Building Equitable Outcomes for Families with Young Children Through Access to Information

On this episode of the Learn With Less® podcast, Ayelet sits down with Sydney Bassard. Sydney is an ASHA-certified speech-language pathologist, with a B.S. in Public Health. Her clinical focus areas are working with individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing and those with literacy challenges. Sydney engages in research with these populations as well as clinical practice. With a passion for access to high-quality service and care for all, she takes the time to invest in each client and their family. Her motto of listening, learning, and advocating stems from the three principles that guide her clinical practice.

We discussed:

  • Sydney’s new book, “A Day With Mom,” which she co-authored with her own mother
  • The importance of health literacy
  • The fine line between “doing enough” and not doing enough for one’s child
  • How everyday routines can be developmentally beneficial
  • The importance of play, and what high quality educational materials actually are
  • Where to find high quality resources for families

Helpful Resources to Acknowledge For This Episode:

A Day With Mom, by Pearl and Sydney Bassard

Understood.org – great resources on early intervention and early learning

Free downloads for families and professionals from Sydney

Early & Bright SLP (formerly Mommy & Me Milestones)

Maximizing Natural Language Opportunities, Without Toys, featuring Joanne Cazeau

How to Use Everyday Routines to Boost Infant & Toddler Development, featuring Stacey Landberg

Parent Coaching and Routines for Early Language Development, featuring Cari Ebert

Free Infant/Toddler Development Blueprint: what are the four major areas of early development… and how can you use the pillars of Learn With Less® to support that learning, using the time, energy, and materials you already have?! Download our free blueprint today.

Learn With Less® Facilitator Training & Certification Program, helping educators and therapists create lasting impact in their communities with a high quality, evidence-based, “plug & play” program

Expand Your Impact Workshop Bundle: for early childhood educators and developmental therapists hoping to serve new families in their community and support themselves, using their existing skills

Learn With Less® Bundle: our best infant and toddler development resources for families and educators alike, including our bestselling books Understanding Your Baby and Understanding Your Toddler, our acclaimed family music album, recorded Learn With Less® “caregiver & me” classes, and a caregiver handout featuring ideas for carryover in the home

Learn With Less® Stories: Testimonials from educators who’ve provided the Learn With Less® infant/toddler family enrichment curriculum and families who’ve experienced our programming.

Connect With Us:

Sydney: Website / Facebook / Instagram

Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest

Text Transcript of this Episode

Sydney’s Book, A Day With Mom

Ayelet: Okay, welcome Sydney Bassard, to the Learn With Less® podcast. I’m so happy you’re here today. And I’m really excited to have this conversation with you, we have met all over the place on the internet. But finally, in November 2022, we got to actually connect and spend lots of good time together at ASHA in New Orleans. And we also around that time, it became very clear that you had just embarked upon the journey of publishing a book, which is incredible. So I wanted to make sure that before we get to the rest of the episode, we have a chance to talk a little bit about what that book is, why you wrote it, its name, and how people can order it, because I’m just very excited that my copy is on its way! Please go ahead and share with the good people.

Sydney: So first off, it was so great meeting you and getting to spend time together in person at ASHA. It was great to just finally get to connect with the people you’ve been talking with over the internet for the past couple of years. So the title of the children’s book that I co-authored with my mom is called A Day With Mom. The principle of the book is to really just tell the authentic story of middle class Black families: to show that Black people live everyday lives, oftentimes in children’s literature, Black children are put on pedestals of being extraordinary – they’re super smart, they’re scientists, they’re all of these amazing things, which can be true! But they’re also allowed to just be ordinary children. Everything doesn’t have to be rooted in being super amazing, and everything doesn’t need to be rooted in poverty and struggle. So that was our mission behind writing the book, and then everything in it is based on activities that my mom and I did as I was a child growing up, from making breakfast together, going to different book fairs, to just shopping at the mall and looking for a good sale.

Ayelet: Yep, that’s great. And tell us the name and the best place that people can find it.

Sydney: Yeah, so the name of the book, again, is a day with mom, and people can find it at artistmadridbooks.com. Please, please, please, we are so thankful for the people who have read the book, for the people who have shared the book with their audiences. But our real goal is just so people can feel seen and represented in this story. But also just to continue to make good connections with your kids. Everything doesn’t have to be an extraordinary experience, sometimes the simple things create those lasting memories.

