggles. I love empowering my team to think for themselves and to share their passions and expertise with my practice. Surrounding myself with smart, motivated people makes me a better clinician, and makes my practice more effective.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.storyofwordplay.com
- Instagram: @jenniferleighelliott
- Facebook: Jen Elliott Ehrhardt
- Linkedin: Jennifer Elliott Ehrhardt