Little Blue Truck’s Valentine

https://amzn.to/4bpZdRU

I love all things related to Little Blue Truck and use these books year round. In this book, Little Blue delivers valentines to all his barnyard friends. For therapy activities, read the book together a few times (always more than once!) and then carry-over the theme with farm animal play. It’s even better if you can find a truck to add to your collection! The truck doesn’t even have to be blue — just a truck!

For nonverbal or minimally verbal toddlers, stick to play sounds and model the animal and truck noises from the book as you play with the farm animals together.

For an additional activity, match the animals to the pages in the book. To introduce this activity, set out your farm animals one at a time. Name each one and make its sound as you point to the corresponding page in the book and say something like, “Ooooh look! I have animals just like our book. See! Here’s a… pig! Pig! Look here’s the pig (pointing to the pig in the book). Oink oink! That’s what pig says? The pig says oink oink! Pig!”  Encourage a child to imitate the animal sound or any other play sound you make like “Beep!” for Little Blue.

If kids can already identify farm animals, show them a page from the book and ask them to find the correct toy animal. Keep it light and fun saying something like, “Wow! Look! What’s that? It’s a ____ (expectantly waiting for them to fill in the blank and say the animal name.)” After a few seconds, say the animal’s name if a child doesn’t. Then say something like, “Yes! It’s a _____. I see a horse. You find the horse! Where’s the horse?”

For older toddlers, make hearts by cutting them out from pink, red, and white paper and then if a child enjoys early art projects, decorate the hearts with any toddler-friendly material like stickers, coloring with washable markers or crayons, or a glue stick and scraps of tissue paper or wrapping paper. Re-enact the book by delivering the cards to animals.

Create a Little Blue Truck Valentine’s Day sensory bin by filling a plastic container with a filler material like dry beans, rice, pasta, sand, or even dirt! Hide the animals along with a few hearts in the filler. Encourage the child to find each animal and put it in the truck. Talk about the animal names and sounds as you dig and find them together. Add more fun and things to talk about with tools like spoons or shovels for kids to dig/dump the filler material.

If you’d like more ways to teach a child to imitate, you can find step-by-step directions in my therapy manual Building Verbal Imitation Skills in Toddlers. 

Where is Baby’s Valentine?

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What a perfect way to introduce and reinforce a gesture/word for asking “Where” and for early prepositions and location words with this darling book for Valentine’s Day!

Read the book together several times. Exaggerate the gesture for “Where’s” each time you read that word by holding both hands out with palms open as if you’re asking, “Where?”

For minimally verbal kids and kids who are learning to imitate, you can also model the word “Boo!” every time you open a flap. The repetitiveness and predictability will provide lots of structure (with the novelty of a new book!) to help them learn this cute, social peek-a-boo routine.

For an activity, hide something around the room similar to locations from the book for a child to find. If you have something heart-related, use that! If not, make a large heart, use a heart-shaped candy box, or I’ve used anything from a favorite pillow to a baby doll. Place the object in the location (use ones from the book like behind the chair, under the blanket, etc.) Model big gesture for “Where’s the ______?” as you ask each question. Help a child locate the item with cues like pointing or taking the child to the object. This is a great activity to work on participation/joint attention and following directions.

Encourage children to use the gesture to ask the question for “Where’s the ____?” each time you’re looking for the object. Use hand-over-hand assistance to help a child perform the gesture if he doesn’t imitate after several models.

Kids may also imitate the preposition/location word if that’s your goal. If not, choose a verbal response that’s appropriate. Pick a target word and repeat it each time you find the object. Some children may name the object you’re locating such as, “Pillow!” or “Baby!” For a verbal child who’s beginning to work on phrases or a child who’s echolalic and  you’re enticing them to say anything functionally, you might try a holistic phrase such as, “I did it!” or “There it is!” when she locates the object.

Older toddlers and preschoolers may enjoy hiding the object themselves while you close your eyes. Ask “Where’s the ___?” several times using your gesture. Look for the object in several locations really hamming it up before you find it.

You can also target yes/no responses with big gestures and words as you’re reading the book and hiding objects.

Find more ideas for teaching prepositions and every other language goal for toddlers and preschoolers through 48 months in my therapy manual Teach Me To Talk: The Therapy Manual.

What Does Baby Love?

https://amzn.to/49kskEi

This is a fantastic book for teaching early imitation with familiar, fun actions and vocalizations for a child to copy. Model the actions as you read the book such as tickling the baby, patting the drum, panting like a dog, or saying “bubble” or “pop.” Encourage a child to imitate too. Read the book together OFTEN. If a child isn’t imitating yet, it means you haven’t read the book enough for them to learn the routine. Don’t give up! It may take several days/weeks of reading the book together and modeling the actions before a child will begin to participate.

If you’re working with a child who isn’t talking or imitating yet and you’ve tried lots of ideas, maybe something else is missing. Get my therapy manual Let’s Talk About Talking to help you discover the missing piece.

The post Valentine’s Day Books and Speech Therapy Ideas for Toddlers appeared first on teachmetotalk.com.

The information focuses on children ages 1 to 3 years who are, as the promotional literature from ASHA says, “in a unique developmental period during which they build the foundational language, learning, literacy, and social–emotional skills they’ll need for life. This is also a time when many children begin to use tablets, smartphones, and other screens—which can interrupt their healthy development.”

Amen!

Almost anytime I’m in a retail store, I see toddlers riding in the cart with their little eyes fixated on a screen, rather than all the interesting things going on around them. While I certainly understand a parent’s need for a diversion for their child while they’re shopping, I wish I could encourage them to think about the rich teaching opportunities all around them. Just labeling what you’re buying and talking to your child about what he is looking at is all it takes.

The other thing I wish I could tell parents is that even though it looks like your baby is enjoying the show, research says that children don’t process visual and auditory information the same way adults do because they don’t have the language skills to fully comprehend what they’re seeing: chiefly, fast-moving pictures and rapid-fire dialogue.

There are a couple of wonderful quotes I want to share with you from the press release about the new handout.

“Managing screen time can be one of the more vexing challenges families face—and screen usage contributes to a lot of parental anxiety, guilt, stress, and frustration,” said Dipesh Navsaria, MPH, MSLIS, MD. Dr. Navsaria is a pediatrician, an early literacy advocate, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s (UWM) School of Medicine and Public Health, and an associate professor of human development and family studies at UWM’s School of Human Ecology. Dr. Navsaria helped develop Be Tech Wise With Toddler!

He continued: “The pandemic has only heightened this challenge, as parents and caregivers are stretched so thin. So, to help parents balance the very real needs in their life while still protecting and promoting the healthy development of their children, we’re trying to educate families about why screen-free time is so critical. Despite advertiser claims, young children don’t benefit from electronic devices, apps, or technology-enabled toys. And while screens may seem to solve a temper tantrum or other behavioral issue in the moment, they are just that: a temporary solution. They can make life more difficult in the long run as children increasingly demand them—and lose their ability to self-soothe and work through their own emotions in the process. These are skills they will need for life.  This resource offers a frame for families to consider as they parent their children at their best moments, worst moments, and every time in between.”

Again, amen!

The handout also contains the most recent screentime recommendations for families from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Under 18 months: No screen time except for video chatting with loved ones.
• 18–24 months: A small amount, at most, of high-quality programming, if you choose.
• 2–5 years: A maximum of 1 hour per day. “Co-view” (watch together) rather than have young children (of any
age) use screens while alone.

Before you think I’m sounding pretty hardline about this, please know that I violated this with my own children. If I had it to do over again, they’d be like their dad and me in our home now… no TV.

However, complete elimination isn’t always realistic, as the brochure points out, and using the guidelines above may be the “happy medium” solution many families are looking for.

Video chatting with loved ones is a recommended activity for any age! Instead of finding a show or movie, calling a grandparent or another family member can also be the distraction a child needs AND he’s getting real life interaction rather than watching something he can’t quite understand yet.

As you can see with the picture for this post, video chatting is a favorite activity for our family. I can’t believe I get to “babysit” from 14 hours away while mom gets ready, does some housework, or (for you fellow therapists!) completes a report!

I showed this picture to a friend of mine, and she asked me, “What do you do on a video call with a baby?”

The same things you do in real life!

We talk, sing, babble back and forth, and sometimes, we read a book. Recently, I’ve developed a couple of cute play routines with a baby doll we use during the calls. Lots of days it looks and sounds more like a speech teletherapy session, but sometimes, it’s just us hanging out. I talk about what he’s doing (eating a peanut butter puff from Target, banging a toy, or looking at things he drops from his high chair to the floor) and of course, sometimes, I just sit and stare at him… Oh, how your LaLa loves you!