Ayelet: That’s right. Fantastic. All right. Thank you, Sydney for that. That is very exciting. And again, of course, we’ll link to that in the show notes. So let’s get on with the rest of the episode. You and I have been in community on Facebook for quite some time now. And it’s just great to hang out with you in well, not in the flesh, but synchronously here now.

Sydney: Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to chat with you today.

The Trajectory of Sydney’s Career as a Speech-Language Pathologist

Ayelet: Yay. Why don’t you, instead of reading a bio out loud, it would be great to hear from you a little bit about your story, you know, what led you to the work that you are doing today? And what is that work?

Sydney: Oh, that is such a long story. But I’m going to do the condensed version today. So I’ve been an SLP for almost three years. And I tell people that I kind of ended up in this space by chance. I originally went to school to be a pharmacist. I was dead set on being a pharmacist. And then I took organic chemistry II, and found out that I was not cut out for the pharmacy life very quickly.

And so I was kind of in the space of not really knowing what I wanted to do or having a strong foundation. And that’s around the time that my brother found out he was dyslexic and had ADHD. So I ended up working for the reading center that he went to. I loved it, but I knew that I wanted to still have some of the freedoms that I would have if I had gone into pharmacy. So I found SLP, fell in love with the field from the reading standpoint, first, and then learned a lot more about hearing loss and working with children with hearing loss that use cochlear implants or hearing aids, particularly. So that’s kind of what led me here.

Then right out of grad school, I wanted to work on a cochlear implant team. That was my goal. And so I did that for two years within a children’s hospital and I absolutely loved my job there. But I really missed my family. So I decided to move closer to home last year, and now I’m here owning and running my own private practice, and doing a bunch of other jobs on the side, too.

Ayelet: Amazing. That’s so great. Well, I It’s always fun to talk to people who like came to the speech-language pathology worlds from a slightly different path, because that was my path as well. And I learned about the field much later in life, or realize that that that was a thing that condensed all of… basically all of my interests. And it’s always nice to hear from people who found this field more intentionally.

The Inception of The Listening SLP: Health Advocacy and Parent Education

So let’s hear a little bit about what you are doing. You run an Instagram account and social media existence, and of course, a whole website that is called The Listening SLP. And I would love to hear about what you’re doing over there, what your mission there is, and the message that you would like to share with families, because as you and I both know, but we want our dear listeners to know, that it’s very much in line with what we talked all about here at Learn With Less®.

Sydney: Yeah, so The Listening SLP happened kind of by chance. I had been following some other SLP accounts on my personal Instagram, and then ASHA in 2019, I was like, I can do this, I want to share! I really wanted to help and connect with students, was my initial goal. So that’s kind of what I did then, I was still in the midst of my clinical fellowship. And so I just stopped it. And then COVID happened. And I picked it back up, thanks to a really good coworker who’s now a friend of mine. But my mission at that point had changed. At the time, I was like, students need help and information and support. But what I really started to see more from practicing is that there was a lack of transparency with information.

My bachelor’s degree is in public health. It’s not in communication sciences and disorders. So I knew a lot from the public health aspect of what does health literacy look like? What is the importance behind it, and how we’re always wanting to get people to this “take action” step. But sometimes we miss the steps along the way of, we have to plant the seeds before we can get them there. So that’s where I shifted the focus of The Listening SLP. And I wanted it to be a space where health equity was at the forefront. We are no longer keeping information to a few but we’re able to share information with the masses. And so that’s really what has happened. That’s where my business tagline that really means a lot to me, of “listen, learn advocate” comes from.

Oftentimes, as practitioners, we are really instructed in grad school, that we are the professionals. And we know all the things – which is true from a foundational standpoint, from a pure knowledge standpoint of the information, we do know those things. What we don’t know is all the other things that’s going on in that individuals life. What we don’t know is how much they know coming into the situation. And so, being able to take a step back and give information freely is really what I want to do. I love the space that I’ve created now, because that’s what I get to do.

I love interacting with the parents and people from all over the country, all over the world, that have taken like little snippets of things that I’ve put together and they enjoy it. And I should clarify, this is not coming from me. I think sometimes people are like “The Listening SLP” or “Sydney said it.” No, no, no, no, no, pretty much everything that I put out is taken from either research articles or other resources that are available. And I have just compiled it in this way that is a little bit easier to digest.

Ayelet: Exactly, right. It’s all based in developmental research, or whatever it is, in terms of what researchers, what scientists what “experts” are saying and have learned, and you’re the venue, right? You’re the person who is putting those things together, and putting them in a more sort of easily digestible format so that families can have access to that information.

