Author: Breanna Barker

The Power of Mindset in Speech Therapy   There are two types of mindsets we often encounter in therapy; the first is a fixed mindset and the second is a growth mindset. A fixed mindset occurs when you experience challenges and you have a negative attitude towards yourself. A fixed mindset can often delay therapeutic gains as a portion of sessions may be spent focusing on factors that are out of your control, such as focusing on what went “wrong” in the first place. A growth mindset refers to identifying that there is a challenge and coming up with a plan to overcome the challenge. A person with a growth mindset often looks at the larger picture and recognizes that

    Joint attention is the action of two people sharing a common focus on an object or task. Joint attention tasks can be, for example, rolling a ball back and forth, looking at a book together, or blowing and popping bubbles. The ability to establish joint attention is important for developing social-communication  and cognitive skills. By age three children are able to maintain joint attention with a peer or adult.  One way to promote joint attention is by playing a game that requires turn taking such as holding a book and having the child turn the page. Additionally, if the child is playing with a puzzle or block, you can take turns stacking or adding pieces to the puzzle.

    There are many benefits of reading aloud to your children. Frequent read-aloud habits help build attention skills. Additionally, children’s vocabulary continues to grow when exposed to new vocabulary. While reading, stop and ask your child to retell part of the story or explain what a word means in the context of the story. Increased exposure to books will help your child not only learn about new words, but also increase their understanding of the sequence of events as well as their comprehension and inferencing skills. While reading, ask your child Wh-questions or have them make predictions based on the events of the story using the text to support their ideas This allows the child to engage with the

  How do children know that they are an important part of a conversation? How can we encourage a child to initiate a conversation? We can Observe, Wait, and Listen (OWL). Observe, Wait, and Listen are important strategies that parents, caregivers, and other communication partners can use to increase engagement, feedback, and allow for a child-lead communication environment.  Observe: During the Observe phase, parents, caregivers, or other communication partners are observing what the child is interested in (e.g., trucks, dinosaurs, slime) and looking for opportunities where the child may communicate. The child might initiate communication independently either through gestures, words, sounds or actions. However, the child might start an activity without stating what they are doing. Through the use of