My point is this… when your child seems to “need” a screen or you “need” your child to have a screen, pause to think about your content. While watching a movie here and there certainly won’t harm a child, we should provide better, more developmentally-appropriate opportunities for learning language when there’s another option.

The handout I mentioned includes lots of practical advice about that and language learning in general.

Take a look if you haven’t seen it…

The family-friendly informational piece is perfect for sharing with families. Here’s the link so you can download and have it ready for your visits next week!

Be Tech Wise With Toddler!

Other posts about screen time:

No TV… One Year Later

Still No TV for Me

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Are you working with a late talker with slow progress? Late talkers who add words s..l..o..w..l..y are often missing one or more of the foundational skills for language development. That’s why they seem to get “stuck.” Kids like this make a little bit of progress, learn a few new words, and then nothing…. for days, or weeks, or sometimes even months. Speech-language pathologists refer to the skills they’re missing as prelinguistic skills. If that’s a new word for you, prelinguistic is a way to describe or what happens before (pre) words (linguistic). If you have a child or are working with a little friend who is nonverbal or minimally verbal, you should carefully consider these skills. You may find what you’ve been missing to help a child begin to add words more consistently.  Once you identify what skill is missing and target that one little piece, often a child will FINALLY break-through that plateau. Sometimes a child is missing a few skills and it will take longer, but finally… those first sweet words start flowing! Everyone loves it when that happens! Especially me! When I first began to target prelinguistic skills as the focus for therapy for any little friend, regardless of their ‘diagnosis,’ I began to see more consistent progress across my caseload, especially in the kids who were “hard” or “stuck.” Analyzing these 11 prelinguistic skills in a late talker can make THE difference for you – whether you’re a therapist or a parent. I have two ways you can access this information… 1. For readers…. here’s the book.  In my MOST COMPREHENSIVE therapy manual Let’s Talk About Talking… Ways to Strengthen the 11 Skills All Toddlers Master Before Words Emerge, I’ll teach you what the skills are, how to know if they’re strong or stable, and how to help strengthen these skills that establish the foundation for talking and communicating. This is a tremendous resource for both parents and professionals. It’s HUGE – over 300 pages – but extremely user-friendly. Here are your steps… 1. Complete the easy checklist of prelinguistic skills for a child by reading the descriptions. 2. Determine what you should work on using the recommendations on the chart and in the book. 3. Flip to the chapter for that skill for step-by-step directions including lots of different therapy activities that work for late talking toddlers. 4. Get busy! The therapy plan is practically written for you! If you like to have things all laid out for you and want a resource you can refer to again and again, get the book! 2. Or watch and listen!  I have a whole series of shows to teach  you these 11 prelinguistic skills that ALL toddlers master before they begin to talk and communicate. This series is a tremendous resource and I hope that this information helps you as much as it’s helped me! Here’s a link for a page with all the episodes in this series. I’d love it if you’d share it with other parents and therapists. Therapists – All 12 shows are available for CE credit and I wanted to post links in one gigantic post in case you missed any show or still need to get your CE credit for only $5 per course. Generate your certificate via email. **Each course is approved in IL EI too!** When you purchase CE credit, you’ll receive a pdf perfect for reviewing with parents. The handouts are also great tools for telehealth visits. Use them as your session plan. Send the pdf before the visit as a way to structure your session and introduce strategies. Or send the pdf after the session as a follow up. Parents asked us for a way to purchase the pdf without the CE credit, and that’s an option now too! Check that out here. Show Recap: The first show is an overview of all 11 prelinguistic skills with a great discussion of the foundational skills for language development, especially if you’re a therapist and need a way to explain to parents why we work on more than talking. If your child is in therapy and you’re not sure why he is or isn’t talking yet, this show below will help you understand.  These are the kinds of things parents of toddlers and preschoolers with language delays need to hear during assessments and initial visits. The YouTube video is below and here’s that show link for CE credit… #385.  In the next 11 shows, each skill is reviewed in detail with an explanation of why this skill is critical for language development and how to begin to work on each skill with a toddler who is not yet communicating. Start by watching the first show below. As you’re listening, you’ll hear areas that you’ll have questions about. Keep a little list, even mentally, and then go back and begin listening to those shows. Always start with the lowest number of show first and address that area since these skills are “loosely” sequential. Work on that area (goal) with a child until you see some gains, and then move on to the next skill. It really is that easy to get started. Skill #1 Responds to Things in the Environment. This is the starting point for therapy for babies and toddlers with severe developmental delays – often due to a medical diagnosis or sensory difference like vision or hearing issues. Here’s that show link… Watch or listen for treatment strategies. #386 Skill #2 Responds to People. Communicating always involves at least 2 people. Kids who avoid others or check out when you try to talk to them are at a huge disadvantage for learning language. BUT… you can make it better using the strategies discussed on the show. #387 Skill #3 Begins to Take Turns. If you’re not working on this with nonverbal or minimally verbal little ones, you should be! Kids learn to take turns noonverbally before they can talk to you in conversation. Here’s the link. #388 Skill #4 Develops a Longer Attention Span. Find out why attention is so important for language development, what’s normal for toddlers, and how to improve this in your busiest little ones. #389 Skill #5 Consistent Joint Attention. The ability to shift and share attention is an area where kids who go on to be diagnosed with autism really struggle. They can’t learn to listen to your words and link meaning until they learn to stay with you and pay attention to the same thing you’re talking about with them. Learn how to address this with the strategies in this show. #390 Skill #6 Develops Appropriate Play Skills. Play is such an important predictor for cognition and for helping drive receptive and expressive language. Watch for ideas to help kids who can’t (not won’t!) play with toys! Get play going today!  #391 Skill #7 Understands Words and Follows Directions. Kids must understand words before they can use them to communicate. If a child is over 18 months old and not following directions, there’s a receptive language component to his lanugage delay. Learn how to help kids jumpstart their receptive language skills. #392 Skill #8 Vocalizes Purposefully. Being noisy comes first, before words! All children, whether they talk on time or late, progress through a phase of vocal play and experimentation so that they gain practice using their voices. Watch for strategies to help silent children begin to vocalize more consistently. #393 Skill #9 Imitates Others. Imitation is how all children learn to talk. As parents and therapists of late talkers, we may begin to teach a child to talk by trying to get them to say words, but kids have to learn how to imitate easier, earlier things – like actions, gestures, and play sounds – before they begin to imitate words. Watch the show for the sequence of teaching imitation and strategies to make it easier for you to teach a child who is having difficulty learning to imitate on his own. #394 Skill #10 Uses Gestures. You’ll learn why gestures are an important predictor of language development, 2 pieces of critical EBP concerning gestures for SLPs, and how to teach gestures to toddlers and preschoolers with language delays. #395 Skill #11 Initiates with Others. During this show, you’ll find out the importance of initiation and how to help late talking toddlers learn to take the lead during communicative interactions. Learn real strategies you can teach a child TODAY to get initiation going! #396 Therapists… get 1 hour CE credit for each of these shows for only $5! Check out the page for this series or the master entire page of podcast courses. The process is super easy. Watch or listen to the show. Pay the $5 CEU fee, complete your forms online, and then receive your certificate via email. We’re so grateful to be able to share this information with you. If you’re watching our videos for FREE, please subscribe to our YouTube channel if you haven’t done that already! Laura teachmetotalk.com Psalm 18:1-2 IS YOUR CHILD READY TO TALK? Watch below… #385 Is Your Child Developmentally Ready to Talk? 11 Skills Toddlers Master First Laura Mize

The post Late Talker with Slow Progress? Do This! appeared first on teachmetotalk.com.

HOPE.

They all want hope.

Hope that whatever is going on with their child will get better.

Hope that you have answers they don’t.

Don’t believe me?

Then start listening to what parents say…

“I’ve told my pediatrician for months that my child is not saying very much, and he keeps telling me he’s not concerned.” (Meaning… I hope there’s nothing wrong.)

“My friend’s little girl is saying way more than my son is, but I know he’s a boy and that all kids are different.” (Meaning… Please give me hope that he’ll catch up!)

“Do you think my kid will ever talk?” (Meaning… Is there any hope?)

HOPE is powerful for parents.

It overcomes negativity, helplessness, and even fear.

It overrides that voice within us, and sometimes, those loud voices around us!

As therapists, I believe one of our most important jobs is helping parents learn to hear the sheer relief that hope can bring above all the other noise.

Now, in case your outlook leans a little on the cynical side these days…

I’m not talking about hope in the sense of false hope, delusional fantasies, or even patronizing placates like the things parents of late talkers hear continuously…

“Einstein talked late.”

“My neighbor told me his child didn’t talk until he was 7 and now he’s a doctor.”

or even worse…

“You’re overreacting. Forget about it and he’ll talk one day when he’s ready.”

I mean realistic hope.

