Root Cause Conversations
Root Cause Conversations is the podcast for curious people who want to look beyond the obvious, ask better questions, and better understand the many pieces that shape our health, families, and our lives.
I'm Amanda Mavrakos, MS, CCC-SLP, a pediatric speech-language pathologist, myofunctional therapist, and owner of Salt & Light Speech-Language Resources.
My professional background gives me one lens for looking at whole-person health, but I certainly don't have all the answers. And honestly, that's part of why this podcast exists.
Because when I talk about "root causes", I don't mean there's always one hidden thing responsible for every symptom or struggle. I think of our health more like a puzzle. There are so many pieces that can intersect in ways we may not immediately recognize. That's why you'll hear conversations with people from various backgrounds. We're gonna sit down with healthcare providers and therapist, but also educators, parents, faith voices, and other people who can help us look at these questions from a different perspective. The goal isn't to have one person with all the answers. It's to bring different voices to the table, learn from one another, and help you feel better equipped to ask questions, advocate for yourself and your family, and build a collaborative team when you need one.
My Christian faith is an important part of who I am and how I view whole person wellness, so you'll hear conversations about faith, scripture, and spiritual health here too. But you don't have to share my faith to join us. I believe we all have something we can learn from one another.
And I want this to be more than a podcast you simply listen to. I want us to build a community around these conversations. I want to hear from you what questions you're asking and what topics you want us to explore. That's an important part of this.
We're not here to chase perfect health or pretend we have it all figured out. The heart behind this is to stay curious, ask better questions, and have deeper conversations around things that matter to us.
So pull up a seat. The conversation starts here.
Root Cause Conversations
What Is Root Cause Thinking? Introducing Root Cause Conversations
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Have you ever felt like you've been told what is happening, but no one could explain why?
Welcome to the very first episode of Root Cause Conversations! In this intro episode, I'm sharing why I created this podcast and what you can expect from the conversations ahead.
I talk about how working with kids who weren't making the progress I expected in speech therapy led me to start asking better questions. That journey introduced me to myofunctional therapy, tethered oral tissues, and the incredible connections between breathing, swallowing, oral function, speech, and overall health.
This podcast is all about connecting the dots. We'll explore speech therapy, tongue ties, oral health, airway and feeding challenges, and whole-person wellness—while also making space for conversations about faith, family, and personal growth.
Season One features conversations with incredible clinicians and local experts, including a doula, pediatric physical therapist, occupational therapist, orthodontist, and more, all centered around the real questions I'm hearing from families and professionals every day.
If you're ready to stop settling for quick answers and start understanding the why, you're in the right place.
Be sure to check the show notes for my free Root Cause Starter Guide and my Root Cause Course if you'd like to keep learning beyond the podcast.
Stay curious, keep asking questions, and I'll see you next time on Root Cause Conversations.
Continue Your Root Cause Journey
đź“– Free Download: Root Cause Parent Starter Guide
A simple guide to help you better understand tongue ties, oral habits, airway health, and what to look for.
Download here: https://saltandlightspeech.myflodesk.com/rootcauseguide
🎓 Want to dive deeper?
Explore the Root Cause Course—a self-paced course designed to help parents confidently connect the dots.
Learn more: https://www.saltandlight-slp.com/rootcause-course
đź“– Related Reading
Continue learning with this week's featured blog post.
https://www.saltandlight-slp.com/post/what-every-parent-should-know-about-airway-health-tongue-ties-and-speech-therapy-and-what-we-re-d
Connect with Amanda
A Little Something Extra for Our Listeners!
Want to keep connecting the dots long after the episode ends?
We've created a FREE interactive Root Cause Resource Library to help you make sense of some of the things we talk about here on the podcast. Inside, you'll find practical checklists and resources covering topics like sleep, oral habits, and more—all organized in one easy-to-use place.
No more digging through endless Google searches. Just helpful information you can explore at your own pace, right from home.
https://saltandlightspeech.myflodesk.com/rootcauseguide
Stay connected with Root Cause Conversations!
Still curious? Good. We like curious people around here.
Join the Root Cause Conversations email community for the things we can’t always fit into an episode--helpful resources, practical education, freebies, podcast extras, and more ways to help you connect the dots.
