Overall, this experience has been very rewarding and a fantastic learning experience. While this internship and research experience does not directly apply to my chosen field of Speech-Language Pathology, it has made me think of how I need to be compassionate towards my clients, versus just seeing them as a caseload that I need to fix; I need to help the person, not the problem. I have also looked at ways that I might possibly be able to relate this experience to my field of Speech-Language Pathology. Perhaps I could explain to coworkers that when providing therapy to individuals a part of the LGBTQ community, we might have to change how we might conduct a therapy session, to not make it so heteronormative. I could even make a pamphlet listing different types of ways that they could conduct therapy where it would be more inclusive for all families involved in therapy. For example, if I was seeing a child who had two moms and had a language delay, I could show the child pictures or have them read a book about a family with two moms, instead of the traditional family. This would integrate their personal family experience, …show more content…
Working with them while they are transitioning to becoming male or female and working with them on changing their voice quality. Therapy could focus on how to make the voice sound more feminine or masculine and teach compensatory strategies in doing so. In addition to having them in therapy, putting them in a support group with other people being treated for transgender voice quality might be very beneficial for them. They could learn from one another about strategies and techniques that they use when trying to change their own voice quality. And while the field of Speech-Language Pathology has been doing research on transgender voice quality since the 1980’s, there is still much work that can be done when figuring out how to help treat these