Hope that’s entirely believable.

Hope that speaks these kinds of messages…

Instead of “No,” hope says, “Maybe.”

Instead of “Quit,” hope says, “Try again.”

Instead of “This won’t work either,” hope says, “It could.”

I want to be the kind of person who speaks hope.

Not only for my little clients and their families, but for me too!

Life’s disappointments are much easier to handle when you can see past your current circumstances.

Hope helps you get there.

I want to be that kind of person.

An ambassador of hope.

A beacon of hope.

A voice of hope.

I bet you do too!

We offer lots of hope for parents at teachmetotalk.com. If you haven’t recommended teachmetotalk.com‘s resources for your families, I’ll be sending out a tool tomorrow to help you do that!

Need some help tonight? Our best resources list.

Laura

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I almost titled this post “Why Flashcards Don’t Work to Teach a Nonverbal Toddler to Talk,” but I opted for the one above instead. Many parents and even some therapists default to using flashcards in an effort to teach a child new words.

From a parent’s standpoint, flashcards may be a natural choice. They seem educational and after all, doesn’t everyone remember using flashcards in school to learn new information?

From a therapist’s viewpoint, I can also see why flashcards may be a preferred treatment method. When most of us attended grad school or have treated older children, we were taught to use picture cards during therapy, mostly to increase efficiency. It’s pretty easy to flip through a stack of 25 cards with an 8 or 10 year old, particularly if you’re working on getting the right sounds in the right places (or articulation, if you prefer the technical terminology.)

But here’s what happens when we try to use this same technique with younger and younger kids… it doesn’t work! Or at least not as well as we’d like and here’s why:

Many young children who are pre-verbal aren’t yet symbolic and pictures are symbols.

Flashcards show pictures of objects (and sometimes even written words!), and the child may not realize that the picture represents the real thing. In other words, just because the child sees the picture of the cup, he may not associate the picture of the cup with the one he may even be holding in his hand. Some children may not yet understand the word “cup” even when you say it.

This is important for language development because words are also symbols. If a child hasn’t yet linked the spoken word “cup” with the one he uses every day, he may not be ready to understand the picture is also called cup.

Beyond that, for many, make that for most toddlers, flashcards are just plain B.O.R.I.N.G. What’s the appeal of looking at a picture of a dump truck when you can glance out the window and spot a life-size truck or even better, you can zoom a cool toy version across the floor?

It’s true that some children do like flashcards. These are usually children with visual strengths. Kids like this may also watch movie after movie, spend lots of time exploring picture books, or require that the iPad be pried from their little hands in order to move on to something else. They may be drawn to finding shapes, colors, letters and numbers in all kinds of places. For those children, flashcards may be a natural extension of their individual learning preference. Although I detest flashcards for most of the toddlers I work with during therapy sessions, even I use them with children like this because it’s what they enjoy. Because of that, flashcards do work to teach language for these young learners. However, we must be careful, even when kids do seem to learn words by looking at the cards with you, that their language skills are generalizing to everyday life. It’s problematic when a child can say “banana” when he’s looking at a picture in his favorite book or in an app, but he can’t ask his mom for “banana” when he sees it on the counter top in the kitchen.

So if flashcards are out, what’s a desperate parent or therapist to do when we want to teach a very young child a new word?

It’s easier than you think!

Choose real life!

When language is emerging, or when a child is first beginning to learn what words mean and how to say them, teach new words by using real objects and real events, preferably as you’re going about your day. You don’t need pictures of blocks, a car, a ball, cookies, or milk to teach those kinds of familiar words. Dig through your kid’s toy box or get yourself to the kitchen and find the real one instead!

Be sure to say the word several times as you use the object in the way it’s intended – meaning that you actually play with the toy or eat the food. It will be much more relevant and much more likely to make a lasting impression for your child to help him learn to understand and use the word. Beyond that, the real thing is just plain FUN for your child and for you!

Remember…you can teach words anytime, anywhere.

Need a book full of ideas like this? If you like the idea of reading a goal and several proven activities to address that milestone, Teach Me To Talk: The Therapy Manual is written specifically for speech-language pathologists and other early intervention professionals who work with young children birth to 4 with receptive and expressive language delays and disorders. Because this project was written for professionals, it may not be as family-friendly as other teachmetotalk.com products, but many committed mothers and fathers report that this manual gave them more direction and specific instructions for what to work on at home than any other resource they’ve used. This manual is especially helpful for selecting goals and then designing corresponding fun and developmentally-appropriate treatment activities for toddlers and young children functioning from the 6-9 month developmental level up to the 48 month developmental level. It’s the ultimate “how to” tool for working with infants and toddlers with language delays.

Laura

The post The Truth about Flashcards for Toddlers Who Don’t Yet Talk appeared first on teachmetotalk.com.

That’s the purpose of this post, to help you find a way to help your own late talker – or, if you’re a therapist like me, a whole caseload of toddlers with language delays!

Anytime you’re working on changing something, you need a plan!

When a child is not talking yet, you need not only a plan, but a good plan!

Early in my career, I recognized the need for a consistent way of designing my own treatment plans to make sure that I addressed every aspect of helping a child learn to communicate – especially those things that may not be as easy to identify as “he’s not saying any words.”

To keep myself on track, I developed a hierarchy or a plan for how to look at a child’s communication skills in a continuum knowing that everything a child learns is building a strong foundation for what comes next. I started sharing this hierarchy when I launched my website teachmetotalk in 2008 and began publishing my DVDs and therapy manuals. In 2010, I began teaching this hierarchy to therapists throughout the United States and did that for many years. Nowdays, I just do that on YouTube!

Today I want to briefly share that hierarchy with you and then show you how to apply this method or treatment plan when a toddler is not talking yet.

Remember – what you’re doing, the specific activity, is not that important. You can use this method for ANY toy and everyday activity. The important thing is learning the 4 big areas you should be looking at and in what order to make the most impact for working with a toddler with language delays.

The four areas are:

Social & Interactive Skills

Receptive Language

Expressive Language

Speech Intelligibility

Let me briefly explain each area and tell you why it’s important for language development.

Social and Interactive Skills

Every time we communicate, it involves at least 2 people. Actually, this 1 on 1 interaction is the reason language evolved in the first place. We don’t need to know how to talk to do many of the solitary things we do every day, but as soon as another person enters the picture, communication becomes necessary. The first piece of that is realizing another person is there and then learning to enjoy that interaction. Social engagement begins very early in a baby’s life – on day one! Over the first several weeks and months, a baby shows evidence that he likes being with other people and seeks out others for the purpose of interacting. Those skills continue to grow and develop over a child’s first year.

However, sometimes a baby who has been pretty social begins to withdraw. He or she begins to avoid interaction and tune other people out – especially people outside her own family. Or it may be more subtle – a child used to smile and giggle and be super engaged, but then it shifts a little. He becomes more interested in toys or screens than people. He or she doesn’t learn to consistently respond to her name or pay attention as people talk to her. She doesn’t look at things when you point to them. There’s scattered eye contact so that it may difficult to get them to look at you. They look like they’re always busy with something else or not listening as you talk to them.

Let’s contrast this with toddlers who have typically developing social skills. They do respond to their names. They watch you often as you talk to them. They seek out other people to help them and try to communicate with facial expressions and their own body movements, even before they can talk.

Social & interactive skills are the foundation for communicating.

When a child is not naturally social and interactive, he’s at a real disadvantage for learning to communicate because that foundational piece is missing. If a child you’re working with or your own child doesn’t frequently connect with you and a variety of other people, then this is the area where you should begin your plan. You’ll work to help a child learn to like (or at least tolerate) interacting with others. Without this piece, communication skills will not move forward. Social interaction and engagement should be your first goal.

I recommend AND USE the treatment approach in Teach Me to Play WITH You first with all kids and families who need help with social interaction ideas. I can teach you to do it too. Read more…

Children with significant social delays or differences that don’t resolve when they learn to interact will very likely go on to be diagnosed with autism. Understanding the underlying differences in how kids with autism learn language is critical. My treatment manual The Autism Workbook will help you pinpoint focus areas  you need to strengthen and help you design a treatment plan for a toddler or preschooler with characteristics of autism or an official diagnosis.

In case you’re wondering, throughout my career, I have also use these strategies with toddlers and preschoolers who have markers for autism but make so much progress (especially with social interaction) that they do not get the diagnoses. I get emails from parents who have bought my manuals and followed my work who tell me the same thing about their child. While I can never make a bold claim without seeing a specific child, please know that this is possible. When you implement the right strategies, things change.

Receptive Language

The next big area for language development is receptive language or how a child understands the words he hears. Babies and toddlers must first learn to understand words before they use those words to talk and communicate.