Pull up a chair & join us → https://saltandlightspeech.myflodesk.com/phhol2p41i
- Website: https://www.saltandlight-slp.com/
- Navigating Tongue Ties e-book: https://saltandlightspeech.myflodesk.com/tongueti...
Hey guys, I'm Amanda Mavrakos, and I am your host here on Root Cause Conversations, where we're talking about speech therapy, tongue ties, oral health, plus diving into faith, family, and wellness for people of all ages. I am a speech language pathologist and the small business owner behind Salt and Light Speech and Language Resources here in Alabama. A heads up, this podcast is for educational purposes only. It is not individualized medical advice, and it is not meant to diagnose or treat anything. So always loop in your own provider for anything specific to you or your child. Thank you so much for pulling up a seat at the table and joining us today. So let's just get into it. Welcome to episode one of Root Cause Conversations. Yay! I'm so glad you guys are here with me today. This is going to be my intro episode. So I'm just going to tell you a little bit about who I am, why I'm here, why I decided to do this podcast, and what I hope that we can grow in this community together. So have you ever gone to see a healthcare provider, a doctor, and walked out of that appointment like scratching your head a little bit? You went there for a reason and you came out with a few pieces of information, but you just knew that something wasn't quite right, but nobody could really tell you why. And at this point, you've gone to see several different people who have given you a few pieces of the puzzle, but you know that those puzzle pieces they need to go together, right? Like we have all been there. Now I could be talking about your child. Um, they have been going to therapy, they've been doing the work, but something's missing. Or I could be talking to you, the adult, the parent. Maybe you've got some sleep issues. Perhaps there's an undiagnosed tongue tie, and you know that there are dots that haven't been connected yet, and you know deep down that really matters. If this is resonating with you, and if you're thinking like, huh, yeah, that's me, well, you are in the right place. I'm so glad you found a seat at this table with us here at Root Cause Conversations. My name's Amanda. I'm the owner of Salt and Light Speech and Language Resources, where I see clients of all ages, kiddos and adults. At Salt and Light, we specialize in speech and language development, oral facial myofunctional therapy, tethered oral tissues, airway help, and feeding challenges. As a small business owner and a lifelong learner, I am building this podcast in real time. So please do not expect perfection here. Guys, I'm not a professional podcaster, okay? So give me some grace as I get through this because I'm just doing the best I can. But I promise you that we've got some amazing people lined up this season. I picked every single guest based on what I'm hearing from clients, friends, and family, but also some of the concerns and questions that I'm seeing pop up on social media. I've tried hard to cultivate a lineup that's going to bring you guys some really juicy golden nuggets of information. Now, I want to tell you a little bit about how I got there because I do think it really matters. I want you to know the backstory a little bit. When I started seeing kiddos at my private practice, most of them had a speech sound disorder or an articulation issue. So they had trouble saying certain speech sounds. And they were like working hard. They were coming to therapy, they were doing their home program. And honestly, I kind of felt like I was working hard too. Like I was doing what I had been taught to do in undergrad and graduate school. But guys, something wasn't clicking. Their progress was a lot slower than I thought it should be. And at this point, I'm questioning myself. Like, am I doing a good job? Am I a good therapist? Am I even the right fit for this person? So, being who I am, I started doing some research. Like, how can I be the best therapist for my patients? And I noticed there was some online chatter about my own functional therapy. That was a new term for me. I'd never heard that before. But these people were getting some really great results. And so I started joining Facebook groups. I started asking questions. I started taking courses and I started connecting with people that were getting the outcomes that I was wanting from my clients. Because for me, if somebody has been coming to therapy for years and years, something's got to be missing. And I don't want that to be on me. So I pursued specialized training and myofunctional therapy. I took about three courses and started putting pieces together and realizing what was happening inside the mouth and the way these kids were breathing and swallowing, as well as some other things from a whole person perspective, all of those things were actually connected to why their speech wasn't moving in the direction that I felt like it should. But also in the middle of all of that, I got some additional training in tethered oral tissues, tongue ties. Because guess what, people? We're connecting dots. We're putting pieces together. And in the myofunctional therapy courses, they were talking about tongue ties. We didn't discuss that in graduate