- Will you consider this?

We all need to get along, and the best way is through communication.

I'm Christine Zak-Edmonds.

Stay with me for more.

(upbeat music) Getting our message across doesn't always go smoothly, and we know how frustrating it can be.

But for our kiddos, when they can't talk, they can still communicate with sign language taught by speech pathologists and early childhood educators at Communication Junction.

Welcome Abbey Cook, who shares her knowledge of language development with all of us now.

Welcome, and you're the founder of Communication Junction.

- That's right, thank you.

It's great to be here.

- So how did you get this all started, the ball rolling?

- I feel like it's been a lifelong journey, really.

The short answer is I was just looking to spread the knowledge of early communication with families and just kind of decided, let's see, I've been signing with my kids at home.

Let's see how it goes with the community.

And kind of the longer answer is that I started signing as a child.

My mom was a kindergarten teacher at District 150 and she was in charge of the deaf, not in charge of, but she had the deaf and hard of hearing kids in her class and wanted to be able to communicate with them without the interpreter all the time, and so she and I, at the time, Peoria Park District was offering sign language classes, and so she and I took some classes together and I kind of continued to dabble in that through high school.

I was a swimmer in high school, and the assistant coach was in charge of the life skills classroom, and I volunteered in the life skills classroom and really fell in love with the special ed population, moved forward to college and decided to pursue a degree in speech language pathology, and I was interested in signing.

So then I took a couple more sign language classes and moved forward to graduate school at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC.

Gallaudet is a university for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing is the undergraduate program, and then the graduate program is for individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing or people who want to work with deaf and hard of hearing.

- Interesting.

- So I got my master's degree at Gallaudet University as a speech language pathologist, and my husband and I moved to Virginia Beach, Virginia at the time, and I felt like this is what I want to do.

I want to be a speech therapist with deaf and hard of hearing kids, help them with reading comprehension and language, and really felt like I had my dream job for the five years that we were there.

But my husband is in the military and he was deployed several times while we were there, and the second time he was deployed, we had a toddler and I was pregnant, and so when he came back, I just said what do you think.

- Can we go home?

- About moving home.

It would be nice to have a support system.

He's now a reservist in the United States Navy, so was able to find a civilian job here in town, and so we moved to Peoria, and the goal was that I was gonna work part-time.

- [Christine] And raise your children.

- And raise the children and spread the message of early communication, and starting a business is just not at all what I anticipated.

And so here we are almost 13 years later.

- [Christine] That's incredible.

- It's just been amazing.

The community response to it has just been amazing.

- So that's you.

Now tell me about Communication Junction and all that it has to offer, because you impact infants to age about five and a half.

- Yeah, we don't work with the special ed population.

That's just kind of where my heart, I mean, we do work with them, but that's not our primary focus.

So kind of like you said when you were introducing me, we know as parents that it can be frustrating to communicate with your little ones, both for the parent and for the child, and so our goal is to empower parents with communication tools so that they can communicate with their children, continue to connect with their children and create lifelong learners.

The way that we do that, one of the ways that we do that is through sign language, and that's what we're known for, but our classes are so much more than that, so much more than just signing.

We really infuse a lot of speech and language skills into our classes.

We help families learn to just communicate, whether they're signing or talking.

We have some kids who use communication devices in our class, but for the most part, families who join us are coming to us because they're looking for a fun activity to do with their children.

- [Christine] Fun and learn.

- And educational.

- So, where do you start?

What's the very first class that a parent could bring their child to?

- The very first class that we recommend that families join us for is our What Is Your Baby Thinking class.

That class is appropriate for children as soon as they're born all the way up until three years of age.

So many times people will say well, they're not signing back, so I don't think I should start signing yet, but signing, any kind of communication, is just like spoken language.

We don't not talk to our children when they're born.

- [Christine] I talked all the time.

- We start talking as soon as they're born, even though we know that their first word isn't going to happen 'til about one year of age.

That's the benchmark.

One year of age, your child should have about one to three words.