The best and most practical way to judge a child’s receptive language skills are by looking at how well he follow directions during everyday routines such as “Go get your shoes,” “Bring me the cup,” or “Let’s go take a bath.” Toddlers with typically developing language skills are completing these kinds of routine requests by the time they are 15 to 18 months old.

For therapists, there should also be evidence of a child’s ability to follow commands during sessions. If mom says, “He understands everything,” but I can’t get him to do anything for me during therapy, there’s a problem! You’ll want to tease that out. Is a parent overestimating a child’s comprehension skills? Many times, parents attribute a child’s lack of compliance to behavioral or personality issues like “He’s stubborn” or “She’s lazy,” but most of the time, that’s not the case. Even the most strong-willed toddlers with normal receptive language skills follow many different requests during everyday routines at home, especially when there’s something in it for them!

Receptive language is heavily dependent upon a child’s cognition – or how he thinks, learns, plans, and remembers. Toddlers with cognitive delays will always have difficulty learning language. You’ll know to expect those challenges and adapt your teaching strategies to meet a child’s needs in this area. Your goal here will be teaching a child to understand new words and new concepts, not say those words just yet.

If a child does not understand language well enough to consistently follow directions, you’ve found your first (or next) goal! Teach a child to understand more words first and to follow simple commands. Here’s why and it’s pretty obvious when you think about it… and I’ve said it before, but I’ll repeat it so you can remember…

Toddlers must first understand words before they can use words to communicate.

It’s highly unproductive to spend time trying to teach a toddler to say new words when he doesn’t understand those words. Any child who is 18 months old and can’t follow simple directions during familiar daily routines will very likely be diagnosed with moderate receptive language delays. Children who are 2 and aren’t following simple directions in everyday routines are at risk for significant receptive language delays. You’ll have to address this area first before you teach them to say more words.

My best receptive language resources are Teach Me To Talk: The Therapy Manual for specific goals/milestones and activities from under 12 months to 48 months and Let’s Talk About Talking, a comprehensive speech therapy manual to help you determine why a child isn’t talking and what skills you need to strengthen to get a child there!

Expressive Language

The 3rd area for language development is expressive language or how a child uses words – or even gestures or pictures – to communicate his own needs and his own ideas with others. Parents and therapists think about expressive language as the “talking” piece.

Before kids can talk, they need to be able to vocalize or use their little voices purposefully. Sometimes toddlers with speech disorders aren’t able to control their vocalizations. Everything is still very reflexive – like crying or even noises with sneezing or coughing. This has to become volitional – where a child understands that he can use his voice and imitate the sound you’ve made.

When babies first begin to babble and vocalize, the sounds are pretty random. Late talkers will continue to do that too. They may even jabber and use lots of jargon. The problem is that they haven’t learned to link meaning with those sounds yet. They don’t understand the direct imitation piece – meaning you say a word and then they say a word.

Verbal imitation is a big part of learning how to talk. It’s often a piece that’s missing too when a toddler is not talking yet.

But we can’t begin teaching a child to imitate with words – it comes at a much earlier developmental level. We first teach a child to imitate using actions with objects and with body movements. In typically developing toddlers, this process evolves over several months in the last half of the first year. It can take much longer in toddlers with developmental delays.

If a child you’re working with isn’t using very many words (but is socially engaged and does follow directions), then look at his or her verbal imitation skills. That could be your starting point. My best resource for teaching a child to imitate is Buidling Verbal Imitation in Toddlers. (This is out next podcast series too. I am so excited about teaching this material to parents and professionals on YouTube!)

You may also consider introducing strategies like sign language or picture systems or if this is likely to be a long-term issue, another kind of AAC device – a speech generating device or an app that speaks for the child when he selects the correct picture message until he’s developmentally ready to talk. Watch a podcast on getting started with AAC.

Speech Intelligibility

The last big area is speech intelligibility or how well you can understand a child as he talks. Of course being understood is a big part of communicating! Speech-language pathologists think about this area as articulation – or getting the right sounds in the right places. Remember too that ALL toddlers can be difficult to understand when you’re an unfamiliar listener. Even parents may struggle to understand everything a child tries to say. The norms are pretty generous in this area. Parents may understand only about half of what a 24 month old says and closer to 75% by 2 ½ and then 90% by age 3.

A child’s speech may be hard to understand for several reasons. Sometimes they’re just using jargon or jabbering which means there are only a few true words included. Those kids understand that they should talk – they just don’t have the vocabulary yet to say what they want to say. This could be an expressive problem, but it’s usually an indicator of a receptive language problem after the second birthday.

Kids may have specific sound errors which prevent them from being understood. It may go beyond just not being able to pronounce a certain sound yet. There are often error patterns – a child speaks only using vowels or he may be able to include a few consonant sounds at the beginning or some words and never the ending sounds. Or he may shorten words and omit entire syllables.

Or there may be no pattern in his errors at all. His speech sound errors are inconsistent – he may say a word fine one time and then never again or every time he tries to say a word, it sounds a little different. There are several diagnoses associated with poor speech intelligibility. But we wouldn’t address this as the main focus for a child with delayed language until the other areas are firmly established.

When a child is developmentally ready, I use the methods I explain in FUNctional Phonology which outlines how to deterimine if a child is ready to work on articulation (or getting all the right sounds in all the right places) and how to prioritize your goals. It’s a developmental approach with lots of word lists, tricks and activities for toddlers rather than older kids.

Each of these 4 areas is an important part of language development when a toddler is not talking yet.

When we don’t address a toddler’s area of weakness, it could be the reason why progress in learning to talk is much slower – even when a child is already in therapy.

I hope this post helped you understand as parents what may be going on when a toddler is not talking yet. For therapists… this is how I explain each area of language development to parents. For more help deciding which products would be best for each issue when a toddler is not talking yet, you can also read this post.

Thanks so much for reading this lengthy post to the end! You’re a person after this writer’s heart.

With gratefulness –

Laura

teachmetotalk.com

Psalm 100:4-5

The post When a Toddler Is Not Talking Yet… You Need a Plan! appeared first on teachmetotalk.com.

Imitating is how EVERY child learns to talk.

How to Teach a Child to Imitate

Teaching a child to imitate words often begins with teaching him HOW to imitate.

Sometimes it’s easier to teach a child to imitate by starting with movements of your body rather than with words or even sounds. You can begin by modeling easy movements you know he can do such as banging on his high chair tray, smacking at a window when he’s looking outside or clapping. If your child is already waving bye-bye or playing interactive games such as Peek-a-Boo or So Big, he already knows how to do this since “copying” you is how he’s learned the game in the first place. If you need more help with remembering how to play these kinds of games, check out my manual Teach Me To Play WITH You.

For kids who don’t catch on and try to repeat what you’ve done, I always back up and start to imitate their movements. Pick a time when your child is in a happy, playful mood to do this. It might also help to be in a confined space, such as inside a playhouse or under a blanket or table, so that her attention is focused on you. Wait until she does something, and repeat her movement. Stare back at her expectantly and wait for her to do it again. If she doesn’t, wait for her next big movement, then try again. When she notices and repeats the same or another movement, copy her again. Make this a game over the next several days or weeks so she expects you to imitate her. I also try to not to talk too much during these interactions so that the focus is on imitation, not on what I’ve said. Too much talking takes the focus off imitating, and this is the skill you need to teach. If I talk at all during this kind of exchange, it’s usually to say a funny novel word such as Bang, Bang, Bang or making a silly noise.

Once your child understands this game, try to take the lead by initiating movements you’ve seen her do in your last few play sessions. If she doesn’t do this on her own, try to take her hands and gently perform the action after you’ve done it. Some of these are performed with your mouth (blowing, fake coughing/sneezing, smacking, etc..) so they are particularly useful for helping kids move toward imitating vocally.

