Ep. 99 The Brain Science Behind Communication
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Why does “just use your words” fail for neurodivergent students?
What's up everyone and welcome to Making the Shift for Autistic Kids.
We're an SLP couple from California with four boys. And we're here every week to bring you neuroaffirming tips, tricks, and tools. Are you ready to make the shift? Let's
do this! What is up, yo? If you don't know, now you know this episode is a solo show. It's me speech, dude. That's right. I'm solo. I'm flying in solo, baby. And we're gonna have a good time. I wanna kick this episode off because you're gonna absolutely love this one. But I want to I wanna be real. I just hit one million IEPs to write. Thought I was being serious. Oh, hot diggity dog. I've got a mountain of paperwork that's sitting on my desk. It's officially its own ecosystem. I got just about zero time to do any of it. Um, my between my social media inbox and my emails, the my inbox, I've just been filling it lately and it's judging me. My brain is.
How does personal overwhelm illustrate the link between stress and language access?
Just over-the-top hot diggity dog, fully dysregulated. Which ironically is the perfect segue in today's topic, isn't it? If I can't access my thinking brain when I'm drowning in deadlines, got mounds of paperwork, then how do we expect kids to access language when they're overwhelmed and when they're stressed, right? So we're gonna talk about brain development. We're gonna do some Really oversimplification of brain development. We're gonna talk about regulation. I know you've heard that on some of the other episodes, but we're gonna squeeze some neuroscience stuff in here. And we're going to talk about why expecting a dysregulated kid to just use your words is about as effective as asking me to finish my IEPs without giving me 10 cups of coffee.
All right, buckle up folks. This is an important one to know. I hope I give you some language that you can use either for IEPs or sharing with families or for your own purposes of why this is so important, but the language to use as we support our our students, our clients, and those that we connect with. So let's do it. Let's dive into brain development. Let's dive into regulation and language. Let's learn the science of all of this. I'm gonna give a shout out to Dr. Dan Siegel and his concept of mindsight. I've learned some information from him about how the brain, uh essentially the nervous system develops. How it develops from the bottom up. uh meaning before we can think uh before we can think and reason and communicate actually and that how we need to first feel safe and connected.
What is the three‑part, bottom‑up model of brain development?
So uh shout out to to dr dan siegel i don't know him personally but if you know him or somebody out there then just say hey that guy speech to give you a shout out he loves your stuff his stuff's awesome so that's where today's mini neuroscience lesson comes in okay if we understand how the brain is built Honestly, I I eat this stuff up for breakfast, but if we can understand how the brain is built, we can better understand why kids struggle with communication when they're dysregulated. And what we can do to help. All right. So, how does the brain develop? We're going to talk about the bottom up. way the brain develops. It doesn't just start with the baby having deep thoughts and big ideas like, oh, I know how to change the world.
It starts with survival. And then from that It builds upward. Okay. So the brain stem is nestled in between the brain. For those of you watching this live, We've got the brain, the brain stem, and then we've got the spinal cord. I turned my head so the sound probably went down. So the brainstem is survival mode. This is the foundation. It's the foundation of the brainstem is responsible for things like breathing, heart rate, digestion, basically all of the things that keep us alive without any conscious thought. We don't have to think about them. It just happens automatically, right?
Why is the brainstem considered the survival system for communication?
It's automatic. It's reflexive and not, again, I repeat, not where thinking or language happens. The brainstem, survival. The brainstem, survival, the brainstem, survival. Oh, sorry. I was gonna get into song and dance there. All right. So here's the next step. The next step that we have to rem uh be aware of is the limbic system, emotions and attachment.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why does “just use your words” fail for neurodivergent students?
0:09–1:23
2
How does personal overwhelm illustrate the link between stress and language access?
1:23–3:04
3
What is the three‑part, bottom‑up model of brain development?
3:04–4:27
4
Why is the brainstem considered the survival system for communication?
4:27–5:42
5
How do the limbic system and attachment shape a child’s ability to learn language?
5:42–6:58
6
What role does the cortical “thinking brain” play in speech and language?
6:58–8:11
7
Why is co‑regulation essential before a child can communicate?
8:11–9:29
8
How can shifting from “why won’t they talk?” to “are they regulated?” transform outcomes?
9:29–10:34
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The NeuroAffirm Podcast
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Ep. 124 Building Rapport Isn’t Enough...How Therapists Become Part of the Intervention
Ep. 123 Not Seeing Progress in Speech Therapy? Start Here.
Ep. 122 Screen Time Considerations for Autistic Kids
Ep. 121 The Biggest Sensory Mistakes SLPs Make
Ep. 120 Why Anxiety is So Common in Autism (And What Actually Helps)