However, with signing, because it's new to everybody, it's not what we know.

We want our kids to sign back immediately, and so just like spoken language, the earlier you start signing with them, the earlier they can sign back to you, and they can sign back before they can start talking.

So lots of times people will say, what age will they start signing back to me, and there's not really a great answer to that.

Usually we see kids starting to sign back somewhere between six months and a year, depending on when they started that journey.

- [Christine] And it starts with more and please and thank you, right?

- Those are definitely good places to start.

We have five signs that we recommend families start with.

The first two that I recommend families start with is the sign for milk, because that helps you meet your child's need.

That first year of life, that's all they're doing.

Milk is the main form of nutrition, so every time you feed your baby, sign that sign for milk, regardless of how they're feeding.

And then the second sign I recommend families start with is our sign for all done, because as we know, babies don't have large attention spans, and we're moving throughout our day, changing activities frequently, so that's a nice sign to use.

- To let them know, and then they can let you know when they're done with something.

- Because the magic of signing is frequency and consistency.

Sign the word every time you say it and find lots of opportunities to say it, so starting small, milk and all done.

And then from there, we like to add the sign for book, because we're doing lots of reading with our kids.

If it's an older toddler, a lot of times the sign for help is really nice, because inherently, people are signing more with their children all the time because we know that sign, but more starts to lose its meaning and they start signing more for everything, so changing it up and adding help, because they might be standing at the refrigerator and wanting something to eat and they're signing more, but really they need help opening the refrigerator, or the blocks fall down and they need help.

- See how ignorant I am?

- You're not ignorant.

You're not ignorant at all.

You just haven't been doing this for 13 years and educating families on that progression of language development.

So, more, please and thank you are really great signs to use.

My goal is to get families beyond that, get families using functional language to communicate with their kids so they really can understand what it is that they are wanting and needing or seeing, just seeing in the world around them.

So for example, in class yesterday, we were talking about rain and weather, so that as the seasons are changing we can start talking to our kids about what's going on outside.

We provide families with a wide variety of vocabulary.

And then we encourage, you asked where they should start.

And then we encourage them to continue to join us for that What Is Your Baby Thinking class until they feel like.

- They've mastered it?

- They've mastered it or their kids are at a good communication level.

I mean, we have families that will join us for 10 sessions of What Is Your Baby Thinking or eight sessions, of two years, of What Is Your Baby Thinking.

And then after the What Is Your Baby Thinking class at 18 months or when a family feels ready, we have the next level.

- [Christine] Which is?

- The program is called Sign to Learn.

We're using signs to help teach new concepts and vocabularies to toddlers.

We have a class on the alphabet, we have a class on colors, we have a class on shapes, we have a class on animals.

These kids might or might not be using sign to communicate, but we are using sign to teach them new vocabulary just as another tool in that parent's toolbox to teach them.

- So you're not only a speech pathologist, but you're early childhood too, so that's a nice marriage, especially the kids who get to benefit and the families who benefit from it.

- One of our goals is really to help parents understand the progression of communication and how they can best support their kids in their communication journey while having fun.

- It is a lot of fun.

You're connecting with your children, or we're connecting.

Grandparents can do it too, right?

And do you encourage that?

- Yeah, absolutely.

The more people in the child's life that are communicating in whatever way the family chooses, the more the child will be able to communicate, so that frequency and consistency that I was talking about, the more people that are doing that, the easier it will be for the child to acquire.

- Well, you also do some virtual classes too, and with COVID you've had to retool, but maybe you were already doing some of that anyway.

- We weren't.

Prior to COVID, we had had lots of families that, Caterpillar's a big employer here in town, but people move on and they move to different places.

Just before COVID I felt like there were a lot of families moving out of town, maybe because we capture families when they're young, and so as they advance in their careers, they're moving to different places.

We had been getting a lot of feedback like oh, I've moved to this city, but there's just nothing like Communication Junction here.

I've moved to the city.

There's just nothing like Communication Junction here.

