Category: blog

How to Make the Most of a Parent Coaching Session

Parent involvement is a crucial component to speech and language intervention with toddlers. Your therapist may provide you with specific language strategies to utilize during daily routines or play activities at home. Parent coaching should include joint interactions with the clinician, the parent, and the child as well as opportunities to practice the techniques with clinician support. After the parent coaching session, it is often expected to try the strategies at home and discuss the outcomes at the following session.  Prior to returning for the following session, it is important to think about successes and challenges over the past week. Below are some questions to ask yourself in order to prepare for your next parent coaching session.  1. What moments

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Protecting Your Hearing During Firework Celebrations

During the COVID pandemic in July of 2020, firework complaints in the city of Chicago increased by 700%. In the United States, total consumer sales of fireworks nearly doubled in 2020 in comparison to 2019. Firework injuries are most common in young children ages birth to four, with injuries most common to the face, ears, and head. Hearing protection is often overlooked during Fourth of July and other summer firework celebrations. Here are several ways to practice safe hearing methods while using or attending firework celebrations: Use hearing protection such as basic earplugs or protective headphones for very young children or those who are susceptible to sensory overload from loud, sudden noises Keep a safe distance from firework launch pads

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Social Skills

Humans are very social. We use social skills every day when communicating with one another. Building children’s social skills is often discussed, but what are “social skills” really? If your child has been in speech therapy, the terms “social communication” or “pragmatics” have probably come up. These terms refer to the way a child uses language for a variety of purposes (making requests, greeting, giving information/ sharing) while following basic rules for conversation including: -taking turns in conversation-introducing topics of conversation-staying on topic and maintaining a circle of communication-recognizing and repairing miscommunications-rephrasing when misunderstood-use and understanding of nonverbal signals-personal proximity and orientation of body when speaking to others-using facial expressions and eye contact/ eye gaze Weaknesses in social skills create

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Sign Language and Verbal Communication

Some people believe the false assumption that teaching sign language to a child will hinder his or her ability to learn verbal communication. There is no research to support this claim. Research does show that children with speech and language delays benefit from the use of sign language. When a child is unable to express him/herself, challenging behaviors may arise. This can lead to frustration for both the child and the parents. A study by Thompson, Cotnoir-Bichelman, McKerchar, Tate, & Dancho (2007) states that introducing basic signs may contribute to the prevention of behavior problems for young children. It is often easier for a child to learn the motor actions needed to make a sign before they learn the motor

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Developmental Milestone Check-in

When families come in for an initial evaluation, I sometimes get questions like “What age should my child be able to…?” Or “What should my child be doing at this point in development?”. While this information can be easily provided at the time of an evaluation, the American Speech and Hearing Association (ASHA) and a nonprofit called Bright by Text came together to help families receive this information at home. After a survey was completed, it was determined that speech and language development is currently one of families top concerns. Thus Bright by Text developed a system called “Identify the Signs” that can send you information about speech and language milestones, warning signs of speech language delay or disorder, activities to

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Autism as a Super Power

In an article from Fox News 13, Led Bradshaw, a father with a life-long interest in drawing, designed a comic book series “The New Adventures of Jake Jetpulse” to help his son Jake, diagnosed with Autism, learn more about the world. In the comic series, Jake (the main character) has the super power of Autism and encounters many different obstacles which have been recorded from Jake’s own imagination and experiences with peers. These comic book stories have paralleled social stories, an evidence based strategy for supporting children with Autism, which are commonly used to teach different social nuances (e.g. sharing, bullying, etc.) When Jake was diagnosed with Autism, Led’s research as a parent helped encourage his use of visual supports through

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Learning two (or more) languages in early childhood, your questions answered!

Raising children in a bilingual home, parents often have questions around bilingualism such as: Will two languages confuse my child? Why is my toddler using words from both languages in the same sentence? Research supports that from infancy, bilingual infants begin to distinguish two separate languages by the language’s acoustic features without confusion. Bilingual infants have the capability to attend to perceptual language features between the two languages such as differences in rhythm, tone, and prosody.  Mixing two languages in the same sentence: Oftentimes, code switching can be mistaken for confusion in young bilingual children. Code switching is when children mix or “borrow” words from two languages in the same sentence or utterance. Research supports that code switching is a component

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Getting Siblings Involved in Speech Practice

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

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Rebuilding Social Skills

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

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COVID-19 Mandates and Impact on Speech Intelligibility

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

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