The Power of Play: Jeaneen Tang on Language and Learning for Parents

Brad Minus: And welcome to another episode of life changing challengers. I am really excited to have Jeaneen Tang on the show today. 

Jeaneen Tang: Hi, 

Brad Minus: Jeaneen is a speech language pathologist and she became that in a very, very interesting way. And she's harnessed a lot of skills to where she put into her book that you can see that behind her.

If you're on YouTube, play dumb and sabotage. And she's gonna tell us a little about that. But first, I know you're all waiting for this question. Hey, Jeaneen , can you tell us a little bit about your childhood? You know where you grew up? And what was the compliment of your family? And what was it like to be Jeaneen as a kid?

Jeaneen Tang: Absolutely. So I live in Los Angeles, California now, but I grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Hawaii will always be my home. And I loved growing up in Hawaii, but unfortunately, my parents did not. Stay in their marriage together. And before I was two, I didn't have a father figure in my life.

They were divorced. They held big grudges against each other. And for some reason, my father thought that I chose to live with my mother. So I kind of grew up with a single mom and no father figure in my life. And my mom, you know, she worked really hard.

And, you know, I was a latchkey kid for a lot of my childhood. And. When I was eight years old, my grandfather, who was kind of like my father figure, the most father figure person that I had in my life, he was ill. He had lung cancer and he ended up passing away. And I felt really, really helpless at the time.

And I wanted to help people and I had this need to want to be helpful and have a purpose in life and, you know, growing up, I thought maybe I want to be a teacher. And then I was in high school. I thought, maybe a physical therapist could have been something that could have been helpful for my grandfather.

So I thought about that. And, you know, as I went through university, I thought, You know, I'm not sure if I want to do physical therapy, but maybe I want to do something else. And I wasn't sure what that was. And someone thought, how about speech therapy? And I really hadn't thought about speech therapy before.

And when I looked into it, the University of Hawaii at Mānoa had it. I went to grad school there and I was very happy that I went in that path because being a speech therapist, the longevity of my career is much longer than physical therapy because I don't necessarily have to lift patients or carry people or, have to have such strain on my body as long as I can be cognitively sound and be able to have conversations and work with people, I can have this career in my life.

So, You know, having that need when I was growing up to, Not having my father there made me become a people pleaser, which, as an adult is really difficult. I still have to overcome that as an adult. And, my other father figure sparked. A desire to be helpful, and that was really, motivating for me in the long run because I became the person I am today because of these two men, and a one strong woman who raised me as a single mom.

Brad Minus: Oh, that's, that's amazing. So first of all, I'm going to ask you just one little thing. Can you take the mic part of your headset and just push it or pull it away just about a centimeter there? 

Jeaneen Tang: How does that? Okay. Perfect. 

Brad Minus: There's these things called pops. Right. 

Jeaneen Tang: Okay. 

Brad Minus: And if it's too close, it gets to be like that.

So we're good. But I want to step back a little bit. Okay. Tell us a little bit more about, high school. You know, I said, you talked about how you found that need, but tell us about you and did you, did you do any extracurriculars where you're in sports? Did you, did you worry on the chess team or on the math leads?

Tell us a little 

Jeaneen Tang: about that. Oh yeah. High school was great. You know, I went to the university laboratory school and it was a very small, it was a private school, but it was like a public school in the sense where we didn't have to pay for like school, like we paid 300 for our, all of our things, our yearbook, our field trips and everything like that.

But my high school was very small. I had 49 people in my class. So it was, you know, two classes of, up to 25 people. You know, everybody was encouraged to play sports. I did competitive speech. I played, one year I was a four sport athlete.

I did gymnastics. I did cheerleading volleyball and basketball. I competed in speech, like I said, and, it was really a great place to grow up because everybody, you know, there was no bullying. There was no like real big clicks. I couldn't imagine going to a high school with a thousand kids.

That was just, Unfathomable to me, like that kids go to school with a thousand other children and they make it through high school because it's such a trying time. So I really enjoyed my high school time. It really did not so much prepare me to go into a big university. Because there was so much attention put on you in a small school because all the teachers knew your name, you were held accountable, we had great teachers, and my love for writing and my love for reading really Blossom there because every morning we would have journal writing for five to 10 minutes.

And if you couldn't think of something to write, you literally had to write, I can write, I can write, I can write. But it was really about keeping your. Your handwriting or your thoughts fluid and once you had an idea, then you could just continue on with the journal writing, but it made you not give up.

It made you like, stay the course and really focus. But when I went to the University of Hawaii, at Manoa at first, you know, I went to a science class. I had 300 people and so. Sometimes I wouldn't go to class because I'm like, well, they don't even know I'm here or not. So that part was not good. But, my high school life was great.

And, going back to the University of Hawaii for grad school, you know, we had very small classes because it's graduate school and it's very specialized. And there I was able to have the attention that kept me accountable and then find that community within my student body to really, To learn from others and to become, you know, the therapist that I am today.

Brad Minus: That is, that's the epitome of what, how I did it except opposite. I graduated with 800 kids. Oh, wow. So, yeah, graduation was like three hours long. It was awful. And it was hot and because there's so many of us, it was inside of a stadium.

So it just took forever. And then I went to Illinois State University and University of Illinois and it was just huge. But then when I finally decided to go to, business school, for my graduate degree, very, like, tiny, almost every class all the way down to, you know, even accounting.

It was like, I think there was like 10 people in the class. The difference in learning though was crazy. I love the fact that you went to a class and you only had 49 people in your whole class. And so the school might've had what? 200 people total? 

Jeaneen Tang: The high school had 200 and the school itself had kindergarten through high school and it was 300 for the whole school.

So like literally I didn't go there from kindergarten. I started in high school there, but I had classmates that went to kindergarten there and they had less than 10 kids in their class. And then I think in sixth grade, it like doubled or whatever. So by the time they were in sixth grade or middle school, I think they had 20 kids or less or 15.