Additional ideas for other movements to teach a child to imitate –

Touching various body parts

Jumping

Pointing

Shaking his head

Smacking lips/kissing

Opening & closing your mouth

Clicking your tongue

Waving

Yawning

Give me 5

Touching the floor

Holding arms up

Patting your head

Stomping Feet

Fake Cough

Fake Sneeze

Blowing

Moving on to Imitating Sounds 

When your child can imitate these movements pretty well, but still doesn’t seem to be able to make the leap to imitating words, I add silly sounds to the imitation games to accompany movements he can already imitate. For example, when I’m clapping, I say, “Yay!” If I shake my head, I say, “No, no, no” (in a silly, playful way), or I might add “sound effects” with popping my lips, or saying, “Do Do Do” as a I jump up and down. One silly sound that works well is saying, “Mmmmmm” when you’re eating a yummy snack. I add a little side-to-side shoulder action as I model this one to give them a motor movement to copy. These silly words, often called Exclamatory Words, are often among the first words that babies try to repeat and say on their own. Try some of the following:

Other Exclamatory Words

uh-oh, oops, whee, wow, ouch, oh, Oh man!, Oh no!, yuck, icky, yum-yum, boo, an audible inhalation or exhalation (think a surprised noise)

Fun With Noises

Some children are able to produce animal sounds before they begin to imitate words. I try these often during play with a farm set. A good first one to try is panting like a dog. I particularly do this if I know the child can imitate opening his mouth. Don’t forget other animal sounds like a bark, meow, neigh, oink, quack, moo, baa, roar, ssss for a snake, etc… I sometimes ask a child, “What does the ____ say?” before I do it, but most of the time, I grab the animal, hold it up by my face as if I’m pretending to be the animal, and model the sound. Exaggerate your facial expressions too. This nearly always generates a laugh, even if I don’t get them to try to repeat the animal sound just yet. Model the sound in play with the animals and barn too, but holding the toy animal by your face while you emphasize the sound and darn near make a fool out of yourself works really well! If they don’t try to imitate this, I might hold it next to their mouths and say, “You do it. You’re the ____!” If you need to take the pressure off of vocalizing, pretend to kiss the animal using an exaggerated smacking sound, then have them try. This also works well with puzzle pieces using animals. Don’t forget zoo animals either, but you may have to be more creative with their noises.

I also try noises to accompany whatever action we’re using in play with the farm animals or even dolls. Have them eat, drink (I do a loud slurpy noise), and everyone’s favorite, snore. When characters walk I either say, “Walk Walk Walk” or “Up Up Up” as they climb. You might also try to model a new consonant sound that they can’t usually produce in a word attempt. My friend who is a DI uses a little chant, “Doo dee doo dee doo” when characters walk, and she’s gotten several children to produce a /d/ in this context when I haven’t been able to get it in a real word. Other sounds I use routinely in play include fake crying, sneezing, laughing, yawning, and shivering for cold or scared.

I always play using vehicle noises. Don’t forget about vroom, zoom, boom, crash, honk-honk, beep-beep, choo-choo (or woo woo), siren noises, etc…. Try these in the middle of play. One of my favorites to do is to get the vehicle stuck when I model “stuuuuuuuuck” and then make lots of effortful noise while I try to pull the vehicle out.  Again try the by the face method, especially for the honk, beep, choo-choo, etc… I also do these with puzzle pieces of vehicles if a kid is too “busy” with a toy vehicle to notice all of my vocal efforts during play.

Another good thing to try is having a child vocalize into a bucket or can since this produces an echo-like noise. I had one little girl with Down syndrome who would not imitate any sound or word unless we first tried it this way. Babbling syllables is a good way to start with this. Try to use the same sounds you know your baby can do such as mamamama, bububububu, or dadadadada. If you can’t get a babble with consonant and vowel syllables, start with vowel sounds such as “ah,” “uh,” or “oh.”  Then I move to vowels that sound like words like “i” for “Hi” or “ay” for “Hey.”

If a child is pretty quiet and I don’t hear much noise at all during play, my goal is always to make him noisy, even before we begin to work on words. One thing I try to is to imitate any noise he happens to make whether it’s accidental or on purpose. Tickling or chasing is a good way to elicit squeals or laughter, then I make a big deal out of matching the child’s laugh or squeal with mine aiming for the same sounds, length, volume, and pitch as him.

If you’d like more information about how to teach a child to imitate, I can help you! Get my book Building Verbal Imitation in Toddlers.  You’ll learn the 8 levels of imitation necessary for helping a late talker learn to imitate and talk!!

Here’s a video about teaching a child to imitate with toys.

The post Child Not Talking? Teach a Child to Imitate appeared first on teachmetotalk.com.

The word “communication” encompasses all of these areas. It includes toddler’s ability to understand and produce words. It includes a baby’s ability to use gestures, such as pointing and facial expressions, to convey his message. To a greater degree than you may realize, it also includes how curious he is about his world, how he plays, and how he tries to interact with others. All of these communication skills can be broken down into smaller, more specific areas. These areas are listed below, along with various terms you might also hear or read concerning communication skills. Each of these categories is important in determining your baby’s overall ability to communicate.

Speech-language pathologists typically separate communication skills into speech skills (actual sound production skills) and language skills (the vocabulary one uses and understands.) When referring to early communication skills, language is usually the area emphasized – and rightly so. While sound production skills are necessary to eventually speak (you have to be able to produce sounds to say words) elevating their importance above language is usually a mistake with toddlers. More commonly than not, it’s a child’s language delays that account for his not talking or understanding, rather than his ability to produce sounds. Focusing on speech sound production for a baby who is trying to talk, but doesn’t speak perfectly yet, can also be a mistake. For example, a child who says “mi” for milk at one year old, and even to age two, should not be overtly corrected for not producing the ending sounds on the word, but more about that in a later post.

LANGUAGE SKILLS

Language skills are generally broken down into two broad categories: receptive language and expressive language.

Receptive Language

Receptive language can also be referred to as “Language Comprehension” or “Auditory Comprehension Skills.”  This means how your baby understands the language he hears. Examples of receptive language include how well your baby follows directions such as “Give me your cup” or how he might start to walk toward the bathroom when you announce, “It’s time for a bath. “ These skills begin from birth when your baby begins to purposefully look at you and enjoy your attention and continue as he starts to notice environmental sounds, such as the neighbor’s dog barking or a loud fire engine. It progresses when he begins to pay attention to what you’re talking about so that he looks around when you announce “Daddy’s home!” or watches as you point to a bird outside the window. He begins to understand early games such as “Peek-a-boo” well enough to cover his head himself and lights up when he pulls the blanket off and you yell “Boo!“ It includes being able to point to body parts when you ask, “Where’s your nose?” and find pictures in books when you say, “Show me the dog.”

Receptive language is closely tied to a baby’s cognitive – or thinking – skills. Until a child is age 3 or older, it is very difficult to separate receptive language and cognition. In fact, most of the skills listed on early developmental charts are actually the same or similar for both domains. Some children may demonstrate cognitive strengths, such as a good memory or exceptional visual skills, so that they recognize written words or can match colors.  However, more often than not, poor language comprehension skills are linked to at least the potential for future academic problems. This is why language skills are believed to be the most reliable predictor for future success in school.  Problems with language skills are also the number one reason kids aren’t ready for kindergarten.

When assessing receptive language at home, it is very important to be sure that your child is responding to the words you’re saying and not the nonverbal cues you might be giving. For example, when you’re asking your child, “Give me the block,” he may be responding to your outstretched hand as he gives it to you, or he may see the juice box you’re getting out of the refrigerator rather than understand, “Are you thirsty?”

Expressive Language

Expressive language means what your child communicates with words he says or gestures he uses. This is most often what parents are referring to when they are concerned about their baby’s ability to communicate. Again, skills in this area develop much sooner than when your baby says his first words. They begin when he cries during the middle of the night for a feeding, and when he gurgles back at you when you are holding him close and calling his name. These skills progress to how he excitedly kicks his arms and legs when you sing to him. As an older baby, he expresses himself when he fusses and pushes you away when you are interrupting his play to change his diaper. This expands to a whine and persistent “Uh uh uh” when he reaches up to the counter for his cup. He learns to wave when grandma leaves usually before he begins to echo, “Bye bye.” These early gestures are an essential prerequisite for expressive language development.

SPEECH SKILLS

Speech skills are the sounds a child produces and combines into words. Speech-language pathologists (SLP) can take a couple of different approaches to analyzing a child’s speech sound skills, or articulation skills, as more commonly noted in evaluation. Clinicians analyze the specific consonant and vowel sounds a child produces correctly alone, or in isolation, and then further assess a child’s ability to correctly combine these sounds into syllables and words at the beginning (initial), middle (medial), and ending (final) positions in words.

An SLP may take a broader look and analyze the patterns a child uses to form words, or phonological processing. This might include leaving off syllables in words such as “na” for banana, or leaving off all ending sounds so that “ba” means ball, box, and bottle, depending on the context.

More often than not, a parent’s chief concern regarding his or her child’s speech skills is simple. They want to be able to know what their child is saying, and often more importantly, they want the all-important others (grandparents, sitters, neighbors, and friends) to be able to understand him too. This is often referred to as how “intelligible” a child is.

