Meet Regina Feinberg
Regina Feinberg is a Licensed Speech/Language Pathologist in the State of Washington, who has worked over 30 years with students from preschool through high school as well as adults. In the past 15 years, she has focused on helping those with social challenges.
Regina teaches individuals with social-cognitive deficits such as Asperger’s Syndrome, High Functioning Autism, PDD-NOS, Nonverbal Learning Disability, ADHD, social anxiety and other social challenges to communicate and interact successfully with peers, family and community.
By using creative strategies, she is able to focus on enhancing social communication skills. She develops goals together with her clients that make significant and positive differences in her clients’ lives!
And while Regina is gardening, kayaking and taking long walks around the island, you can bet, she is thinking of new ways to increase her clients’ progress!
Regina has raised and launched three wonderful children with her husband, Ron K. Feinberg, who is a leading psychotherapist in the area. The cats, chickens and now, grandchildren keep her excited about life!
Certifications and Degrees: Regina holds a Washington State Department of Health Speech Language Pathologist License and American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Certificate of Clinical Competence. Regina received her Bachelor’s Degrees, Summa cum Laude, in Linguistics and Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles and Master’s Degree with Honors in Communicative Disorders from California State University, Northridge. She was awarded a Clinical Linguistics Fellowship at the Neuropsychiatric Institute, UCLA.
Leadership: Regina is involved in several Social Skills Professional Consult groups, leading one on the Eastside and attending another in Seattle. These groups include Psychologists, Counselors, Speech/Language Pathologists, Occupational Therapists, in private practice and in the Public Schools.
Job Skills Training: Regina works with the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services/Department of Vocational Rehabilitation to help clients improve social skills as relates to getting and keeping a job.
Advanced Studies with Tony Attwood and Michelle Garcia Winner.
Presentations: Regina has presented Social Skills frameworks and group skills to Specialists Staff in local school districts.
Teaching Approach
Spotlight Social Skills sessions zero in on the skills needed to make and keep friends, like understanding the perspective of others, being flexible, gaining conversational skills, improving eye contact and listening skills, learning to join in, learning to tolerate change, mastering repair strategies for when a social error has been made and dealing effectively with teasing.
Clients discuss, brainstorm, observe and role play common situations. Regina works with her clients to outline what works and what doesn’t. Participants role play “the wrong way” scenarios and contrast that with “the better way” scenarios. We use clear positive reinforcement to motivate clients to attend to and learn social communication skills that will help them to understand and control their behavior.
Group members share joy and silliness, frustration and challenges in a comfortable and friendly environment. The tone and activities in these sessions make it easy to try something new. Regina uses concepts and strategies recommended by some of the leading experts in the field of Autism Spectrum Disorders and social skills development such as Michelle Garcia Winner, Tony Attwood, Jed Baker, Carol Gray and Steven Gutstein.