Brad Minus: You think, and this is something way off topic, but do you think that teachers and instructors have a harder time? With the bigger classes, or do you think it's actually harder to have the smaller one, 

Jeaneen Tang: Coming from like my point of view, I would think that you have a harder time teaching a bigger class because you have so many different personalities and you have to keep attention for all of these different kinds of kids where.

In the smaller classroom, you're able to give that attention. You're able to keep people accountable and engaged and have that participation happen. If I were to be a teacher, I would want to have a smaller classroom. Because I think it would just be overwhelming for me to think that.

Nobody's paying attention 

Brad Minus: and you know what I agree. I see your point and I agree with it, but I kind of agree. I kind of think that it would be more difficult with a smaller class. I'm thinking that if I've got 30, 40 kids in my class. I could roll it with, Hey, it's this way or the highway.

I'm going to give my lectures. I'm going to send the thing. And because I cannot give that type of attention to one student, I could kind of draw back and go, okay, well, no, this is how it is. If you've got any questions, I mean, I'm here for you, but you know what? And that kind of like, because there's so many.

Now I had these classes and this is why I'm saying it, you only talk to the teacher if you actually really, really had to. Whereas in the class, that's 10, you know, 10 kids. You kind of had to rely on the teacher. You didn't have anybody else to, you know, you didn't have a lot of other people to get to bounce things off of.

So you could just directly go to the teacher and that teacher now has got to not only deal with different types, but they have to deal with them in a more intimate way. You know, intimate atmosphere. Just my thought about it. I'm not, I'm not a teacher. I'm a coach. Little did much different. But yeah, so just, I was just, I was just curious, especially from a mom, you know, a mom and a, and an ex student and graduate.

Jeaneen Tang: Yeah. 

Brad Minus: So the university of Hawaii at Momoa, what that, that sounds like it was a pretty big school. What was that kind of, what was that per capita or how many? 

Jeaneen Tang: I have thousands of kids that go there, and the campus is large, you know, it takes you 10 minutes to walk across the whole campus, at least 10, 15 minutes sometimes.

And the campus continues to grow. And then there's an upper campus and a lower campus. During my freshman and sophomore year, I went to the University of Hawaii at Manoa as an undergraduate. And then I went to my junior senior year at Pacific University in Oregon, which was a much smaller campus. I had class sizes between 10 to 20 kids.

The science classes was like 60. But when I was at University of Hawaii, no class was smaller. I think my math class, my calculus class had 25 kids. And then I said, my science classes were 300. And then you go into your laboratory classes that had, 30 kids. So it really varied. I lived off campus at home with my mom.

So I didn't do so much like dorm life and real campus life. And so I, you know, I didn't really party in the dorms. I didn't do all that kind of stuff. And I worked, as soon as I could. So I was working since I was 16, you know, part time I worked through college. I loved waitressing because it was, easy money and you had cash and I never had to go to the bank, to, pull money out of the ATM.

I always had cash ready, and it gave me a lot of independence. But, you know, it was a really big campus with a lot of great things you could try, different, things you could study. And I feel it's, it's great for people who are very self motivated and don't need that accountability being held upon them.

But for me, I know that I do better if I'm held accountable. You know, if someone's like, Hey, did you do this assignment? Or don't forget, we have this coming up, where I don't do well. If it's like 300 people and we have an exam in like a week or two and you could study or not study and it's going to be those bubble sheets.

Have you had those bubble sheets before where, 

Brad Minus: oh my 

Jeaneen Tang: gosh, it was just a little bit too, free flowing for me to really be focused at the time. 

Brad Minus: I agree. I took a couple of independent study classes where we had like five people and you'd meet every week and you just where were you in your independent study and everybody had a different topic 

so it was just kind of like meet with the instructor and then everybody would give a rough summary of where they were, what they were doing and I love those classes, but you're right, man. I remember earth science. 300 people in this gigantic auditorium, teacher didn't know if you were there or not.

And then just the lonely thing about those things where usually they taught right from the book. So if you did miss all your classes, you just follow the syllabus, read the stuff, go to the back, go to the back of the book, do the questions, make sure you memorized it, put them on cards and just go, okay, drop in every, every once in a while to make sure you're at the same places as everybody else.

So after graduate school, what did you end up doing? 

Jeaneen Tang: So before I went to grad school, I actually, you know, research speech therapy and, and there is a shortage of speech therapists, you know, in every different.

area of speech therapy, whether it be in schools or hospitals and such. And the department of education in Hawaii was definitely in need of speech therapists. So it was a great time to go to grad school for myself because they were like, you know, if we, if you work for us for three years after grad school, we will give you a stipend.

And because I was in state tuition, it basically paid for grad school. I worked immediately after grad school, I worked for the Department of Education for four years before I moved to Los Angeles and I had probably the best mentor coming out of grad school. I was a new graduate student and you need to have a mentor for nine months, a supervisor, and I turned out to be her first person, clinical fellow, they call it, that she supervised.

But she, you know, she's still to this day is one of my best friends because I literally would call her every day. Her name is Kathy Miamori and I would literally call her almost every day to ask her questions because there was, you know, you have a new caseload as a clinical graduate student. You have maybe four or five kids that you're taking care of.

But when you're working in the school system, you know, you're working full time. You have 40 to 50 kids in your caseload. You need to figure out scheduling. You need to figure out assessments. You need to figure out how to talk to parents and having all these meetings.

And I would literally call her almost every day and I learned so much from her. Also the other therapists on our team at the time, and they're all really great friends. Every time I go back to Hawaii, I always make sure I spend time with them because they have such, they've been such great influences in my life and my career that you know, they're just.

life changing to me and they're just, you know, I just can't thank them enough. 

Brad Minus: Oh man. So to step out of this for a second. So Kathy, Maya, Maury, Kathy, Maya, Maury, she's in my book. If you're listening to this, you are a huge, huge influence on this young lady. So hats off to you now back to our regularly scheduled program.