I love what you said about that shift between what we, number one, what we as professionals are taught, and taught to believe about ourselves or understand about ourselves that we are quote unquote, the expert, and that we come in, and our job is to “teach” and “give” information when you and I know very well that it’s actually… to do our jobs in the best way possible, to serve our clients and to provide them with the tools that THEY need to be able to be the best advocates for their families. That role is not of teacher and expert. The role is of co-host, right? It’s a collaborator.

Collaborating With Families: Using Everyday Routines to Build Language

I would love to hear a little bit more about your philosophy, your belief system and what the kinds of things that like you help families understand. Of course, that’s a big part of what we do here at Learn With Less® in terms of routines-based intervention and looking at what a family is already doing, what’s already happening in the home, and how we can build language around that. So I know that you have some great tips and ideas for how to build language in the home or in the community for that matter. And I would love to hear a few of those if you don’t mind sharing with the audience.

And what you said about how, Yes, we know that we have that knowledge base, we have the pretty deep understanding of what the research says the quote unquote “best ways” or lots of different tools and strategies to help build language in a young child’s life, for instance. But what we don’t know is the context, the context that we’re walking into within every given family. That piece is just is so essential. And I think the reality of what you said [earlier, before we started recording] about you know, yes, toys are great, toys are great, they’re great, but everyone has access to everyday things in our homes.

Sydney: Yeah, so I think the first thing that we have to realize is that parents are stressed. And that is okay to say. Parents of small children, it can be a very stressful time, it’s a lot of love, a lot of joy, but it’s stressful. And it’s stressful when your child is hitting those milestones, as we would expect. The stress is even higher when your child is not necessarily doing those things. You know, you have pressures from family, you have pressures, even sometimes from your partner and your spouse within the same house. Maybe, you know, feeling some tension in that relationship, as well.

Then there’s tension sometimes between the parent/caregiver and this child who they’re just wanting them to communicate. So I think the first thing is to recognize that parents are stressed. And oftentimes, we hear practitioners say, play-based and floor-based routines are the best. This is what people should be doing… without acknowledging that there’s so many other things going on outside of just, this parent wants to help, they still have responsibilities of cooking and cleaning and working a job.

So that’s why I love routines. Daily routines, hands down, are my favorite, from the standpoint of it can help alleviate some of that guilt that parents feel from not being able to carve out this time to sit on their floor. Or if that’s not their thing, they don’t feel pressured into having to make it their thing. So that’s what we do a lot on my social media, that’s what I do a lot in therapy, is how can we find out what your daily routine is, and then incorporate language structures?

The first thing as a therapist is I asked families, what generally is your routine? And then you have the people that say, I don’t know, we just kind of do things. Okay, well, figure out things that most people do every day, then. Most people are going to eat, most people are going to bathe, most people are getting in a car to go somewhere. So okay, there you go, you got three daily routines, I don’t really care when you do them. But there you go, you have them.

Helping families to figure out how they can incorporate those language skills into their environment. And that takes some humility on the part of the professional, because what you’re going to have to do is not come in with all the ideas and just spit them at the parent. It’s really more so a collaborative effort, because what I call things, I grew up in the South, so I might call something very different than someone who grew up in the north, versus someone in the Midwest or a family that’s coming from California. So making sure that we’re asking those things as well, when modeling those behaviors.

So I have a whole series on my page where we do building language within daily routines, and we model it with toys. But then I try to have a video, too. And now those are blog posts that live on my website. So if there’s a family that’s not you know, they don’t want to be on social media, that’s fine. It’s also in a blog format. And then I’ve been tagging the video at the bottom so that practitioners can show the demonstration as well.

Ayelet: Nice. We’ll be sure to link to those things as well. That’s fantastic. What are some of those, what have you from the feedback that you’ve received from both practitioners and families? What are some of the ones that have been the most popular or you’ve had a lot of feedback about?

Sydney: Oh, I think the one that came out about ice cream, hands down as been one that people were like in love with, because it was summer, you know, everybody was ready for a nice cold treat to enjoy. That one was a really popular one. I think the one that we did with going to school was another really popular one. And there was one on bathtime routines and bedtime routines, those were popular. And I want people to know that I don’t come up with all of these ideas of things to say aye my own generally before those posts, especially, that I’ve sent them to a couple other SLP colleagues, I’ve sent them to parents. I’ve even had some grad students look at them too. So they’re not just coming from me and my own brainchild, but a couple other people are giving their input as well. So there’s some diversity in the language and emphasis of each post.

