WholeStory Speech

Website

Rochel Lieberman, Ph.D. CCC-SLP: Researcher & Speech-Language Pathologist She co-treats parents and children using SEST at her practice, WholeStory Speech.

Dr. Rochel Lieberman is a researcher and speech-language pathologist, with social communication disorder as her area of expertise. She is the co-founder of Story Emotion Social Therapy (SEST), an approach to address social, emotional, and language skills.

09/17/2026

Your child’s block tower falls, and it’s twenty minutes before the tears stop. If that’s a familiar scene, you know it was never really about the blocks.
Bouncing back from something small isn’t always easy for kids, and it’s a skill they can build over time.
On October 14, WholeStory is hosting Julia Cook for an evening built around that idea: When the Going Gets Tough, So Do They. She’s a bestselling children’s author with more than 100 books and over 4 million copies sold.
It’s a 45-minute talk followed by 15 minutes of live Q&A, virtual, $25 per person.
Wednesday, October 14 at 8:30 PM EST.
Reserve your seat. Link in bio.

09/15/2026

New year. New website.
Out with the old, in with the new. WholeStory just got a refresh.
Shop the books + resources, grab a free download, and find everything WholeStory in one place.
Come take a look: wholestoryspeech.com
Link in bio.

09/10/2026

This is either great footage or completely unusable. There’s no in between.

(You’ll understand once you watch it.)

Studio version’s on its way. This one couldn’t wait.

09/10/2026

The question doesn’t change. The room just gets bigger.
More from this interview soon.

09/06/2026

Educators fill these rooms every year. Parents rarely get the chance to sit in them. There’s too much else going on.
In February, I’ll be speaking at Learning and the Brain about social skills, belonging, and regulation, the things that can shape whether a child feels like they belong or feels like they’re constantly trying to keep up.
I’ve sat with enough parents to know that some of the most important questions come after the school day is over, when everyone is tired and there is finally a minute to think.
Those are the questions I want to bring into the room too.
If you could hand a room full of educators one question about your child, what would it be?
What do you wish they understood?
Comment below, or DM me if you’d rather keep it private.

08/30/2026

Are you tired of telling children and teens what to say? So am I. Scripted phrases work until the moment a child actually needs them, and then they vanish. SEST WholeStory takes a different path. Instead of feeding kids lines, we help them map their own story: what happened, what they felt, what they needed, and how to make things right again. The words become theirs, and they last.

I speak to therapists, parents, and school teams about how to build emotional language and social communication through story, without scripts and without telling kids what to do. If that is the shift your group is ready for, let’s talk.

Book me to speak. Link in bio, or send a message.

08/24/2026

Every student has a hidden language: is your school fluent in it?

Introducing the 13 WholeStory Tools™: practical, research-backed strategies helping educators, staff, and families understand Social Communication Disorder and build emotionally safe conversations with every student.
Bring WholeStory to your school — staff trainings, parent workshops, and student-facing sessions available. Link in bio 👆

08/12/2026

Back to school. Back to the fundamentals. 📚

Start the school year with a story-first approach to social-emotional learning.

SEST Fundamentals: Story Emotion Social Therapy gives SLPs a framework for looking beyond social behaviors and listening for the whole story.

📖 Add it to your back-to-school professional library.

Available on Amazon. Link in bio.

07/01/2026

“If telling kids what to do worked, they’d already be doing it.”

So often, children are not missing another reminder.

They are missing the words to explain what happened.
They are missing the safety to share what felt hard.
They are missing an adult who can listen for the story underneath the behavior.

A meltdown is not just a meltdown.
A conflict is not just a conflict.
A quiet withdrawal is not just “being difficult.”

There is usually a story there:
what the child wanted,
where they got stuck,
what felt too big,
and what they did when they did not know what else to do.

WholeStory helps parents stop chasing behavior and start listening for what is driving it.

Because when we understand the story, we can respond in a way that builds connection, language, and repair.

05/13/2026

Bring WholeStory to your community
Bring real talk to parent nights, school trainings, and community events, and leave with tangible tools and methods to implement.
You’ll gain
A new way to listen to your child
Language to understand their behaviors
Tools to replace correction with connection

Reach Out
Tell us your event date, audience size, and goals. We will customize talks for your community, and all you have to do is watch the transformation.

Address

801 Mt Vernon Pl NW
Washington D.C., DC
20001

Website

http://www.wholestoryspeech.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when WholeStory Speech posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.