OTHER AREAS

As mentioned in the opening paragraph, there are other essential skills a baby needs to be able to communicate. A child must be social, or have a desire to be with and interact with others. A toddler must be learning throughout his day and want to explore a variety of play interests. He should not be stuck in such spinning all his toys, repetitively pushing buttons on and off his light and sound toys, or preferring to watch TV to the exclusion of other types of play. A baby must have learned important cognitive concepts such as object permanence (something doesn’t go away just because I can’t see it) and cause-and-effect (if I push this button, the jack in the box opens.)  He must be able to pay attention to something and more importantly, someone, for more than a fleeting few seconds. This includes consistently making and maintaining eye contact and enjoying back and forth play with adults. Play skills are also important. Early pretending and playing with two toys together, such as feeding a doll with a spoon, are important precursors to language. Imitation is HUGE skill for babies to master because imitation is the way we learn just about everything we know in our lives. Imitation includes learning to hold up hands during a game of “So Big,” learning to clap when we’ve done something great, and babbling back to Mom as she says “Mama, mama.”

How do all these skills work together?

All of these skills are essential to helping kids learn to communicate. While child specialists tell you that all kids develop differently, generally language development follows the same pattern.  There is some variance here and there on the rate or when a specific skill is obtained. For example, on most checklists, skills are listed for an age range, say six to nine months, rather than a certain date like seven months. This is how all of those charts were developed in the first place, and how tests are standardized. Thousands of children are studied to determine when a certain skill is mastered, and then it’s listed on the chart in a range.

There are also some other factors that are fairly predictable. Receptive language generally precedes expressive language. Which means that if a child has a receptive language delay, he’s going to have an expressive delay too. Most of the time, we have to understand something before we can talk about it. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule. This does not include children who mimic everything they hear or when speaking seems to be a child’s gift – for instance, when she can recite lines from a movie, but not understand how to ask for what she needs. The ability to babble or vocalize using a variety of sounds generally comes before a child begins to say real words. Usually a child is speaking in words before they begin to combine them to phrases and sentences.

Don’t even get me started on the Einstein theory that a child can be non-verbal one day and wake up speaking in full sentences the next. This may happen RARELY, but please don’t count on it! There are only a FEW folks with even the genetically predetermined possibility of reaching the cognitive capacity to be Einstein, so unless your family tree is full of Noble-prize winning physicists and world-renowned surgeons, this is probably not going to be the case for your little one. That’s not to say that intellectually mediocre parents can’t produce whoppingly intelligent children, but this is truly the exception rather than the rule.

Speech or Language Delay?

When your child’s language skills are moving along at a slower rate than would be expected, but the same skills are achieved in the same expected order, it is called a speech delay or language delay. When your child is not acquiring skills in the same way as expected (for instance, he may have some skills at higher age levels with many skills absent at a younger age level) or if there is no pattern per se in his development or if there are a typical characteristics present, it is called a speech delay or language disorder. Speech delay or language delay are typically easier to overcome and eventually catch up. A disorder is generally something a child will struggle with for a while, perhaps his entire life.

Now after reading all of this you may feel overwhelmed, defeated, or even scared out of your mind. Take a deep breath and realize that your child has his whole life ahead of him, and so do you as his parents. Many, many, many parents have felt this same way and experienced these same feelings. Some have lapsed into depression or let their fears immobilize them. Some have wasted countless hours on evaluation after evaluation searching for answers to the inexhaustible question, “WHY DID THIS HAPPEN TO US?”

But many have risen to the occasion and used this information as fuel to propel them to explore.  They don’t just look to specialists to tell them what’s going wrong with their children, but to wholeheartedly pursue interventions that work to make their babies better. Sometimes it takes years, loads of money on therapy, and tons of parental blood, sweat, and tears to finally hear their little ones whisper “I love you.”

For many parents, it just takes making a firm decision to commit to using simple strategies day in and day out and an on-going belief that things will get better. Which kind of parent are you? I trust that since you are still reading this, you are one of the ones who will choose to make a difference.

As I say at the end of every piece of information I write for parents and at the ends of visits with parents who look like they are at the ends of their ropes, YOU CAN DO THIS! YOU CAN! YOU! You are your kid’s best hope. YOU! YOU CAN DO THIS!

I recommend these speech therapy manuals for late talkers to all my new families…

For my best help working with a young toddler when you first begin to worry about language delay is Teach Me To Play WITH You. It’s filled with easy, fun routines to do with your baby to help him begin to talk. When you see signs of speech delay in your toddler, you don’t have to worry! Take action and get going today.

If your child is over 2 and understands language well but still isn’t talking, get Building Verbal Imitation Skills in Toddlers for a step-by-step plan for teach your child with speech delay to talk.

The post Language Delay? Understanding Communication Skills for Parents appeared first on teachmetotalk.com.

Here’s an excerpt from an e-mail I received from our “Ask the SLP” post.

“My son is 18 months old and understands everything we say to him, but he is not talking with words yet. He mostly looks at us, will point to what he wants, and grunts. Is there anything we can do at home to help him learn to say words?” -From Claire in Wisconsin

There are lots of things you can do at home to help him talk! How do you teach new words? By doing what you’re doing now – modeling words in the middle of your routines and during lots of one-on-one playtime so that he can repeat you.

Imitation is only way kids learn new words.

Talk all day long to your toddler about what you’re doing, but make sure that you are saying lots of single words (rather than speaking only in sentences) and then pausing to give him a chance to imitate.

This was hard for me to learn as a new therapist.

I would spend so much time talking that I didn’t give my little clients a chance to respond before I had moved on to the next thing! Thankfully I have learned to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n and   w–a–i–t for my little friends’ brains and mouths to catch up!  (Read more about expectant waiting and how it works to help a toddler learn to talk.)

Some kids respond well to parents who say the word and then wait long enough for their toddler to imitate the word.

However, some kids need direct cues such as, “Say _(the word)______.” Another therapist’s tip – Don’t ask your child, “Can you say ________?” The answer to this question is “yes” or “no.” Simply use, “Say _____” or “Tell me.”

Another of my favorite “hacks” is saying to a child, “You can say ____. It’s… a… _____” And then waiting for the child to fill-in-the-blank with the correct word. Think about this technique as giving a child a “running start.” This strategy has worked so well for toddlers that by now it’s one of the first things I try when a child doesn’t imitate well with direct cues, likely due to difficulty with confrontational naming. The starter phrase (or carrier phrase in a sense) seems to relieve that pressure to perform and kids who normally shut down, may complete the phrase with the correct word.

When a Toddler Grunts Instead of Talking, Use a Toddler’s Favorite Things as Motivation to Talk

What’s my number one trick for getting kids to try to talk when they’re grunting instead of talking?

I’ve written about this a lot here at teachmetotalk and in all of my manuals, but I’ll give you a summary here too.

Unless a child is a super picky eater, is on a restricted diet, or has severe allergic reactions, I always use FOOD.

Specifically junk food and lots of it.

I also use their favorite toys or activities too, but usually after I “hook” them with cookies, goldfish, chips, fruit snacks (I call them “candy”) and everyone’s favorite, cheese balls.

Some parents and therapists try to take the high road and in the most condescending tone they can muster, tell me that they NEVER use food to “bribe” kids to talk.

Why not?

It works!

And let’s face it, we all perform best for things we really like.

Looking at pictures in books or pointing out objects to them with the hope that he or she will begin to repeat the word may work for some kids, but in my experience, food works with almost everybody. (Except maybe very, very picky eaters, but even then I can usually find some junk food they like!)

The food method (as I call it) always begins with me sitting on the floor holding the bag or bowl of snacks. Try sitting on the floor first because it’s in their line of vision. I usually say something like, “Mmmmm. Cookies! Do you want one?”

If I get no response, I say, “Okay. I’ll eat it.”

That usually gets most kids interested, and sometimes a little riled up which can work in your favor unless they go over the edge.

Then I say, “What do you want?”

Immediately answer this question as you want them to answer by modeling the word (or sign) for them to imitate.

When your kid tries, even if the word is not perfect, go ahead and give him the cookie.

You can clean up the sounds later when he’s older and is not as apt to be frustrated. (See the post on What Doesn’t Work – Unproductive Strategies for more on this!)

If he doesn’t try to say the word, withhold the snack and model the word again for a few more times.

Sometimes it takes a few “models” before a kid can process and try to say it himself. Wait him out. If he still won’t try to say it after this long, go ahead and give it to him. Going beyond this number of prompts really is, for lack of a better word, MEAN! You want to keep him motivated enough to try again!

I usually cue a child between 3 and 5 times with a word before moving on or before giving him what he wants. If he’s too frustrated (throwing himself backward on the floor and screaming), forget the prompting and just give him what he wants. No kid learns anything when he’s that MAD!

But a little bit of frustration sometimes does a child good. (Read about that here.)

I never accept “uh uh” or pointing, or grunts instead of talking from a kid when I know they can do better.

We know a child can do better when I have heard him try to approximate the word before or when he’s become a fairly consistent imitator.

If not, I might hold out with a couple of models and then still give him what he wants if he truly can’t do it.

Using signs or pictures is what I switch to if a child can’t consistently make himself attempt a word. (Here’s a post about using sign language to help kids learn to talk.)