Ayelet: Oh, that’s great. That’s really cool. I mean, I think it’s so key that one again, it’s coming down to like “the expert” versus a collaborative piece of being in community with other people and how that, depending on where you’re from, what language or what words you are utilizing, and it’s so – I love how you say that about within the English language itself, there are so many ways Is that people express themselves. It’s totally true. For those of our listeners who have not yet seen some of the videos or looked at your blog, I’d love for you to just break down. Number one, how do you define a routine? What does that look like? Because I think a lot of people think, okay, a routine is like a bedtime routine. It’s like how we get from one place to another, right?

But I think what you and I define routines as is like a little bit, even smaller, right, breaking it down even smaller into literally what happens step by step within this process. And why that’s so important is because those tiny little steps help us get from one place to another, within even a two minute period, throughout our day. And they happen again, and again and again. And those become patterns that our children can familiarize themselves with. And those patterns can help to build language, words, phrases, and expectations and all of the things. So yeah, I’d love to just hear a little bit more about that, from your perspective.

Sydney: Yeah, I would totally agree with you. And to add on to that, anything can be a routine. I mean, oftentimes, people think of routines, as you said, as bedtime routine, or our bathtime routine. But anything can be a routine. If it’s your family routine, that everybody goes and takes a walk to the mailbox, then that’s the routine. You know, that’s, that’s an integral part of what you and your family does during the day. And so what we want to do is figure out all of those ways to capitalize on language within those moments. So before you’re heading out the door, what are you having to do? We’re going to make sure we’re dressed, you have to make sure we have our shoes on. Keys are important. If you’re going to lock your your house or if your mailbox is somewhere else, you need to have the keys to open that. So those are all those little, itty bitty moments, before we’re even out the door to get on that walk.

Ayelet: Or the dog is barking. And that’s the signal that we have to do it in the first place, right?

Sydney: Right!

Ayelet: And “wah wah, wah wah…” [imitates Charlie Brown’s teacher’s voice.] I was curious to hear your thoughts around… because there are there many of us who are parents or caregivers are naturally more introverted. And so even just speaking to your child, and I think oftentimes, the big advice is like just talk, just talk more to your child, just talk freely and doesn’t matter what you say. And like, yes, of course, that is a great thing to do. And again, it’s not always – we don’t want to bombard our children, and we don’t want to overwhelm ourselves in the process.

So do you have any hot tips about what you say to families who maybe are more introverted, or for whom that part doesn’t come so naturally, about that fine line between doing enough, you know, quote, unquote, versus not feeling like you’re not doing too little.

Sydney: Exactly. So figuring out all those little ways to capitalize. And the nice thing about a daily routine, or even if you do a routine multiple times within a day, you’re having all of these language exposures. But I never want families to feel as though they have to constantly just be talking. Because when you do that, we do end up sounding like Charlie Brown’s teacher, it starts to sound washed out, no one is listening. So you know, give yourself some room to grow. But give yourself some room to just connect with your child!

Every time you go to the mailbox, every time you go to do… you know, really any routine you do. It doesn’t have to be, oh, I’m narrating I’m giving information. I’m providing it, because that’s overwhelming for you. And sometimes you just don’t want to do it. So remember to keep things light to just giving your kid a hug. It’s building a connection with them. And I think when families realize that they can take a little bit of the pressure off of themselves, then it can come a little bit more naturally. Instead of feeling as though we’re constantly having to keep watering into this plant. Because at some point you’re going to overwater.

Families Are Stressed: Give Yourself Grace

Yeah, I always tell my families, especially my moms out there to give yourself a lot of grace and kindness. Because moms, especially, can be really hard on themselves when dealing with their kid, and trying to work on these skills. But then also recognize that that’s okay. You do not have to be extremely extroverted and jumping up and down and doing cartwheels and backflips. It is totally fine for you to still be 100% yourself. I think sometimes when we’re giving advice, and we tell people to do these things, if it’s not natural to them, they’re like, you know, they’re shutting it down, or they’re not wanting to do it. Or they’re trying to force themselves to fit into this box that they don’t really feel comfortable in – and we don’t want that to happen. The interaction is still supposed to be natural. So sticking with that, you don’t have to force yourself to be something that you’re not.

