Category: blog

According to the ASHA Leader, one of the many devastations of the COVID-19 pandemic has involved the number of children in traditional school settings who have under-identified speech-language needs. As students have increasingly returned to “brick and mortar” school settings, outpatient clinics around the country have reportedly observed an influx of parents seeking out speech-language evaluations for their children by private entities. Part of this influx is reported to be due to school-based evaluations not being as readily available during the remote learning phase. It has been reported that in outpatient clinic settings, therapy providers often have the time and resources necessary for assessing a child’s communication needs in quick turn around from when parents initially pursue services. It has

One question that is often asked is, ‘How can we work on our child’s speech goals outside of therapy?’. While doing worksheets for homework can be helpful, another way to target speech goals outside of therapy is incorporating activities into the child’s everyday life. In the article, ‘We left the Therapy Room, Now What?’, Coaching Families on Carryover Skills for Children in their environment’, by Jestina Bunch, Autumn Sanderson, and Ashley Irick,  different activities and strategies one can incorporate into their everyday lives to aid in goal progress are discussed. Some fun and easy ideas from the article are listed below. -Auditory Skills: Say before you show: make appropriate sounds before showing the associated item(i.e. vroom vroom; I hear a

Holidays and seasons are a great way to incorporate new vocabulary and build your child’s language and understanding of traditions or routines! Below are some easy and inexpensive themed-activities for you and your child to do at home: -Get a box of Valentine’s Day cards for their class and look at what is the same or different with each card (e.g., they both have superheroes; one has Iron Man and the other has Spider Man). You can also practice describing what is on the cards. -Get a bag or box of candy hearts and complete one or more of the following activities: Pick out the hearts with action words such as “Hug me”, “Kiss Me”, and “Call Me” and have

Does your child struggle to play simple games or take turns? Some children may not have the attention to wait for their turn. This blog will highlight some strategies to use to help children learn to play a board game with the whole family. The first skill that is important for any type of game is taking turns. While some kids might have the patience to wait their turn, others may think it is life-shattering to watch their sibling move a game piece! Here are some ideas that you can use to help your child understand how to wait their turn: *Carpet Squares: have your child sit on something like a piece of carpet, towel, or piece of paper. This

Introducing your baby to solids can be an exciting yet nerve-wracking experience. You may be thinking: What is the best way to introduce new foods and make my child a happy, healthy eater? Responsive Feeding is an approach that helps foster your child’s awareness of his or her hunger or fullness and assists in developing a healthy eater. Responsive feeding requires the parent to watch and monitor their child for hunger cues and offer their child food when those cues occur. Likewise, the parent will monitor their child for fullness cues and stop feeding. The first step to responsive feeding is learning about the various cues that babies may provide. Hunger cues for babies may include fussing or crying, moving

  According to Scholastic, shared book reading is one way to build a child’s vocabulary and object recognition skills, spark their curiosity in different experiences, and create wonderful moments of engagement from birth. Selecting books can be challenging given the vast array of choices and styles of children’s books.  Research suggests that one of the best means for selecting books relates to the age appropriateness. Babies and toddlers are reported to do best with high contrast board books that are simplistic, repetitive, and durable with their design. Bath and sensory books which are made of vinyl or cloth are engaging for young infants and can be incorporated in different environments such as when taking a bath or playing at the

  For children who benefit from reading support, this support may fall into one of three categories (reading comprehension, the ability to decode at the phonological level, and the ability to read fluently.) Reading Fluency refers to the ability to read accurately, at an appropriate rate, with naturalistic expression similarly to how people would converse. In short, Reading Fluency refers to the ability to recognize and produce written text with automaticity and ease. Reading Fluency Challenges may look like: *getting stuck when reading aloud *requiring extended time to read a passage aloud (reading slowly) *losing one’s place when reading aloud *having monotone/choppy expression when reading aloud *reading words inaccurately in a given sentence/passage *using frequent start/stop/correct patterns when reading aloud 

When working with your child on increasing your child’s ability to functionally communicate at home, it is important to focus on words that are going to be most effective across a variety of environments and activities.  While nouns (e.g., cookie, star) and politeness terms (e.g., please, thank you) are important, the most effective and research-based words to focus on for early talkers are pronouns, verbs, and prepositions, otherwise known as “core vocabulary.” Studies have shown that these words make up 89% of a typically developing preschoolers vocabulary.  Let’s think about why these words are so effective.  Imagine you are playing cars with your child and your child says “car.” You are likely to interpret that to mean that your child

  Dysregulation affects how children (and their caregivers) interact with their environment and other individuals. Difficulty with sensory processing affects how many children process their environment and can present in various ways (increased energy, quickly moving throughout their environment, or slow, passive wandering with reduced energy). It is important to attempt to reach optimal arousal in order to encourage learning; this can be done by trying to assess a child’s arousal level and attempting to either increase their arousal by providing input or reducing their level of arousal by decelerating into a calm state. Start by asking yourself, “Can I adjust my own energy level to affect the child?” Jessie Ginsburg, CCC-SLP provides strategies to alter states of arousal in