You know, I didn't ask you what, what island was this on where you lived, obviously, which is near the university, in Hawaii 

Jeaneen Tang: on a Wahoo. 

Brad Minus: Okay. So big, like the big, 

Jeaneen Tang: big island is actually called Hawaii. Oahu, is where Honolulu is, where Waikiki is, where the North shore is when you hear about surfing.

And the nickname for that one is the gathering place. 

Brad Minus: Okay. I remember now. I was going to ask you about the different islands. I was almost like you were saying something about going 10 minutes to take you 10 minutes across the thing. I'm like, God doesn't take like 10 minutes just to get across the whole island.

I was like, no, but you were on Oahu. So it was a little bit bigger. 

Jeaneen Tang: Yeah. 10 minutes walking across the campus. You can't drive across the campus, but you know, on Oahu. To go anywhere is 10 or 15 minutes to go to the beach, 10 or 15 minutes to go to the North shore. It's like 45 if you have traffic, but yeah, everything's super close.

Brad Minus: So, you know, I'm an endurance coach and, my mentor as an endurance coach lives on a Wahoo right now. So, yeah, it was pretty amazing. She lives in an office, a fully sustainable house. Oh, really? So it's, yeah, it's pretty amazing. You know, Oh, I know this is totally off topic. I'm sorry.

I'm just so excited to talk to you. But you know, how they mow their grass, she's got a six by six, like a piece of wood, I think it's two by fours and there's, guinea pigs. Oh, so it's two guinea pigs and every day they move it. 

Jeaneen Tang: Oh, wow. 

Brad Minus: Six by six thing.

So as the guinea, as the guinea pigs eat the grass. And they just keep moving this thing over and over and over again. And she said that it rained for a while. They had to bring the guinea pigs inside of it. There's a heavy rains and, and for a couple of days. And then he says, well, then they just borrowed their friend's goat and the goat cleared away everything.

Jeaneen Tang: Seen goats like on Instagram. They're like, this is how the people mow their lawn is with goats. 

Brad Minus: Yeah, well, they couldn't have a goat because they've got 80 different varieties of, of fruits and vegetables and herbs on the, on the thing, and they can't have a goat full time because they'll eat.

So that's why they use the guinea pigs instead. And they just keep moving the box. So it's, yeah, it's such an interesting thing. Just interesting, interesting ways of being sustainable out in Hawaii. And I, I, I so admire that. So, okay, great. So you got this great mentor. You're ready to go.

And then you said you, you moved to Los Angeles after four years, after doing the four year commitment to the department of education in Hawaii. 

Jeaneen Tang: Yes. Yes. So at that point I, you know, I had gone through a breakup, maybe a couple of years before I moved up here in Los Angeles and I decided I wanted to take an acting class.

I was very thankful, you know, looking back that I was a speech therapist already because I moved up to Los Angeles in 2005 to be an actor. And I was like, you know, I'm just going to waitress because that's what I did through grad school. I was still working part time as a waitress.

I can waitress and be an actor and it's going to go really well. And then I found myself working six years, 70 hours a week, waitressing and trying to do acting and audition and everything. And I was just working too much and not having enough time, you know, in my life. And so I was, you know, I got my license in California.

As a speech therapist, so I could actually work part time as a speech therapist and then also do, you know, auditions and everything for acting. And I still do acting every now and then when it pops up, but it's not my main focus because in 2012 I had my son, you know, I was with his father from for about four years between 2005 and 2009.

We had broken up, we started dating again, and then we decided, well, maybe we'll Try and have a kid together. We had a kid in 2012 I sent Che and Unfortunately in 2013 when he was about 13 months old Che fell from our bed and he fell just the perfect way to create this large brain bleed And he had to have an emergency craniotomy and a few days later, he had a stroke, 

so he had the brain injury on the left side and the swelling caused that, the blood. restriction on the left side. So he doesn't use, you know, the left side of your brain controls the right side of your body. So he's not able to utilize like his right arm or hand and he's not able to utilize his right leg.

He can run and he can, climb up stairs. He can do lots of different things, but unfortunately it left him with what they call hemiparesis on his right arm and hand. And, he also doesn't see From midline to right in both eyes. So you only see his 50 percent peripheral vision and he has a lot of, you know, special needs.

So in a split second, which was really, an accident that he fell, we had this. Lovely child who is now disabled and he's 12 now but he is such an amazing person that, you know, hopefully he, life will, be good to him and he can overcome a lot of the challenges that are in place for him now.

Brad Minus: So let's step back and I'm going to ask you some tough questions. If you don't mind, and then just tell me that you don't want to answer it. And I'm cool with that because I just, I kind of want to give a picture. Of what happened here. So you're on the bed and you have this little accident and all of a sudden he falls to the ground.

What is the, what's your split second reaction there as he fell? I mean, any mom I know would be like, oh my God and grab him and you're dead. A lot of times they're like, okay. You're going to be okay. What was going on with you at that point? 

Jeaneen Tang: Yeah, well, I had just given him a bath and so I had, you know, put him in a towel.

I put him in the middle of the queen size bed and I was like, oh, I forgot the lotion, which was just in the bathroom adjacent to the bedroom. It's a few feet away. Turned around to get the lotion and he was 13 months old. So he was toddling and pretty quick so I think he tried to come after me and he fell and the bed was only the bed frame and the mattress So it wasn't a high height so I didn't really think it was that big a fall And he cried, obviously, and I picked him up, I tried to soothe him, and he cried for about a minute or so, and then he stopped crying.

He had passed out. And so at that point, I panicked because, he was crying, and then now he's not even making any sound. And so at that point, your heart sinks, and I called his dad in the next room, I said, you need to get in here. And we immediately. Took a look at him and his dad was like, we got to take him to the hospital right away.