As long as you are engaging with your child in a way that is intrinsic and natural to you and your family, that is 100 percent okay, and realizing we’re all different, like there are some times that I can be the most obnoxious, I’ll claim it, I can be the most obnoxious person when working with a kid and they’re looking at me like you are crazy. And then there’s sometimes that I’m just like, Alright, cool, whatever, we’re, we’re sitting back, and we’re, you know, enjoying because that’s part of being human. Nobody is super happy, super overjoyed 24/7. That’s just not life.

Ayelet: Mm hmm. Yeah, well, I think that even just that message is so important and can be so liberating for parents and caregivers, because there’s just so much, so much pressure out there. And that big transition into new parenthood can be very overwhelming, and is huge, because it is a transition not only in that now you have this human around. And also you have to figure out who you are in relation to that human, and also who you are in relation to yourself. And all of those things can be very overwhelming and very intense. And it’s a lot to handle at once. And I just think the message of simplicity is so important. And and I’m so happy that we can share that message here today as well with these different things.

Another thing I want to just touch upon the idea of toys in general. Something that I like to say a lot lately is that the emperor has no toys, right? Just like anything can be routine. Most things can also be a play object, AKA a toy, as well. And what we attribute to being a developmentally enriching object, because we have purchased it from a specific aisle in a store, is not necessarily any better. And then often is not any better than a coaster, for an empty box, or most things in the kitchen or anything like that. So I wanted to just make sure that we touched upon this in terms of both the developmental benefits of play objects, whether or not something is a toy, and also just the access issues, and what that means in terms of whether you have a lot of toys, or just a couple, or zero.

Sydney: Can I just say, I was duped into buying all the toys?

Ayelet: As a therapist, right!

You Don’t Need All The Toys: What Is An Educational Toy?

Sydney: When I was in grad school, I had a supervisor who she’d be planning a theme. And I did it. And then she goes, Okay, I have a toy for that, and would pull out not just like a toy, but so many toys to all go with this one theme to the point that I was like, Wow, if I want to be a good therapist, and I want to do all my themed stuff, I need to have the treasure trove, the Toys R US of toys too, to the point now that I’m in private practice, my garage is looking like Toys R Us, because I constantly was buying all of the things! And the reality is yes, toys can be great. And they have a lot of benefit to them. But oftentimes, what people don’t realize, especially parents, is you want to do everything just right for your kid. No parent wants to make a mistake or buy something for their child that they don’t think is great. So marketers know that too.

Ayelet: The industry is capitalizing on that, yup.

Sydney: So in their marketing, thank you. So in their marketer brain, what are they going to put on there? “Developmentally appropriate, best toy for ages blah, blah, blah to blah, blah, blah, educational, must-have” you know. And then they hire all of their social media people that they want, so that they can constantly shove this toy down your throat. So that by the end of it all, the marketing that you’ve taken in for this one object, you are dashing down that toy aisle in Target to go get it. And the reality is, you can have that toy, but you can also do the same thing with a common object in your house. And oftentimes think about, you know, like they have the ball drop toys. So, you can do something very similar like that. If you take an empty toilet paper roll or empty paper towel roll, and you can like make a ball out of paper and you can put it in there. And when they go down, it’s that same kind of out of shape…

Ayelet: Out of paper, a cotton ball, out of tape, whatever. Yup.

Sydney: It’s the same concept. So I always encourage people, like it’s great to have some toys, right? Kids are gonna learn with toys, but it’s also okay to use things in your house, because what that’s really encouraging is that imaginative play. And what we oftentimes see happening with children, especially the toys of today are very battery operated, or they’re very fixated on, you know, if you push this button, I’m going to dance, sing, and do a whole jig for you. It’s going to be great. And so it’s not really encouraging kids to go beyond just like well I pressed the button and this thing lit up for me – that imagination is not developing and that imaginative play is important for language development as well.

Ayelet: Yep, right, and concept development, all of the cognition, I mean, all of the things, how something fits together, how heavy it is, whether it fits inside. All of those are concept development. And then when you see your child playing with something or wondering about something, or you do it and model it with them, then you can provide all of the vocabulary around that! And not all of it, just like one word at a time. In! On! Whoa! Big! That’s it! Very, very simple.

Yeah. For years, the only things I ever bring into therapy now are actual items of my own that I’ve seen them have in their home. So that it because to inspire them to use it in a new way. And then the next time I won’t bring it, and then the child will bring out theirs, for instance, it’s great, simple way to shift things. I love that. And not surprisingly, totally in agreement, there.