or undergraduate school. So I thought, hey, this could be another missing piece of the puzzle for the clients that I see at my clinic. And so on the other side of all that training, I knew that I personally had to change how I was looking at these kiddos. And that's where the root cause thinking comes in for me. I stopped accepting the slow progress. And I also stopped accepting that when they walked into the door with this one thing, that's not the whole picture. There's usually something going on underneath the surface of what I'm seeing at the surface level. And my job became digging deeper, finding what's going on and what's driving what I'm actually seeing in the clinic. So that's my backstory. But I do want you to know that this podcast is for everybody. And as this podcast evolves, I'm sure you'll hear more about me and how I came to the conclusions that I did. But I want you to know that I'm here for you, the parents, absolutely. But I'm also here for you, the adult, the grandparent, the teacher. Hey, the healthcare provider out there. I'm talking to you too. Like, we're not just going to be on here talking about healthcare. We're going to be talking about personal growth, faith, and business. Everybody has a seat at this table because root cause issues don't start and end in healthcare. They carry over into our everyday life. On the podcast, we're going to have clinicians, people of faith, educators coming in to share some real stories in a very authentic way. We're going to be pulling back the layers together because none of it's have it all figured out. I don't have it all figured out. And that's why my guests are showing up. We're going to show up and we're going to learn and grow here together. Now, I want to talk a little bit about my faith. It's not just a footnote for me, it's truly woven into everything I do. It shapes how I practice and how I interact with my clients. It shapes my marriage and it shapes how I show up for my people every day. You don't have to share the same beliefs that I do to be here with me. But I always want you to know where I stand. James 1.5 is engraved in my heart, and I believe that wisdom is available to anybody who's coming looking for it. And that's what we're going to be seeking in the podcast. We're going to be seeking wisdom from each other and together. So here's what you can expect real conversations with real people from different walks of life. Every episode, we're just going to be getting to the root of it. And my goal is to release every other week on like the second and fourth Thursdays of the month. We will also periodically be dropping some freebies and resources in the show notes. And today I've got one for you. Hey, it's free. Guys, really, it's free. It's the root cause starter guide. It's a checklist for parents, but honestly, you could probably use it for yourself too. And here you're going to be looking at airway, breathing, and sleep. So if you want to go deeper, I think this freebie could be a real eye-opener for you. And I also have a course, the root cause course. It's built for families who want to understand what's going on with oral habits, airway health, and speech. You don't need a clinical background here. You just need the willingness to get to the root of what may be happening inside of your own home. So I'm going to link the freebie and the course in the show notes. So if you want to check those out, you're welcome to do that. Let's take a peek at what we're going to have in season one. We've got Rachel Bailey, a doula here in the Birmingham area. We've got Jill, she's a pediatric physical therapist and the owner of Leaps in Pelham. We've got Jana with Iron City OT, Amy with Live Equipt, and Dr. Z with Blue Lake Orthodonics. We also have several other guests lined up, and you guys, it's gonna be a good season. I'm excited for it, and I don't want you to miss what's coming. So as I wrap up today, yes, I know I have chattered on for a while now, but I'm really excited about this, and I'm so excited that you're here with me. That's the whole purpose of the podcast here is to shift your thinking, to be willing to ask deeper questions. And if something feels off, I want you to trust that feeling inside yourself. You're not alone. That's exactly why we're doing this in the first place. So please save this episode, download it, subscribe, share it with your people. It would mean so much if you would leave me a review, especially if something resonated with you today. So until next time, there's a seat at this table for everyone. Thank you for joining us on our Root Cause Conversations podcast today. If this episode gave you something to think about, please do me a favor and hit subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you've got a few extra seconds, download it and share it with a friend who you think might need it today. You never know who's sitting with these exact questions that we talked about in our episode. I've got everything we mentioned, plus more, on today's guest and all the ways that you can connect with me sitting right below in the show notes. So make sure you check those out. And if you're still short on answers after today, I am praying you get the wisdom you need whenever and however you need it. Come find me over on Instagram, and I will catch you guys next time.