So, I held him in the car. We got him to the emergency room and your heart just sinks, but it's more, I was very much in shock because it wasn't a high fall and, It didn't seem like that could have caused a big, trauma. Does that make sense? And then the nurse at the emergency room, she was like, he's not waking up and we're like, no.

And so immediately she's like, we need to get him inside. They did a cat scan. They saw there was no abrasion or cut on his head. You know, we didn't think it was a big accident, but he must have fallen the perfect way to cause this brain bleed in his head. And so on this cat scan, they were able to see it and you know, they immediately were rushing him off.

They intubated him. They had an emergency craniotomy. His dad is very much, you know, distraught. He goes down the hallway distraught. Me seeing my son being intubated and the social worker next to me asking me, you know, do you want to sit down and talk? And I said, can you please give us a minute? And in her report, she said, I was a cold hearted mother, because I wasn't breaking down because I was more in shock and taking everything in objectively and, you know, to read her words that I was a cold hearted mother, because I had asked for some time was very heartbreaking because

They thought, you know, me being the Asian mother, I must have snapped and tried to hurt my child.

Brad Minus: I've had personal experience with this. A friend of mine, had this same issue, ended up with a spiral break and unfortunately, spiral break in an arm, and it was, so he actually got it at daycare and then he had fell at home, like, He had just finished healing and then he fell at home and it was just a simple fall and the fight that they had to go through.

So I feel for you because I can't imagine and I don't understand these social workers who are working with Children and with families all the time that they don't see different levels of. Shock and awe and heartbreak that Oh, everybody's if you don't fall into the pattern, then you must be doing something wrong.

And it and I still hear about it. I still see stuff that's going on today. I don't understand now. I understand that. Our environment is caused our social workers and that was those agencies to be overworked, underpaid and the whole bit. But it still doesn't. I don't think that doesn't have it doesn't.

There's no excuse for losing your humanity and understanding that people react different ways. So anyway, that's all I got to say about that. But I feel for you and I can't imagine what you're going through here. You have your child is in the hospital intubated. You don't exactly know exactly what's going on.

You just got the CAT scan thing and now this woman wants to sit there and call you. Oh, 

Jeaneen Tang: yeah. 

Brad Minus: Don't even get me started. I'm going to, I already started, so let's just end it there. But, but yeah, so I, I feel that's, that's gotta be the worst at that point. So that I'm sure the doctors can come out and start talking to you about what are they going to do?

Jeaneen Tang: Yeah. Before, you know, before they rushed him off, they said, this is what we need to do. And, you know, obviously you need to sign off on it. Right. So then he goes into surgery and then you need to wait, right. You need to wait. And, during that time of waiting, you have police show up, ask you questions, you have doctors show up, ask you questions.

And, then the surgeon comes out and says, He is in recovery and, doctors sometimes don't use the best language and, they said, Oh, he was actively dying, which is another way if he, if he didn't have the surgery, he would have died, right? Because he would have bled out in a sense.

But to hear like someone say your child was actively dying is a very traumatic and heartbreaking. And, you know, within the 24 hours of him getting hurt and the surgery and everything we were talked to by, social workers, by doctors, by police officers, by detectives, because, you know, that we, their story didn't change because it was the same thing, you know, he fell from a short distance and.

It was an accident, but they thought, you know, we must have tried to do it on purpose.

And, you know, it was very a difficult time for us 

Brad Minus: because it all had to come from her report, you know, the police wouldn't even come in if this report didn't have to go out to that. And, yeah, that's just awful. How long was it until you, until they were able to diagnose the fact that this is the way that she was going to be.

Jeaneen Tang: Right after 

Brad Minus: the issues 

Jeaneen Tang: a few days, so, after his initial craniotomy, they, at the time I was doing acting and, you know, in hindsight, I probably should have made better choices. But I was doing a play and we were traveling at the time and I was actually supposed to leave that next morning.

So after he had an accident, my brother flew up from Hawaii to be with my son and my son's dad was here. So I thought, well, I was going to be gone for a day to do a show and come back. And in my mind, I was. I'll be gone for 36 hours, I'll be back and I'll be with my son to, with his recovery.

But until then, my brother will be here, his dad will be here, right? And so, but the detectives and all that saw it as I was fleeing. They thought I was trying to, you know, do something. Anyway, so they, they saw that as. It's me being guilty or of something. So they actually said we could no longer be in the hospital with our son because they thought that we were going to try and hurt him.

And so they removed us from the hospital. And so when I returned back from my performance. It was the most difficult performance, but I got the call when I was going to be on stage. We were being removed from the hospital. And so when I returned, of course, it's heartbreaking. It's very traumatic for us.

They did not have anybody in the room with my son, even though my brother was fluent from Hawaii. He had not been in town at the time of his accident, and they knew that he wasn't involved in the accident. They still wouldn't let him stay in the hospital with my son, with his nephew. So my son was in the room by himself.

They took him out of the PICU at the time. And so he was by himself and the next morning when we went back to visit him, they were rushing him back to the PICU because he stroked. So he didn't initially stroke, right? He had the brain injury. He had the craniotomy and a few days later, after he was left alone, he had a stroke.

And so they were rushing him back, re intubating him. And then the, the judge at the time said, no, the family. Is allowed to be in the hospital. So I literally lived at the hospital for three months with him while we were in the intensive, intensive care unit and then in rehabilitation for three months.

And, you know, the, our judge was great. I don't think he, even for a split second thought that I tried to harm my child, but the process of, you know, the department of family services is. It's very long, and I wasn't actually allowed to be alone with my son for 10 months, and I had to be monitored every time I was with him for 10 months, and we didn't get full custody back for 20 months.

So, fortunately, my son's father, his mother was living in France at the time and she flew back to Los Angeles and she was actually able to be the guardian. So he never had to go to foster care, which was, we're very thankful for, you know, so she was actually able to be his guardian and my monitor.