Sydney: Yeah, it is really simple. And I think we were… I mean, you and I have talked about this on several occasions about the equity issues that we see around toys and materials within not just the field of Speech Pathology, but really all over. Sometimes when we are using all these toys in therapy, we don’t know what people’s life is like at home. Even if we are a home health provider, even if we are in early intervention. And we think well, no, like I’ve seen, we have no, you have no idea what goes on behind closed doors when you are not there. So they might seem like they have all this stuff, because maybe they’re pulling it out because they know you’re coming. Or you might have the family who is breaking their bank, because they see you with all the toys, so they feel like they have to have them too.

And then there’s some people who, they quit services because they they feel pressure into doing all these things that they know realistically, is not feasible for their family. So when we help people figure out how to use what’s in their home, we’re meeting them truly wherever they are, we are taking those external influences out, and we’re working with what they have. And then what you’re also doing is you’re coaching the parent. You’re providing the model in real time, because not only is this in their house, but you’re using their materials. You’re not using something else to demonstrate the task and then trying to get them to scaffold it to this different object you’re providing. You’re basically given the YouTube tutorial right there for them.

Finding High Quality Resources New Families Can Use

Ayelet: I would love to hear, Sydney, because you’ve spoken a little bit, a few times about you are not the only one, you’re not like the sole place where this information is coming from, you know, you pull from resources, and you then help to break it down, of course, as you and I both do. But I would love to hear because I think a very valuable part of what we provide here on this podcast is not only the conversation, but also a little bit more, you know, suggested resources into delving further into what other things might be helpful. So please tell us a little bit about where people can find the resources that you have created. And also other things, whether it’s like podcasts, books, research, websites that you feel like might be helpful for families to know about, or other professionals, as well.

Sydney: Yeah, so all of my resources, you can find that thelisteningslp.com Pretty much all of the resources that are geared towards families are, I have them as free downloads, so that way, you’re able to easily access them, some of the ones that I really find helpful, and I’ve actually gotten feedback from parents that have loved them. I did one about like, how do you know that your child’s provider is the right one? That is a relationship that you’re going to want to foster and build. And it’s an investment, right? Like, it’s not just an investment of your time, it’s an investment of your money, it’s an investment of your feelings. And so making sure that you are really kind of screening this person, especially if they’re a private provider, schools are a little bit different. But private providers, you can do that and just kind of making sure that this is going to be a good fit for you and your family. So it’s a five question guide that you can just ask a provider and most people should feel pretty comfortable answering those. And based on those questions you can figure out like if this is a relationship that will be great, or if there’s one that you might want to adjust.

The other handout we have available is tips for building language at home. And so it just goes over some general language strategies that families can use along with an example and an explanation for why. And then, you know, we talked a little bit about toys. The list was originally created for children who are deaf and hard of hearing but it’s really a question guide for any child that a parent or even a extended family member can go through, and it’s five questions about when you are going down that toy aisle, these are the things that you should be asking yourself and it kind of gives some rationale behind why we should be thinking about these things before just picking something up and dropping it in our basket for purchase. So those are some of the ones that I have.

Some of my favorite, favorite child based resources is there’s Mommy and Me Milestones, which I find that she is wonderful. She breaks things down really well as well for families, and she has a lot of handouts and free resources available for professionals and for families. Her stuff is really, really amazing. And I really love anything pretty much that she puts out. It is really helpful. And then a lot of my other resources and things that I pull, I try to go directly to the research or the kind of the source behind it.

Sometimes that can be a little tricky as a parent to figure out where to find that. But if you ask the professional that you’re working with, they should be able to direct you to those things and then understood.org, I think is underrated. But there’s stuff is really helpful. And I love the way it breaks things down into smaller, digestible sections. So those are kind of some of my top ones that I like.

Ayelet: That’s great. Yeah. Thank you for that. I think that’s awesome. Sydney, thank you for this conversation. Is there anything else that you want to leave people with?

Sydney: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is just continue to listen to all parties, continue to learn from each other, and then form these partnerships to advocate.

Ayelet: Love it. Yep. Great takeaway. Thank you so much, Sydney for your time and energy today. And thanks to everyone who’s listening. We’ll see you next time.

Listen, Learn, and Advocate: Support New Families, with Sydney Bassard

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