Year: 2021

Why involve siblings in your child’s speech and language practice? For a child to master new speech and language skills, they should practice several times a week, outside of their speech therapy sessions.  This can be a challenging task for parents who are juggling busy schedules.  With fun, age-appropriate games and activities, your child’s siblings can learn to become helpers to make speech-language practice more enjoyable and enhance carryover of skills. By setting clear expectations and limits, the older sibling can also benefit from this experience.  If everyone has an opportunity to feel special and appreciated, it will create a positive experience for all and ultimately strengthen the sibling relationship. To keep the experience fun for both children: 1- Let

Due to the pandemic, there has been limited in-person interactions. While interactions via Zoom have been helpful to continue working on social skills, it can still be hard to work on some areas of verbal and non-verbal communication. In the article, “Approaches for Helping Students Recoup Social Communication Skills”, Diana Paul discusses different ways to help rebuild social communication skills which may have regressed due to the pandemic. Some recommendations to help rebuild these skills are as follows: –Get communication partners involved: Peers, Parents, Caregivers, and Teachers. This allows a student to learn how to adapt their communication skills with a variety of communication partners in different environments. Additionally, having the communication partners ask a variety of questions (not just single

A recent article from the ASHA Leader reports that COVID-19 Mask Use and Social Distancing Guidelines are reported to decrease intelligibility of spoken language by 3-12 dB and even more so for individuals with hearing loss. It is reported that with every three feet of social distance, coupled with environmental noise, the volume of sound in conversation is ultimately measured to be cut in half. It is also reported that people with hearing loss who may wear hearing aids, may struggle with wearing their H.A as they can become dislodged, tangled, or lost as individuals attempt to wear and take off their face masks as needed.. AS COVID -19 has continued, clear speech masks have been marketed to allow for

Young children often have difficulty identifying how they are feeling and how to express their emotions appropriately.  Parents may observe behaviors such as hitting, biting, tantrums or outbursts at these times. While these moments can be challenging, they can also be a learning opportunity for your child in understanding and using “thinking and feeling” words. According to The Hanen Centre, studies show that children typically learn these types of words from their parents during everyday activities and conversation. Young children’s first thoughts and feelings revolve around their own wants and needs (“I want juice”) and their physical feelings (“I’m hungry”). As early as age two, they learn to talk about what other people are feeling (He’s sad”). It will take

Children with a history of speech-sound disorders are at risk for reading difficulties. Because of this, it is critical to start working on pre-literacy skills at an early age. Before a child is able to read, there are pre-reading skills that must develop. One of these skill areas is phonological awareness. Phonological awareness refers to the awareness of speech sounds and the ability to reflect and manipulate them. Phonological awareness includes skills such as rhyming, segmenting a word into sounds, blending sounds into a word, identifying the first or last sound in a word, and changing a sound to make a new word. Here are some activities you can try with your child to support the development of these skills:

            With spring and more warm weather approaching, many families are seeking fun things to do outside while still following the parameters of social distancing. The park is a great location for families to visit. While at the park, there are plenty of opportunities to promote language development for younger children. Here are a few ideas for parents: Basic concept pairs: ask your child if they want to go on the ‘big’ slide or the ‘small’ slide; when on the swings, do they want to be pushed ‘fast’ or ‘slow?’ do they want to climb ‘up’ the slide or go ‘down?’ For children who are beginning to use words: elicit ‘go’ when going down the slide or on the swings

According to a study conducted by researchers from The University of California San Francisco, children with a diagnosis of dyslexia were shown to display increased emotional sensitivity in film viewing probes compared to children without this diagnosis. Results from the study showed that children with dyslexia exhibited significantly greater reactivity in terms of facial expression and respiratory rate compared to peers without dyslexia, suggesting an underlying predisposition to stress, anxiety, and emotional dysregulation which could increasingly manifest with challenges in the academic areas of reading, writing which are associated with the diagnosis. 

In his article, ‘Is stuttering increasing during the pandemic?’ speech pathologist, Scott Yaruss, who is widely known for his contributions with  Stuttering Therapy Resources, reports an increase in referrals for stuttering assessment throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Yaruss states that the increase seen is a result of several factors, and does not necessarily mean an increase in incidence of stuttering. These factors include: Parents and caregivers may be experiencing a high level of stress and concern for their children; parents may now be aware of noticeable differences in the way a child is speaking Many parents and caregivers have been working from home or spending more time in the household than before – they may now be noticing speech dysfluencies that

Doing experiments or art projects in treatment sessions or at home can help target a variety of receptive and expressive language tasks. Using simple items such as glue, glitter, water, food coloring, or beads, your child can create a calming jar or a snow globe! Predicting/inferencing can be targeted by asking the child what the items could be used to make or have your child help locate items to use in the process to increase executive functioning skills! Creating a sensory project or experiment can encourage turn taking, commenting, word retrieval, and narrative language while allowing children to experience the craft with their senses.

Students have been virtually learning for about a year now and over this time an increase in students with executive functioning difficulties has been observed.  In the article, “Executive Function Difficulties an Issue for Teens Learning Virtually”, Kimberly Levin discusses specific areas she has observed difficulties in and the strategies she uses in order to help strengthen these skills. -Sustaining Attention: Since students are not always being required to turn on their camera during virtual learning, they are getting more distracted by their surroundings. This is resulting in directions or lesson concepts being missed. Keeping cameras on and actively taking notes during lessons can help a student maintain attention to the lesson. Additionally, placing all other electronics on “Do Not