Today we’d like to introduce you to Kellye Slaggert.
Hi Kellye, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am a mental health counselor who works with children and their families. Supporting strong parent-child relationships while supporting a child’s developmental potential is my passion. I often use books as part of the therapy process. Books are non-threatening ways to learn and talk about different topics. I created a non-fiction overview of the components of Propeller Co-regulation using simple graphics. The airplane’s propellers summarize the five key aspects of regulation. While informative, children wanted a character brought to life. A chance encounter with Carlie Sturtz gave the story the chance to take flight (pun intended). Once the story was completed, we found a brilliant illustrator, Lisa Albinus, who created colored illustrations for the chapter book and its accompanying workbook.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Writing the book has been the easiest part, outside of grammar. The whole journey of creating a book and then getting it into the hands of its intended readers is akin to being in a new country for me. New terms, processes, and sequencing of the different aspects of making it happen were a lot to learn. I don’t know what I don’t know.
While I love to learn, the myriad details of how it all comes together, the steps for getting the book launched, there have been inconvenient missteps and knowledge that I wish I’d had earlier in the process. Finding the right tools for the job and editing support has been extremely valuable. Parts of the workbook had to be completely recreated in software other than the one in which it was originally developed. Time-consuming, tedious, and at times frustrating to get the content properly formatted.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I have my master’s degree in clinical psychology and am a licensed mental health clinician with over 30 years of experience. My passion is helping children and their families. If a child is experiencing challenges or delays, early support pays dividends in their future trajectory. Strengthening a child’s social and emotional development, ability to manage stress, parent coaching, and neurodevelopmental disorders are all foundational to my clinical practice.
When working with children, you must meet them where they are and join in their interests. Having clinical resources that are customized to a child’s interests increases the child’s buy-in and helps build rapport.
Over the years, I’ve created a handful of short educational materials for children when I couldn’t find anything already available. My non-fiction creations are short educational blurbs or resources for a child.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
When moving to North Carolina and determining what my practice would look like, I lucked out in reaching out to a clinician who happened to be in a multidisciplinary practice. I was lucky that Lake Norman Children’s Therapy had space and wanted to have additional mental health providers rent space within their walls. It is nice to have pediatric occupational, physical, and speech therapy clinicians under the same roof. If a child receives more than one clinical service, they can have it all at the same location.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://propellercoregulation.com
- Instagram: propeller_coreg