And so we had started exploring different ways to provide what we provide in the classroom in some sort of, and at that time it was online.

Virtual wasn't a word at that time.

- Okay, all right, got it.

- Some sort of an online presence.

We threw a couple things out there.

We're talking about our class program, but we also have a story time program, so we were trying to maybe try to do our story times online and that kind of thing, but then when COVID hit, we had to immediately switch to virtual programming.

And quite frankly, I'm very thankful for it.

That time in my life was very stressful.

It was very hard to be a business owner at that time.

People just were very uncertain about everything, so it was just very difficult to navigate, as I'm sure everybody feels.

But from that, we have created this virtual program that is just, I love it, I love it.

I love being in the classroom with the kids, but I've held onto my virtual classes because I also love teaching virtually.

It's just so fun.

I mean, yesterday on my screen, I had a family from Pennsylvania.

I had a family from the Netherlands.

I had five families from Central Illinois and a family from Texas all on the screen together.

As I said, we were talking about weather, so it's fun 'cause then you can see what's it like in Pennsylvania.

- [Christine] Where's it snowing?

- Right, yeah.

So it's just been fun, and we are working to grow that virtual program, and just like Communication Junction has grown here in Peoria and we also have a location in Bloomington-Normal through word of mouth.

We're really just encouraging our families that are joining us virtually to share with their friends so that that program can continue to grow and we can continue to share that message of early communication with families.

- And you started this.

There's not another Communication Junction anywhere else.

This is your franchise.

- I guess you could call it that.

When I started Communication Junction, the program Signing Time, which used to air here on WTVP-PBS, was creating a teaching program and I signed on with them, and that really gave me the opportunity to kind of gain my confidence and get my feet wet with teaching little ones with their parents in the classroom.

I had been in preschool classrooms teaching kids with other teachers, but adding the parents in as I'm training more and more instructors, I forgot what that was like.

Now you're talking to.

- Adults as well.

- Who are also trying to learn, and so that really allowed me to get my feet wet with teaching and really start to understand where I wanted the program to go, and so that was a great benefit.

So it started with the Sign Time Academy, and then Communication Junction just kind of grew from there, and I have been creating curriculums since then.

Starting in August, with our classes in August, we're gonna be starting a brand new curriculum, so we're on version five, so every couple of years we continue to learn and grow as a staff, and then we infuse that into our program and teach.

- You can evaluate what's needed.

So who learns faster, the kids or the adults?

- The kids.

- [Christine] Definitely.

- There's so many times that parents will come to class.

We do a little sharing time at the beginning of class.

How did it go, how was your week, any questions, any concerns, what new things can we celebrate?

And a parent will say the other day she was signing bird.

I haven't signed bird since we learned that six weeks ago and she just pulled it out and signed bird.

- [Christine] She probably heard a bird somewhere.

- She heard a bird somewhere, and their brains are just like sponges.

This is my untechnical version of the story, but I think about your brain and all of those fun little folds that you have, and I think the kids just tuck all those little pieces of information in those folds, and then they just pull it out when they're ready to.

- Their computer memory's not overcrowded like mine.

I need to get rid of some.

- Way too many tabs open in the brain.

- So when you have a class, you're located on North University in Peoria.

That's where you hold the classes then.

And then how do people sign up, or how does that all work?

- If a family is interested in joining us for class, they can just visit our website, which is www.CommunicationJunction.net.

- [Christine] Let's make sure we get that on the screen correctly.

- And then there's several buttons on that screen that say register for a class.

We just revamped our website, and so I'm hoping that it's very clear.

With the face to face classes and the virtual classes and the benefits that you can get from joining a class, either at your comfort level or your location, whichever you need, they can read about the class there.

They can sign up for a class.

My email is on the website.

We really take a personal approach to our families because we are building a community, whether we're building that community here in Central Illinois, in Peoria or Bloomington-Normal or virtually, but we really try to connect with those families, so always here to answer questions.

- So the classes that you have, you're teaching some people in person as well as the people.

- At the same time, no.

