Author: Natasha Gigliotti MA CCC SLP

Hot Chocolate Breath – Quick Self-Regulation Activity

Winter is finally here, which means beautiful snowy days, building snowmen, and — of course — warm cups of hot chocolate! This few-second self-regulation activity brings up the image of a warm cup of hot chocolate and is a quick way to send oxygen to the frontal lobe, helping us parents and our children create a sense of calm and focus. 1. Cup your hands together, as though you are holding a mug of delicious hot chocolate. 2. Bring the “cup” to your nose and breathe in deeply, as though you are smelling the “hot chocolate.” 3. Blow out through pursed lips, as though to cool off your hot chocolate to make it ready for sipping. Repeat this for 3-5

Read More

Self-Care for Parents

Parenting is one of the most challenging, even if rewarding, endeavors a person can undertake. Parenting a child with special needs brings its own unique demands. This is why practicing self-care is crucial to prevent burnout. And when I say “practicing,” that is exactly what it is — an intentional daily practice. Here is a few examples of ways parents can “care” for themselves so they can be the best and healthiest person (and parent): – Connect: connect with family, friends, or other support networks on a regular basis (even if it’s just a short phone call, text, or a quick coffee date or walk) – Take care of your body: eat healthy food, exercise, get as much rest/sleep as

Read More

Ready, Do, Done! – An Executive Function Strategy

  Does your child have a hard time planning and implementing a project? Sometimes even we, adults, have a hard time knowing how to plan, get started, and execute in an efficient way. From smaller projects, like completing a craft, a school essay, an oral presentation, or even cleaning one’s room — there is so much executive functioning that goes into being able to envision what you want the end result to look like, what the steps are to get there (and predicting how much time each step will take!), and what materials and resources you will need before you even get started! That is why Sarah Ward, a wonderful speech-language pathologist, based in New Jersey, created a great strategy for

Read More

Bring Mindfulness to Your Home

In today’s fast-paced world, it is more important than ever to create a little space for mindful communication. Our ability to communicate the best way we can depends on how present we are at any given moment. We can bring more  groundedness, calm, and a sense of safety into our daily lives and routines  through a multitude of simple actions. These actions can help us parents, as well as our children be the best communicators we can be. Here is a few ideas for the whole family: – begin each family meal by taking 5 transition (or “bubble”) breaths (breathing in through your nose and slowly breathing out through pursed lips (as though blowing a big bubble) – during bed-time

Read More

DON’T “Wait and see” when it comes to childhood stuttering!

  “Wait and see” was the standard advice for parents of preschoolers with emerging stuttering for many decades. Although we now understand so much more about stuttering and its complexity, echos of this (very much outdated) advice are still too common.  The truth is, fluency development plays out very differently from one child to the next. While one child may go through a brief period of disfluency and spontaneously recover, another child may not. Timing of intervention is important — the longer a child stutters, the more likely the stuttering is to persist. In an evaluation, speech-language pathologists examine a wide range of risk factors (based on the most current research) to determine an individual child’s likelihood to continue to stutter

Read More