And you know, I would. You know, uh, his father and I didn't live in the same house, so, the grandmother would watch our son at the father's house the father lived at my house for a little bit when he wasn't allowed to be alone with him, but once he was allowed to live back with our son, he lived with our son and the grandmother I would wake up before my son would wake up in the morning so I could go over to the house to feed him and I would go to work and then I would come home after work to their house, I would, you know, feed him.

I would put him to bed and then I would go back to my home. And, you know, this continued until I could actually, Be alone with my son and have him for overnight and eventually be, reunited with him full time. But it was like a time in my life where I don't know how I got through that.

Because you know, you're just exhausted. It was just, what we had to go through. To get past that. 

Brad Minus: Well, it's obviously that, you know, maybe that you and your, your baby's father were not compatible maybe that way because you were living in several places. That's all I'm asking. It's all I'm saying is, but you were strong enough in your parental bond.

That you were able to get through this and that great that you had family that you were able to, you're able to lean on and have a decent support system. But I'm so happy that you got through that because, yeah, something's got to be done about that. 

So I, it still goes on today. But there's got to be some sort of, Resolution to that. Because that's just not right. Obviously, you walked up to the judge. The judge knew that you weren't going to hurt your child that this was an accident.

But the whole process getting to that judge sounds like it took a long time. 

Jeaneen Tang: Yeah. And the process is like, Oh, you go and you have your court hearing and then they say, Okay, come back in 3 to 6 months. You know, it's like this length of time that you have to wait in order to get see the judge again.

It's like, what determines that? Like there's their schedule, not so much what you're doing to be a better parent per se, you know, they want you to go to parent trainings and all these counseling and everything, which I did, I did everything, but it was just like, come back in three months, come back in six months, whatever the number was, it didn't really matter, you know, it didn't say like, Oh, you're trying harder.

It felt like forever. 

Brad Minus: Well, you're reunited now. It's been quite a few years since that happened. So let's skip forward. Let's get out of that mess. Because you got through that and you got your kid back and now you're back.

So now he's two, two and a half. 

Jeaneen Tang: Now he's 12. 

Brad Minus: But at that point, after you get through and you're reunited and you're full time and you're living and you have your child. 

Jeaneen Tang: He was almost three. 

Brad Minus: Okay. And as you mentioned, he sent them that he had problems with his arm.

Problems with sight and, you said what left leg is 

Jeaneen Tang: So the brain injury was on the left side. The stroke was on the right side of the body. He needed, you know, as an at that time, I was working as an early intervention speech therapist. So I knew. That we needed to have services in place as soon as we got home.

So we stayed at the hospital, at the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, and we, the rehabilitation department there was great. We lived there, literally, for three months. They had really great services and when we got home, I had everything in place. I had physical therapy in place, occupational therapy in place, speech therapy, infant stimulation therapy.

So everything that needed to be in place for him was set in place. And then when he reached, school age, turning into kindergarten or pre kindergarten or preschool, He had other services in place as well through the school district. So it's really important to get as many services.

Early on as possible. 

Brad Minus: So, let's make that list, occupational therapy, early childhood stimulation, 

Jeaneen Tang: infant stimulation, physical therapy, speech therapy. And even though I'm a speech, you took 

Brad Minus: The role of speech therapy.

Jeaneen Tang: Because I was a speech therapist, I knew that I'm doing it all the time when I'm with him, but I had to go back to work as well, I also wanted somebody else to be there for him. So twice a week somebody else would come and work with him on speech therapy because it's always great to have more than one person, if possible, working with a child.

Brad Minus: So each one of these people came and worked with him at least twice a week? 

Jeaneen Tang: Yes. 

Brad Minus: A lot of therapy. Could you tell what he was feeling when he would get these visits from these people that, you know, made him do things?

Jeaneen Tang: He's always been a really happy baby. So he really enjoyed working with them and early intervention therapists, they have a gift of working with kids and making it seem like it's play. You know, so it's not about, forcing a kid to do anything or some drills.

The hardest part for him was occupational therapy and physical therapy, right? Because he needed to walk, he needed to climb stairs, he needs to learn how to jump and then physical therapy. It's like trying to get that right arm to move, trying to get him to do some, weight bearing, which is like putting weight on that arm 

you know, not moving. But if you make it fun, then you don't really, the child doesn't really know that it's a lot of work. If you mask it as play. 

Brad Minus: Fantastic. They have to gamify it. 

Jeaneen Tang: Gamify it. 

Brad Minus: So that's obviously a newer term, but yeah, so they gamifies for therapy.

So, and then how would what transition to school once he got into school age, did all of it transfer or was it just a couple of them? Was it just occupational? And, and speech. And then he still had to have a separate, physical therapist to come or how did that work?

Jeaneen Tang: So once you go into the school district, you know, there's a individualized education plan, right? So it's a federally funded thing and you get all of the services that you need in the school. So he does, even to this day, he's 12 now and he still gets occupational therapy, physical therapy. He gets adaptive PE, he gets speech therapy, he gets counseling because it is frustrating at times, when you're not able to do the same things your peers are, or if you feel you're getting bullied or, you have self esteem issues sometimes, you know, it's really difficult to, Learn how to cope with your own emotions, especially if you have an intellectual disability.

Which he does have because of the brain injury and stroke. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. That was my next question to you as far as is, is his, his, what the, intellectual side of it was? It's strictly just a learning aspect. Is he, cognizant of pretty much everything. It's a learning aspect or is it something more?

Jeaneen Tang: Yeah, he is, you know, he's a great kid. He has conversations. And because I, I think me being a speech therapist is a strength for him. He is very social. His articulation is, everybody understands him, you know, so he's not having like slurring of speech because of musculature or anything like that.

He eats everything. He can speak well. He has attention. A little bit of attention difficulties, you know, staying on task. So at school, he does have a one to one adult support person with him. And a few years ago, he developed seizures. So they're also there because he has, reflexive focal tonic seizures.