You either sign up for a face to face class or you sign up for a virtual class.

- Interesting, good to know.

- I've tried that with my preschoolers.

We haven't talked about that preschool program yet, but we have a preschool program as well.

Those kids, they have some school readiness skills going on, so we have done that.

If a family hasn't been able to join us, we'll maybe bring the laptop in and turn it on so that that child can be part of his or her class, but trying to teach virtually and a class at the same time would just be hard.

- Yeah, another headache, and we've had enough headaches in the last couple years.

- It's not the connection we're looking for.

- So you have Sign and Play class.

Tell me about that.

And then you have also during the summer months, and I don't know if it continues, is the Sign and Sing.

- Yeah, a couple of different programs, absolutely.

So Sign and Play classes is what we've been talking about.

We have our Sign to Communicate program, which is that What Is Your Baby Thinking class.

With this new rollout of the curriculum, we'll have a What Is Your Baby Thinking summer class, so lots of the vocabulary will be related to things that you're experiencing in that season, a fall class, a winter class, a spring class.

We're revamping the curriculum so that the vocabulary matches more of what the families are going through seasonally, while also peppering in signs for daily routines.

So that's Sign to Communicate.

Then our Sign to Learn program is the one where we're using signs to help build vocabularies, and then we have the preschool program.

That's all of our Sign and Play classes, and then our other program is called Sign and Sing.

It's a story time program that we offer at a majority of the local libraries throughout the area.

Several childcare programs have us come in and do our program for their.

- [Christine] Throughout the year?

- For their classes, and we also host two different, right now, two different in-person private story times.

The first one is Sign at the Park.

It's the first Saturday of the month, all the way through September at Keller Station at nine o'clock on Saturday mornings.

The other program is called Stroll and Sign, which when this airs will kind of be wrapping up, but that meets every Thursday morning down at the riverfront.

It's called Liberty Park, the grassy area there in front of Running Central Outfitters or RC Outfitters and the water, and that program has taken on its own life, for sure.

There are families that I see at that program that I don't ever see any other time, and there's families that continue to come even when their kids are seven and eight years old.

It's a fun program.

We meet at the park.

We go for a walk down to the ReverPlex and back.

A local vendor generously provides a snack for the kids, and then I do a 20 minute movement and story time for the kids, and those outside programs are $5 a family if tickets are purchased in advance, and then $7 in person.

- You're making a living, you're making a difference.

- Making a difference.

- Okay, barely living sometimes.

You go to bed.

- But it's so fun.

Like I said in the beginning, when I was a speech language pathologist in the preschool setting at an elementary school, I really thought I was doing what I wanted with my life, but it's interesting how your life can evolve.

I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be managing a team of 10 with two locations, a virtual location and impacting so many families, but I love it.

I love it, it's so fun.

- And it's rewarding.

- [Abbey] It's very fun.

- A bucket list, do you want to grow the business even bigger?

Do you want to franchise it?

Have you ever thought about that?

- I have thought about that.

After I leave here today, I have to drive.

Not have to, I get to drive to Bloomington to drop some things off, so I don't know.

There are families that are like, move to Oregon.

Hey, if you ever think about opening a Communication Junction in Oregon, I'd love to help out, those kinds of things.

I think I'm too much of a hands-on person, that I think that we'd have to open on the I-74.

Maybe Champagne or Danville or Quad Cities or something, but I don't even know how I would, it would just be such a different mindset to have an instructor that lived in another state, that I needed to ship materials to or something like that.

Would I like to grow Communication Junction to different cities?

Sure, absolutely, but so far the way that we have grown is in a response to the community.

I am very fortunate in that way.

I have a husband who has a full-time job.

I have a mom who's retired and can take care of my children for me when they were little, so lots of things going for me in terms of just being able to see how it goes.

So yes, we do have a plan of possibly moving farther down I-74 in the future, but we're just gonna kind of see how that goes.

- When there's a need, and you'll know when there's a need.

What's one of the best stories you have about any of the classes or any of the kids that has surprised you or cracked you up?

