Author: Wee Speech PC

Avoiding the Wait and See Approach with “Late Talkers”

  As children develop language with variability and have individual strengths and weaknesses, parents might feel conflicted about when to seek out support for their children and when to “wait and see” if they observe lags in progress or delays in acquiring new skills. Maintaining a once common “wait and see approach” is based on the idea that some children may require more time to develop a given skill compared to their peers and may with time, catch up and develop the given skill at their own pace. According to the Hanen Centre’s summary of two recent research studies, the current literature suggests that the “wait and see approach” is outdated and that even minimal or prematurely provided intervention can

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Improving Frustration Tolerance in Children

  As we progress through thee school year, many parents may wonder how we can specifically help children improve frustration tolerance, navigate challenging feelings, and problem solve successfully at home and in the classroom as they encounter new experiences or difficulties. The following strategies have been found to strongly assist in the challenging feat of growing a child’s frustration tolerance: Provide Exposure to Frustration: Ironically, one of the best ways to improve frustration tolerance in children is to expose them to varied experiences where they might encounter it! Parents are advised to observe, analyze, and learn about their child’s progression from mild frustration all the way to extreme frustration. Experts suggest parents refrain from helping their children through experiences yielding

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How to Model Language with Toddlers (ages 1-3)

By 3, a child will typically produce 3-4 word phrases, make animal and environmental sounds, name most common objects, produce personal pronouns, answer yes/no questions, and request using power words.  As these skills are emerging, you may want to see your child demonstrate these skills.   Here are some ways language can be modeled: Child is playing with a truck on a slide. “Whoa, look at the truck! It’s going up-up-up, weeee!” Child is playing with a baby doll. “Uh oh, baby is crying, she needs mama. ‘Mama, where are you? Mama help!’”  The adult is modeling language a child can imitate that is also describing the play routine, so it is relevant and fun for the child. It’s like watching

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Strategies for a Successful Zoom Speech Therapy Session

  With the outbreak of COVID-19 more than two years ago, schools and clinics resorted to using virtual platforms in order to continue providing educational and therapeutic services to students and clients. Nowadays, it appears Zoom is here to stay as an effective and convenient means of conducting therapy if in-person services are not an option, or simply if a family chooses to elect telehealth for their child. If your child is participating in virtual services, here are some key tips for making sure their therapy sessions are successful:   1. Make sure your child has a designated area to work in. Your child should have a specific area at home that they are able to use their iPad, computer, or

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Myths About Stuttering

Stuttering is a fluency disorder that causes disruptions or disfluencies in one’s speech. Stuttering can also cause an individual who stutters to have negative feelings about how they talk, to avoid situations to prevent a possible stutter, to escape a stuttering moment such as eye blinking, or to have physical tension when speaking. With stuttering encompassing a wide range of difficulties, there are a variety of false statements that surround this fluency disorder. Education about the falsehoods of stuttering can ensure a better understanding of the disorder and reduce biases towards people who stutter. Here is a list of the most common myths about stuttering: -People stutter because they are nervous. -Stuttering effects one’s intelligence. -Stress causes stuttering. -People who

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Neurodiversity and Stuttering

I had the opportunity to listen to a podcast with Chris Constantino, who is a speech language pathologist and a person who stutters. In his podcast, he discusses the neurodiversity movement and how some its beliefs, namely the acceptance and value of differences, can be applied when working with our clients who stutter. Treatment, he reports, shouldn’t focus on forcing individuals to be fluent, but rather, should focus on overall quality of life and exploration and acceptance of an individual’s stutter. One of the activities he would complete when working with middle school students included reacting to negative comments or micro aggressions from others. He engaged the students in role playing and had them practice how to teach people about

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“Very Pre-Term” Delivery and the Impact on Speech Sound Production

“Very Pre-Term” Delivery and the Impact on Speech Sound Production According to an article published in the ASHA Wire, very preterm children (those delivered earlier than 32 weeks gestation) are reported to be at greater risk of speech and language delays through school age. In a study of 63 preterm children, speech sound development was found to be abnormal in 49% of study participants at 2 years of age and in 19% of participants by 4 years of age. Early speech production or the development of acquired consonants by 2 years of age, was highly predictive of intelligibility in single words and sentences by age four. Results suggest that compared to full term infants, an alarmingly high proportion of “Very

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The Prediction of Language Performance from Narrative Language Sampling

According to an article published in the ASHA Wire, narrative language sampling continues to be a recommended and evidence based practice in assessment of pediatric language disorders. In a study designed for 284 children aged kindergarten-third grade, narrative language sampling measures were obtained and assessed on a number of different parameters including a child’s number of different words spoken, their mean length of utterance, and percentage of grammatical utterances in the observed sample. Results from this study supported that strong narrative language skills were consistently correlated with stronger vocabulary and buying Orlistat https://www.overnightglasses.com/ grammatical skills in participants. In addition, this study found that narrative language skills assessed in kindergarten to be longitudinally predictive of a child’s general language ability by

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Impact of COVID-19 on Illinois’ Early Intervention Services 

According to an article published in the ASHA Wire, the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the large shift to Telehealth services contributed to significant changes in Early Intervention resources specifically for Illinois families. 85% of Illinois Early Intervention Providers participating in this study reported a disruption to their services due to COVID-19 specifically in regard to the number of sessions they were able to deliver and the number of children they were able to support per caseload. In addition, it was reported by research participants that provider order Cenmox https://www.senpaisquad.net confidence in service delivery decreased significantly during the pandemic as only 28% of EI providers reported feeling competent with Telehealth service delivery. In this study, it was suggested

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Indicators of Autism in Infancy

According to an article published in the ASHA Wire, some babies as young as nine months are said to demonstrate early indicators of Autism. Researchers through a UC Davis Health Study reported that a baby’s atypical visual habits can be indications of being on the Autism Spectrum. Some of these atypical visual habits include looking out the corners of eyes, holding objects close to one’s face, or staring at objects greater than 10 seconds in duration. This study (published in December 2021) was one of the first to acknowledge Baclofen online indicators of Autism appearing as early as nine months of age. The study’s authors suggest that acknowledging and seeking recommendations given any observed unusual visual behaviors in infancy may

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