So if there's like a loud noise or he trips or someone bumps into him, it'll cause him to have either a very minor to a moderate seizure. He does, you know, he's moved from when he started preschool through third grade, he was in what they call like a special day class or a special education classroom where he was in a class with other special ed kids.

And he would have a one to one. adult person with him in a small classroom setting with a special education teacher and a teacher's assistant. And, when he was in third grade, and this is a time of COVID, right? So right after COVID, they went back, they went back and on campus, right? So they went back to campus and the teacher for third grade didn't show up.

And so for the first two weeks of school, they had seven different substitute teachers and for the whole first semester of school, he had a number of different substitute teachers until they found somebody, a substitute teacher, not even an actual teacher that would stay for the year. 

We actually applied to a charter school, Citizens of the World, and we actually got in. He actually got in. His grandmother had recommended we try a charter school. But then COVID hit, and I was like, well, we're not going to transfer during COVID. And we call it Zoom school because everything went to Zoom, right?

All school was on Zoom. So we're like, we're not going to transfer schools to go to Zoom school. So we stayed in the special ed classroom for those COVID years, couple of COVID years. And then when we went back to campus, there was no third grade teacher and the charter school citizens of the world, I guess they lost enrollment.

So they actually reached out to us in the middle of third grade. and said, you know, we do have openings if he wants to come to our school. So, socially, I felt like he really needed that regular ed classroom peer, you know, environment rather than a special ed classroom, but I knew he was going to need academic support.

So, when we transferred over to citizens of the world, they did accommodate him with an adult support person throughout the day. They had a resource room, special ed teachers to help him. They had all of his services that he would need in place, but he would spend most of his day, in the regular classroom with normal developing peers for that social aspect, which was really important for him.

And to this day, you know, now he's in sixth grade. It's in middle school. And citizens of the world has a middle school as well. So he was able to transition from the elementary to the middle school and have all of those services still in place. But now he's. You know, compared to preschool to third grade, early third grade, he's no longer having to depend on being in that restrictive special ed classroom all day.

And what he's in what they call a least restrictive environment, which is with regular ed peers, with whatever supports he needs to access the curriculum and access, you know, everything, his environment and his classroom day. 

Brad Minus: That's fantastic. And yeah, when you get him to mainstream, versus being a special ed, that's a must.

I'll give you the anecdote. I had a foster child that I wanted to adopt and to make a long story short, it was ended up being a failed adoption because of, a sister coming out of the woodwork and then the courts went crazy and said always he should be with blood and, you know, the whole Clinton adoption act, back then.

So that's, you know, it should go with blood, you know, that's basically what I, so it was a failed adoption, but we had him for 11 months. And he had an IEP because of some, he had been with so many different foster parents that he had a behavioral issues and everything else. And then he had an IEP, but it didn't follow him from the, from the County that he was in till we got here.

I mainstreamed him because I didn't know any better, you know, brand new foster foster dad have no idea. So I mainstreamed him and he did great. He did amazing. And the teacher was like, yeah, he's got some issues, but I'm as able, I, you know, I'm experienced enough that I was able to redirect him and he worked out great.

He's made friends. He wasn't, he wasn't, didn't have any behavioral issues. All of a sudden he was doing wonderful. And then all of a sudden the IEP found us. And he's like, Oh, well, you can't go to that school anymore. He's got to go to this school and he's got to do the special ed with like six kids or seven kids in it, the whole bit.

And it made it worse. Oh man. It was now all of a sudden he's having behavioral issues. And now I've got to do stuff here at home in order to make sure that he understands what he's doing is wrong and, you know, to sign us upside his behavior and everything when he was much better when he was in mainstream and I pleaded my case over and over again and went tooth and nail to sit there and say, listen, I got letters from the teacher that he was mainstreamed and he was in third grade.

Yeah, they're great. And got the letter from here saying that no, he doesn't need to be an IEP. He should not be in special ed. He was doing great, he was learning. But then he just now he's acting out because he was bored, you know?

Yeah, so I get, I'm glad you went the other way because this way was, it was just so hard. It was heartbreaking for us and for me to watch him have to go through this again. He was literally having these behavioral issues again, something was going on that was causing it and I wasn't there to see that, but I could see that there was a big difference.

Jeaneen Tang: Yeah, it really sounds like the school district failed that child. You always have the right to ask for an evaluation, right? You always have a right to ask for a meeting, and get it in writing that you requested something and they have to, address it.

They have to address it because if they are putting him in an environment that is more restrictive. It's not following the letter of the law because you want them to be in the least restrictive environment and it really sounds like they really did him a disservice and they failed him. 

Brad Minus: Yeah, no, no, no.

And I had said that I wrote letters after letters. I met with people. It was just, yeah, I had all the documentation and it's just like, oh, let's finish this up. Maybe I could have won that if I had more time, but obviously at the point where. I was, you know, we were ready to, you know, we're going to adopt.

We actually went to the court and the court gave us a date, say, okay, we're going to finalize on this date. And in between the date. Finally, the case manager came and said, well, his sister came out of the woodwork and she wants her brother and, yeah, it was, that was devastating.

So, you know, kind of like grown up, but now he's in nursing school in Arkansas. So that was great. He turned out. Okay. He turned out good. 

Jeaneen Tang: Amazing. 

Brad Minus: And then did it work? Yeah, it worked out. It worked out in the end. So that was good. But, so, cool. So now he's, now Che, getting back to you and your son, now Che is living life, and he's, you know, continuing on in school, he's doing great, so, at what point did you decide to sit down and write, Play Dumb and Sabotage, and where does the title come from?

Jeaneen Tang: Okay, so the title of the book I'll go to do that first. I've been using this term for over 20 years. I've been a speech therapist for 23 and I feel like I've been using it for most of my career because I feel like Part of it is children like to be smarter than us, right? So we play dumb. You're like, oh, does a dog say meow and the kids will be more engaged and things like that.