- Of course I'm totally drawing a blank right now.

That's okay, that's okay.

Maybe something specific will come to me as we're talking, but it's just fun.

It's just fun when you're teaching a class and a light bulb clicks.

I think some of my favorite memories, I mean, this is very early on before we even had our own classroom.

I was teaching in the Sunday school classroom at my church.

They were allowing me to have some space, and a child walked for the first time in class.

And just seeing the parents' reaction, and that child is now in third or fourth grade and the parents still remember that about class and I still remember that about class.

So really making those connections with families, but those light bulb moments.

Something happened in class just the other day that I even went home and told my family about because it was so funny, and of course I'm totally drawing a blank.

- I feel so good, thank you, because I draw a blank all the time.

- Kids come up with the funniest and the craziest and the silliest things, and one of the things I try to share with my families is let's take time to appreciate that rather than you're not paying attention.

What is Miss Abby saying?

That kind of thing.

- Right, exactly.

- Really just normalizing kids as kids are kids.

One of the things that we're seeing a lot, and I don't know what it has to do with.

I don't know if it has to do with the fact that kids have been home for the last two years.

- [Christine] Or wearing masks.

- It just has to do with the fact that life is changing, there's more technology, life is busy.

I have no idea.

This'll be a study that happens 12 years down the road or something, but we're finding that kids in our classes are really having a lot more sensory needs than they've ever had before, and so it's such a nice opportunity to talk to parents about just because he's move, I had put a video up on Instagram the other day of this child doing circles around me, which to some people would be super distracting, why isn't his mom making him sit kind of thing, but the whole time he was doing circles around me, he's signing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star with us while we're doing it, and mom happened to get it on video.

And so just talking to parents about our kids all have different needs.

- [Christine] And ways of learning.

- And ways of learning, and as long as we are maintaining a safe environment here in class, we're reminding kids to not climb on the gate or hang on the counter, those kinds of things, or run.

Let's work together as a community to help these kiddos.

One of the classic things that happens, this is totally off of what you asked me, but one of the classic things that happens is that kids hit, kids push.

- And that's frustrating.

- That's frustrating.

The way that children learn or experience the world is through their hands, so when a child comes up to you and grabs your grandson, grabs your hair, he's not grabbing your hair 'cause he's angry with you.

Most likely he's grabbing your hair 'cause he wants your attention, he wants you to pay attention to him.

He wants to show you something.

Just talking to families, if something like that happens in class, a lot of times I'll stop class and I'll say okay, let's all help little Johnny.

When he comes towards your little one and he's going to push or pull hair or something, everybody wave hi friend, those kinds of things, so that parents aren't feeling like oh, my child's the bad one in class.

No, your child is acting in a developmentally appropriate way.

Developmentally normal is not always socially appropriate, and so it's our job as parents to help them learn what's socially appropriate.

- And parents need to learn, too.

They need to learn that it's okay.

I saw that on your site, you had five ways to know that your child is frustrated, and hitting was one of them, and acting out.

Poor little things.

And your kids sort of remember some of their sign language.

They have to live with it every day, but you don't sign a lot.

- We don't sign a lot at home, no.

Just like most of the families who join me for class, as soon as your child starts talking, you stop signing because it's not first nature to you like spoken language is.

We probably signed a little bit longer than a typical family joining us for class at home, but you know, once my boys started being effective communicators, signing kind of fell away.

We have a few signs that we still use at home.

We still use eat.

We still use bathroom.

That's a nice one.

I still use the sign for all done.

Sometimes I'll sign something, and especially my oldest will be like mom, I don't know what you're saying.

- Stop, mom.

Well, thanks so much for sharing your story.

Your startup, your enthusiasm and everything.

It's been enlightening.

- Absolutely, thanks for having me.

- Thanks, Abbey Cook.

I hope you all learned something as well, and remember, CommunicationJunction.net.

All right, have a good evening, have a good day.

Stay safe and healthy and hold happiness.

(upbeat music)