Laura Borneke Allen

Allen with a young patient

Clear Communication

Allen gives kids the tools to connect and grow

By Katie Roiger | Submitted photos

Revolutionary Nat Turner once said that good communication is the bridge between confusion and clarity. When we think of communication, we often think of work meetings, talking over the week’s schedule with a spouse, or maybe just having a long chat with a friend over a cup of coffee. One thing that each of those activities assumes is the ability to communicate at all. What if you had trouble understanding when your boss is being serious or when he is joking? Or, what if you wanted to tell your friend a funny story but couldn’t form the words?

“Language-speech pathology is a very broad field,” said Laura Allen, certified speech pathologist and founder of Let’s Speak for Kids in Janesville. “It also goes into social and pragmatic language skills, like understanding social rules – rules that most people are able to grow up acquiring and understanding, like when someone says hello, you’re supposed to say hello back.”

Speech-language therapists like Allen have a large bag of tricks depending on their client’s needs. Some people have trouble forming sounds due to physical reasons, others have trouble finding words to express their thoughts. Others have difficulty understanding others’ speech despite being able to hear, and still others need help learning how to interpret facial expressions and nonverbal cues.

“70 percent of communication, or more, is nonverbal inflections,” Allen said. “Something that kids and young adults right now are really having difficulty with is texting because you can’t look at the person or hear their voice.”

Allen first became interested in speech pathology when she

was a young adult herself. As a teenager, she saw her first sign language interpreter at a church service and was compelled by the idea of alternate communication forms. A short time later, she met a classmate’s mother, Sonia Ziemer, who worked as a speech therapist at her school.

“She’s an amazing lady,” Allen said about Ziemer. “You couldn’t find anyone with a kinder heart.” After graduating from then-Mankato State University with a master’s degree in Communication Disorders, Allen worked a series of shortterm jobs within the speech pathology field before being offered a position at her former high school, WatervilleElysian-Morristown Public Schools. Best of all, Allen got to work alongside her former mentor Ziemer.

After 18 years at Waterville-ElysianMorristown, Allen began feeling tired and unwell. When the feelings didn’t go away, she became worried about her ability to perform her job and contacted a doctor. The diagnosis was as disheartening as it was unexpected: Allen was developing fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.

In the months to come, Allen said she relied heavily on her deep-rooted Christian faith to encourage and uplift her.

“God is great, God is good, and he has a plan,” Allen said. Her supervisor at Waterville-Elysian-Morristown gave her a 2-year medical leave while she pondered what to do next. While brainstorming, she remembered a chat she’d had 5 years ago with a patient’s parent.

“She said, ‘Laura, I really think you should start your own private practice,’” said Allen. “I said, ‘Yeah, I don’t think so! Going out on your own is kind of a scary thing.’ But as I was sitting here on medical leave, I realized that full-time school just was not going to work for me anymore, but I can do part time, and I can have a flexible schedule in my own private practice.”

After chatting with her husband Scott and some trusted friends, Allen resigned from Waterville-Elysian-Morristown and turned her attention to starting her own practice. Her team of supporters helped her transform her barn into a therapy office, complete with a clinic area, 3 mini horses, a donkey, and a therapy dog in training. Let’s Speak for Kids was officially up and running by spring of 2020.

One of Allen’s favorite aspects of her private practice is the room her patients have to move around.

“I have found that movement incorporated into a speech-language program really does make a difference,” said Allen. “I have a young man who loves basketball and I’m able to get him to engage with me by giving him a basketball. We work on a couple of things, and then he makes a basket. He’s actively engaging his body and his brain when talking to me.”

In addition to traditional therapy methods, Let’s Speak for Kids also offers hippotherapy, a treatment tool that involves interacting with and riding horses to engage a patient’s sensory, cognitive, and neuromotor systems. Allen had been interested in hippotherapy for years and jumped at the chance to integrate it with her practice.

“Hippotherapy is something that can only be completed by occupational therapist, physical therapist, or speechlanguage pathologist,” said Allen. “It’s not riding lessons: You are still working to achieve the same goal that you would in a traditional clinic, but you’re using the movement of a horse.”

Allen works with trainer Dennis Auslam from Redwood Stables to prepare the horses for patients to use. Once her barn’s arena is completed, Let’s Speak for Kids will house 4 full-sized horses, including a very special horse named Uno.

“He is missing an eye, hence the name Uno,” Allen said. “Won’t it be fun for the kids to be on a horse that has a disability also?”

Although Allen’s job is to teach her patients new skills, she said that she herself learns something from her clients and fellow speech-language pathologists every day. She said that every interaction with her clients is a gift, and that she is thankful to her Savior for sending her this opportunity.

“I would not have this if it wasn’t for Jesus,” Allen said. “He is the cornerstone of this business.”