But for the title of the actual book, play dumb and sabotage is a book about how to. Expose a child to language and strategies to practice language with a child. And it's really meant for every parent, caregiver, and educator that has to interact with a child at all, whether it's their own or another child.

And it's really about, how we over, anticipating a child's needs and then creating opportunities to practice language. Because as parents, caregivers, educators, We tend to over anticipate what the child might need or want. You know, we don't want the child to cry, so we make sure that the child is fed, the child is dry, the child is warm enough or cool enough.

And we make sure all these things are done for the child, that the child no longer has to interact naturally with their environment because everything is done for them. And then the sabotage part is to know what the child might want or need, but to let the child interact more naturally with the environment, you know, to do things that they might have to indicate through a reach or a cry or a grunt that they want to communicate with us.

And then sabotage is really about creating opportunities like during snack time. You know, I always say it's super easy if you're. Giving goldfish or a little blueberries or whatever. Just give a couple and have the rest of the rest of the bowl Near nearby but out of reach, you know so you the child has an opportunity to to have some of the goldfish but requests for more indicator reach for more and You know, I think that I really wanted to so I didn't really know if I wanted to write a book per se, but I thought I wanted to create a greater outreach and I thought about, you know, teaching at a university, other speech therapists, and then teaching these strategies for them to teach other people.

And then I thought about how can I replicate. myself the best. And I thought, you know, if I could write an easy handbook for parents, that would be the best because then they can pick it up. It's not, it's not a textbook per se, right? It's super conversational. Every chapter has, applicable strategies and exercises to practice what they learned in each chapter.

So it's very easy to pick up and read. So about, it's been about, Just over, let's see, actually a couple years now, because I just published it in the spring of 2024 and it took me about a year to write it up. So it's been like about two and a half years that I had the idea that I wanted to. And I found a company called selfpublishing.

com and they are great with setting you up with like a writing mentor and helping you hit the marks like making your outline and having you touch base. So you, how are you doing on the book? How are you, you know, I wrote everything in the book. But it's like, how many pages or like, what's your strategy about writing?

And they help you really landmark what you're going to be doing throughout, the publication of the book. They help you format the book. They help you with the cover title or the cover art and everything. They helped me connect with editors and, help me put it on Amazon. So they were instrumental with me actually getting the book.

Published or produced because as a speech therapist, I had the ideas, but I didn't know what to do with those ideas. 

Brad Minus: Yeah, I know about self publishing dot com. I speak at a podcasting convention called Podfest, usually in the middle of January. It's actually coming up.

And selfpublishing. com has usually got a booth there they do a little pitch and they tell you, okay, we can help you write your book and stuff. I've gone through their little demo and they've done a keynote on their process and everything. So, and I highly recommend them.

I think they're great. Very, very compassionate, very, very knowledgeable. So yeah, that's, that was a great way to go about it. I had to commend you on that. That's amazing. I'm also kind of thinking that there might be, another methodology that you, I mean, your methodology, but more for adults.

Jeaneen Tang: Absolutely. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. Well, cause you talk about questions and I, and you know, as far as sales process and everything else, it's like, Oh really? Instead of arguing with somebody, you know, someone tells you, Hey, this guy is actually purple. Really? Is this guy purple? Or is it, do you think it's more of a blue, you know, instead of, no, it's not, it's blue.

Hey, do you really think it's purple? You kind of think it's maybe a more of a bluish hue somewhere. Or maybe he's at a purple just in a certain part. What do you think about that? You know, that obviously I always, I always love that.

When I was in sales for a little, bit, always people, you know, I always tell people, I taught a little bit about leading questions, right? Which is what you're talking about here. And I always came up with this example. I'm like, all right, I'll tell you what you need.

I tell you, I can prove that you're not here. I mean, you're not here, here, but let's say you were in the same room, let's say, let's say, and I go to Jeaneen, I'm like, Jeaneen, I guess I can prove that you're not here and you might say, yeah, how's that? Well, let's, let's go. Let's take it. So I go, so Jeaneen, what are your, I bet you've got a couple of great places that you love to vacation.

Where would they be? 

Jeaneen Tang: Hawaii? 

Brad Minus: Hawaii, of course. 

Jeaneen Tang: I would say, well, Hawaii and maybe, yeah, Hawaii. Someplace in Europe, maybe Berlin. 

Brad Minus: Okay. Give me one more place. 

Jeaneen Tang: One more place. I've always wanted to go to Bali. I've seen pictures. Looks beautiful there. 

Brad Minus: Yes. And it is.

So you like those three papers of vacation. So you'd want to go to Bali, but you're not in Bali right now, right? 

Jeaneen Tang: No. 

Brad Minus: And probably Berlin, even though it's probably a little cold there, but you're definitely not in Berlin right now. 

Jeaneen Tang: No. 

Brad Minus: And you're not at home in Hawaii, right?

No. So if you're not in Berlin and you're not in Hawaii, then you must be somewhere else, right? 

Jeaneen Tang: Yes. 

Brad Minus: Well, if you're somewhere else, how can you be here?

Jeaneen Tang: Ah, you're, yes, yes. What, quite the conundrum. Leading questions. 

Brad Minus: Leading you right to where I want you to be. So, I imagine you've probably got some sort of, techniques on, them telling you and giving you wants, but also what they need, right? 

Jeaneen Tang: Yeah. One of my chapters is called, Don't Ask a Yes, No Question, unless you're ready to honor that no.

Because I think a lot of parents and even teachers, will ask kids, Are you ready to clean up? Are you ready to work? Are you ready to go to bed? And if a kid says, no, what do you do? So to avoid that, no. If a child tells you no, and you still say, well, you're still going to go to bed, you're not honoring that no, and you're really taking away their trust.