If a Child Doesn’t Like Food, Try a Toy!

An activity that I routinely have success with is blowing bubbles.

At first I sit on the floor, and I always hold the container so that I am in control. If a kid fights to hold it, I give him a wand, and then I use another other wand to blow. If a kid really fights to hold the bottle, I stand up so he can’t reach it.

Avoid saying, “No” or stating any other negative form or rule during this kind of play.

Just plaster a smile on your face, keep your tone playful, and move what he wants out of his reach, so that you stay in the lead, and he has to “request.”

Ask, “Bubbles?” Model the word (and/or sign if you’re signing) several times WAITING on his request.

Blow only after he says the word, or after you’ve prompted the word several times with no response.

Make a big deal out of watching and popping the bubbles. I pop them in the air with my fingers saying, “Pop! Pop! Pop!”, but I always let some fall to the floor so that I can smack the floor with a big gesture and scream, “Pop!” Lots of kids will imitate this gesture and word for me before they imitate anything else.

If he’s still grunting instead of talking, another idea is shaping his word. Try to get at least a vowel-sounding sound like “uh” rather than a grunt. Model “uh” yourself as you’re saying “Buuuuuuubble. That’s right “uh.” Buuuuuuubble.”

Try Piece by Piece When a Child Grunts Instead of Talking

One more thing I always try when an older child grunts insteaed of talking is using a toy with lots of accessories or pieces so that kids have to ask me for the next thing they need. You can sabotage the activity by having all of the pieces in a clear plastic bag so she can see it and has to ask for each item to play.

Most of my little friends (even the boys) love playing with baby dolls. I gather small bottles of pretend juice and milk, sippy cups, a bowl, several different colored spoons and forks, a hairbrush and comb, baby wipes, diapers, a baby blanket or baby carrier, pretend foods, and lots of doll clothes – shirts, socks, shoes, and hats. If a kid wants a new item, he has to ask (or try anyway).

The key is having lots of items to pick from and then offering a choice between two of the items. For example, ask if baby needs to drink or eat. If she picks drink, ask if baby wants milk or juice, then needs a cup or bottle, then have him choose between two different colors of cups, etc. I try to get a kid to make several different choices before we get to the actual activity. If your child is too frustrated with this waiting, stick to one or two choices before the activity, but always look for ways to expand his attention span and ideas in play. It’s not always just about talking! Be sure to join in the play modeling play and language at or just above his level. You may get more imitation when you’re actually playing than during the choosing.

Try Ball Toys  When a Child Grunts Instead of Talking

“Ball” is an easy first word. Ball toys are always popular with one and two-year-olds too. I like ones that have more than one ball and are clear so kids can watch the balls go in, fall down, or pop out. Hold all the balls and have them ask you for one ball at a time. Make a big deal about catching the balls as they fall out saying, “Got it,” so kids know they have to ask for it if they want it again.

All of this type of play needs to be done in an animated, fun way.

Don’t look like an ogre when you sit and hold the pieces.

Don’t lecture, “You have to tell me the word first, or I’m not going to give it to you.”

Keep it light, fun, and model the word many times PLAYFULLY withholding what he wants until he tries. This kind of approach typically works when a kid is interactive and ready to talk. If your child is too focused on the object instead of knowing that he has to communicate to get it, you may need to back up and work on more social games to make a real connection first before working on requesting.

I hope these ideas help!

You can find more super practical step-by-step activities for teaching a words when he grunts instead of talking in my book written for professionals and parents called Teach Me To Talk: The Therapy Manual. If you’re struggling because you don’t know what to do during your therapy time at home, this book will give you direction with goals/milestones matched to activities that work for toddlers and their families.

The post Toddler Grunts Instead of Talking – Ideas for Parents to Help a Child Learn to Use Words appeared first on teachmetotalk.com.

But first things first…

In the first few months of motherhood, it’s all about our babies’ regulatory needs, basically if they are sleeping, eating, and even pooping properly. Once we’re over that hump, we begin to wonder about their motor skills- rolling over, sitting up, crawling, and walking. We eagerly anticipate our baby’s mobility. Usually our wishes are granted, and our baby takes his first few wobbly steps on average between the ages of 10 to 13 months.

Then comes the second year. If the first year’s obsession is waiting for our baby to walk, then the second year’s obsession is waiting for our baby to talk. For some lucky mothers this happens early. A baby begins to coo around 8 weeks, babbles by 6 months, and then he starts to try to imitate common words before his first piece of birthday cake is served. For others it means waiting a little while longer, after the novelty of walking has worn off around 14 to 16 months.

Still others are waiting when that second birthday rolls around. Usually by then, even the freakishly calm mother is wondering, “Is something wrong? Should I be worried?”

We consult our families and friends. Invariably we hear any combination of the following,

“Calm down. It’s no big deal.”

“Uncle Jim (or the neighbor’s son, or my personal favorite, Einstein) didn’t talk until he was 3.”

Strangel,y this well-meaning advice is not comforting for most of us worrying mother types because we suspect that something is wrong. More importantly, we don’t want to feel guilty later if we did nothing about it.

Most of us also talk to the pediatrician, and sadly our concerns could even be dismissed by our most trusted and revered medical professional. You might be called “overanxious.” (By the way, in all of my education, I have never seen overanxious mother listed as an official reason babies don’t learn to talk on time.) When one mother took her non-verbal 3 year-old son in to be evaluated at a leading children’s hospital, the doctor advised, “Have another baby, and then he’ll talk.”

Although many pediatricians are wonderful about listening to a parent’s concerns or identifying a potential developmental problem themselves during a visit, some doctors simply have not been trained to judiciously screen for communication delays, particularly before a child turns 2. Many urge parents to wait and see. For some children this could be an acceptable approach. In some cases maturity kicks in and a toddler simply outgrows an earlier issue that caused his parents great alarm. However, from my experience, a child hardly goes from being silent one day to speaking in full sentences the next, no matter what your great aunt so-and-so, the friendly lady at Wal-Mart, or even your pediatrician told you.

Language development simply does not happen overnight for most children. Even though you’ve probably been told not to compare your child to someone else’s or even your own older children, and no two children develop alike, there are patterns of communication skills that babies acquire within certain age ranges. If earlier skills are not mastered within a time frame, communication problems are more likely to develop.

Many pediatricians themselves become worried about their own children at an age when their colleagues might otherwise fail to issue a referral. As a busy pediatric speech-language pathologist specializing in early intervention, that is seeing children with language delays ages birth to three, I typically have several clients on my caseload who are children of physicians. Currently I am seeing four children with mothers who are pediatricians, one who is the daughter of a neurologist, and one whose father runs a family practice. All six of these children began the referral process to be evaluated in our state’s early intervention program before turning two, and four of them by 18 months.

Interestingly, two of these mothers, pediatricians themselves, also began their initial conversations with me with a variation of this same question, “Should I be worried?” With all their medical training, they still weren’t sure enough about developmental communicative milestones to truly know if their own kids were at risk. This is shocking because most parents value their doctor’s knowledge above their own instincts. Often times, parents have expressed deep regret to me that they did not trust their own gut feelings earlier and insist that something be done, even against the advice of their pediatricians.

My advice to all parents has come to be, if you are worried that there’s a problem, there probably is.

Occasionally there are parents, and even spouses, who have to be convinced that something is wrong, but more often than not, mothers suspect this long before other people begin to mention it. Even if you are initially pacified by everyone’s advice, but later feel that something really could be wrong, trust your instincts. Pursue additional information until you are satisfied that everything is moving along nicely in your child’s development, or until you find guidelines that confirm your suspicions that he or she is falling behind.

You can find charts that list developmental milestones in communication for babies and toddlers from many sources including parenting books, magazines, and websites. There is one listed on this site as well. Sometimes parents focus on what a baby is (or is not) saying rather than considering all of the other prerequisite skills that must occur before those first words are spoken. Talking is only a part of the communication process. A baby must understand words, have a desire to be with people, and be able to initiate and respond to interaction before words become meaningful. For example, a baby has to recognize who Mama is and want to call her to come get him out of the crib before his babbles of mama mama begin to truly express meaning.

The following guidelines can serve as a red flag for parents who are wondering, “Is this a sign of speech delay in my toddler? Should I be worried?”

1. Difficulty making and maintaining eye contact with an adult by 6 months

2. No big smiles or other warm, joyful expressions during interaction with another person by 6 months

3. No back-and-forth sharing of sounds, smiles, or other facial expressions by 9 months.

4. No babbling by 12 months

5. No back-and-forth gestures, such as pointing, showing, reaching, or waving by 12 months

6. No consistent responding to their names by 12 months

7. No words by 16 months

8. No following simple and familiar directions by 18 months

9. No two-word meaningful phrases without imitating or repeating and says at least 50 words by 24 months

10. No back-and-forth conversational turn-taking by 30 months

11. Any loss of speech or babbling or social skills (like eye contact) at any age

The presence of any of these concerns warrants an immediate discussion with your pediatrician and insistence for a referral to an early intervention program and/or speech-language pathologist for a complete evaluation of your child’s communication skills.