So, like, how do you get around that is you ask, you ask, you offer choices. So if I tell my son, Oh, we're going to get ready for bed now, do you want to brush your teeth first or change into pajamas first? Or I'll do something like, Hey, we've got to cut your nails. You want to do it today or tomorrow? You know, so I give them options.

Or if I, you know, if I'm working with a kid in articulation, I'm not going to say, can you say elephant? They go, no. Or can you say caterpillar? Though I might say elephant. You say it, your turn, you know, so I, I, I do that turn taking a bit with them, but I don't ask them because if they say no, then it's no.

Brad Minus: Whenever I'm looking to, if I'm making an appointment with somebody, and I'm doing it well, and I used to do this a lot more in person nowadays. You just give him a calendar, but when it was then, it was like I picked to plant to my appointments that I had two sides that I had open and I'd be like, Hey, Jeaneen, do you want to meet on Thursday?

Would you rather me a Thursday afternoon or and then my choice? I would have my choice as the second one, or would Wednesday morning be better. Now I'm leading them into one of those two slots, right? Now, of course they had the, you know, as a, as somebody that's, you know, that's got a good head on their shoulders there.

So they, well, no, actually I don't have either of those and you just start again. Right. Yeah. But yeah, just like that. 

Oh, trying to get him to read a clock. Of course he was six. So it was like, Hey, Sean, what time is it? Cause I bought him a watch and you're looking and he goes, it's 9 9 0 1. And I'm like, what time is bedtime? 9 15. How many minutes do you have left? 14. Very good.

What do you think you need to get done within the next 14 minutes? Brush my teeth, put on my PJs. Can I have a story? Hey, I'll tell you what, you got 14 minutes. If you can get your stuff done by that time, I will be in there to read you a story. 

Jeaneen Tang: Keeping them on a schedule is great. And you know, some kids love timers be like, okay, like if we're going to clean up an activity and a kid's really into the activity, I might say. You know, we have two more minutes. I'm going to set a timer and then I'll tell him, well, there's one more minute left, there's 30 seconds left.

And when the timer goes off, it's like, Oh, it's time to clean up. And you have much more cooperation when you have an expectation set. You need to set an expectation rather than out of the blue saying, okay, we've got to clean up now. We've got to go to bed. You know, out of the blue, it's like the kids will throw a tantrum and have a big meltdown.

Brad Minus: Wow. You know what? You're much more than a speech therapist. You know, you can almost be a behavioral therapist. You know, pediatric, or a child behavioral therapist. That's really, really good. That's amazing. So, yeah, for all you moms and dads out there, you know, this has got some great, great, stuff.

Strategies, I would say, right, for helping your kids use their language and then create opportunities to keep using and practice their language. And it's again, it's called play dumb and sabotage mindfully under anticipating the child's needs. And creating opportunities to practice language and by Jeaneen Tang, MSCCC SLP, which, what is that?

What is that? CCC? SLP, Speech Language Practitioner. 

Jeaneen Tang: It's a Master of Science, Certificate of Clinical Competence, the CCC, and then SLP is Speech Language Pathologist. Yeah. Pathologist. Okay. Speech language pathologist. 

Brad Minus: Right. Right. So we got the alphabet soup after Jeaneen's name.

This is good. And we can figure that out, but anyway, so that's, that's the book. It's going to, it's, she's, it's on Amazon right now. I will make sure that there's a direct link right in the show notes. Also, are you on, any, social media or which was your most active? 

Jeaneen Tang: My most active social media would be, Instagram.

I have my professional one it's at it's play dumb and sabotage. And then my personal one is JT 808, but everything is accessible. You can, there's links for everything on my website, which is play dumb and sabotage. com. 

Brad Minus: Play dumb and sabotage. com again, linked in the show notes, the book directly linked in the show notes, the socials will be linked in the show notes.

Jeaneen Tang: You can also email me on the website as well, and I would love to be, I'm going to be creating like a webinar on online. Course. And then within the next year, you know, hopefully get a Ted talk book.

A Ted talk would be amazing. I would love to impact as many lives as possible. 

Brad Minus: You know what, if you're going to do a Ted talk, you're going to do a course. You've got a book, you know, what's next. 

Jeaneen Tang: What

Brad Minus: are you doing right now? 

Jeaneen Tang: A podcast. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. I didn't even have to. I pulled it out of you. So yeah. I'll tell you right now as far as, the latest stats go, the more niched down you are, the more successful the podcast is. So you being.

Pediatric, children's speech language pathology, the sky's the limit, you know, whether you're talking to other, pathologists, or you're talking to moms and dads. 

Jeaneen Tang: Amazing. 

Brad Minus: It's Yeah, it will be successful beyond belief. So, yeah, the more niche down you are, that's why I'm having issues because I all over the place.

But, but no, no, we're doing good. No, no life changing challenges is doing fantastic right now. And I'm so proud of it. So, but yes, so again, play them and sabotage. That's the website. That's the name of the book that will be linked. Jeaneen. This has been amazing. Some of the tools that you gave just for moms and dads, just a small little bit has been absolutely amazing.

And I know that it's going to be valuable for them and for some other speech language pathologists that might be on to, you know, looking on to link life changing challenges. So I really, really appreciate your, you spending some time with us and giving us some of your immense knowledge. 

Thank you so much for joining us. 

Jeaneen Tang: Thank you for having me, Brad. 

Brad Minus: Oh, the honor was all mine. So for all of you watching on YouTube, please go ahead and hit that like button, hit the subscribe button and hit that notification bell so you'll know when the next episode comes out.

And if you're listening on Apple or Spotify or any of the other podcast directories, go ahead and leave a review. And you know what? I don't even care if it's a bad review, I'll be able to just keep evolving the podcast. And as you've been hearing over the last few episodes, things are evolving.

So, you know, let me know if you like it or not. And if you don't, that's fine too. But for myself, Brad minus, thank you for listening for Jeaneen. We will see you in the next one.