Let me also add that babies who are doing well with social and language development exceed these milestones by leaps and bounds.These are very, very low thresholds for communicative skills. If your child is not meeting these basic guidelines, please don’t dismiss your feelings.There is in all likelihood a true developmental delay or disorder present.Seek professional help from your pediatrician, your local school system, or an early intervention agency.

If your child has accomplished these fundamental skills, but you’re still not sure that he’s where he should be, please know that there are many, many things you can do at home to improve your child’s ability to talk.This entire website is dedicated to educating parents with successful techniques to improve your child’s communication skills. When you learn and implement these new strategies at home, you will make a huge difference in your child’s ability to communicate. Remember, involved and loving parents are a baby’s first and best teachers. You can do this, and this website is here to help.

I recommend this speech therapy manual for late talkers to all my new families…

For my best help working with a young toddler when you first begin to worry is Teach Me To Play WITH You. It’s filled with easy, fun routines to do with your baby to help him begin to talk. When you see signs of speech delay in your toddler, you don’t have to worry! Take action and get going today.

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“I attended your course in St. Louis… I used the strategies you taught the very next week and the sessions went very well. I just needed to drop back some levels! Thank you!” Ellen, SLP

This is the kind of email I receive almost every day at teachmetotalk.com.

In this post I want to share with you why taking a step back can be the very thing you need to do in order to help a young child learn something new.

Believe me, I know firsthand how frustrating it is when a late talker you’re working with does not seem to be making any progress. After several weeks (or months!) of getting nowhere despite your best efforts, you probably begin to question why what you’re doing isn’t working. Sometimes, instead of questioning what we can do differently, human nature seems to dictate that we double-down and try even harder without changing much of anything. Or worse, we may be tempted to give up, thinking, “This is never going to work.”

Neither one of those approaches is successful.  There is one simple lesson I’ve learned over and over again in my practice as a pediatric speech-language pathologist and, if I’m being honest, even in my role as a mother:

When a child is not making progress, back up!

We have to constantly remind ourselves when we’re in this situation that the real reason a very young child isn’t making any gains is because the goal we’re trying to get him to reach is too difficult. What we’ve chosen to focus on is somewhere beyond where a child is currently capable of functioning.

In other words, the goal is too hard.

Period.

No more analysis is needed. I firmly believe that if a child could do what we’re working on, he would.

When you find yourself in this predicament, we’ve already established that continuing to do what you’ve been doing won’t likely produce different results. And we’ve already said that quitting isn’t an option, which leads us to our default plan:  back up!

What do I mean by “back up?”

Look at the skills that come just before the one that’s eluding the child, figure out what’s missing, and begin there.

If this doesn’t make much sense to you, let me stop and share an analogy I use with the families of children I see in my practice. When a parent seems confused that what I’m working on doesn’t seem to be the end goal, I explain it this way:

Learning to communicate is a lot like learning higher level math. You’d never expect a teenager to understand algebra unless she knew how to multiply and divide. Teachers would not begin to teach long division until a child had memorized their multiplication tables. Kids aren’t ready for multiplication until they’ve had lots of practice learning to add and subtract. We wouldn’t dare think of teaching a child addition and subtraction unless they could write numbers. Children don’t learn to write numbers until they can identify numbers and have learned to count.

See?

It’s a process.

Language development is a process too, but because it happens quickly and often without much effort in toddlers and young children with typically developing skills, we often forget just how sequential the process of learning to talk really is. We become anxious to jump to the end goal (“I just want him to talk!”) rather than realizing all of the things that must come first. Our intentions and our goals can become too big and unrealistic, particularly when a young child is obviously struggling.

To learn how to “back up,” we begin with what’s not happening and then walk it back (by looking at the continuum of developmental milestones in reverse) to the point where the first breakdown occurs. Then we go back a step, because that’s the starting point where the child is mostly likely to be successful.

Let’s look at a common example.  Let’s say that a mom expresses her desire for her child to be able to carry on a conversation with her but that’s not happening yet, as in, it’s not even close. How can we apply the “back up” principle in this example? Start with what your goal is and walk it back.

If you want a child to participate in conversations with you, start by analyzing what comes before adult-like conversation. Examples of what you would ask yourself are…

Can the child generate a full sentence on her own? Does she understand questions well enough to respond to you, or are her answers pretty limited? Does she already talk using a wide variety of shorter phrases? Is her vocabulary fairly large with enough “words in the bank” to pull from to generate longer sentences? When she attempts to speak in sentences, is she missing the “little words” only, or does she seem to not know what she wants to say? Does she understand the concept of turn-taking, meaning you do something and then I do something? Is her attention span long enough for her to stay with you beyond a sentence or two?

Can you see how all of those smaller steps lead to participating in the overall, “big picture” goal, which was conversation?

Can you also see how a child who is not doing the things I mentioned is not really ready for such a “big” goal?

This seems like common sense, something we should all understand how to do. However, many times when we’re working on something as important as treating a problem so big it’s warranted its own word – a specific diagnosis – we seem to forget that simpler is usually better.

I see this happen over and over in therapy and in my experience, it’s the main reason toddlers don’t make more consistent progress once therapy begins. Many times the problem isn’t that the therapy isn’t good or that parents aren’t committed or that anything else is going on. The problem is that we’ve jumped too far ahead of where a child is functioning developmentally and the chasm is too wide. We’re trying to cover too much ground at once. The child needs to master several preliminary goals first.

While the example I gave you before about speaking in conversations is pretty broad, you can take this same principle and apply it to every goal we target with toddlers who are having difficulty with speech-language development  – and really every other skill too!

The key is breaking down large goals (such as “I want him to tell me what he wants” or “I want him to understand what people say to him”) into smaller, achievable steps that should lead up to the overall skill.

As a parent, unless you’re an expert in child language development, this may be well beyond your ability to do alone. AND THAT’S OKAY! Just because you’re a mom or dad, you’re not supposed to be an expert in everything! Get yourself some help!

Hopefully, your child is already in therapy and you have a great resource readily available to you – your child’s therapist. Ask him or her about the concept of “backing up.” Say something like: “I think my excitement (or anxiety, or determination, or paralyzing fear – Whatever your emotion is, name it!) for the end result has clouded my judgment and I’m not realizing all of the little things that must come first before my child will be able to _____.”

In a perfect world, your child’s therapist will grab you in sheer relief and say, “That’s what I’m here for! I can help you with that! Here’s what we should do!” If that doesn’t happen, you may have caught the therapist a little off guard. Give them a little time to catch up to your new revelation and have the conversation again in a week or two when they have had some time to process what you’ve said and make adjustments.

If your late talker isn’t in speech therapy and you’re going it alone, for whatever reason, do your best to logically think through developmental milestones.  Then determine what a realistic goal would be so that you can direct your efforts toward working on what’s more likely to be successful.  My advice is to get yourself some credible resources…and use them!

An article like this can’t possibly provide the kind of information you need in order to do this. Every child, with his or her own set of unique strengths and weaknesses, will be a little different.  There’s no way that a single post, or an entire website about language development (even this one with hundreds of articles, podcasts, and videos!) or entire books will answer every one of your questions about your own child.  The only way that a professional can truly determine what interventions are right for your child and your situation is to meet with you and your child your child.  Still, educating yourself with books, DVDs, podcasts, and website posts is better than doing nothing. You’ll find a good place to start.

In closing, finding the correct starting point for working with a very young child sometimes feels like a moving target, so don’t get discouraged.  You will have to tweak and adjust until you find just the right step in the process that works for your child, but it is there waiting for you. I’ve listed some ideas for you at the bottom of this post to point you in the right direction…so you can back up!

Until next time –

Laura

————————————————————————————

Resources for helping you figure out how to back up…

“I’m teaching my toddler to talk, but I know I need more direct guidance. I want to back up, but I’m not sure how.” Get my book Building Verbal Imitation Skills in Toddlers to walk you through the steps for helping a child learn to imitate new words.

“I’ve been focused on helping my child learn to say words, but now I realize that he may not understand what many words mean. He doesn’t follow directions very well.” Try Teach Me To Talk: The Therapy Manual or Teach Me To Listen and Obey 1 & 2 so you can learn about receptive language and what you can do to help your child begin to make connections and follow verbal commands.

“I am frustrated with our lack of progress in speech therapy. We’ve been going for a while, but we don’t see changes yet.” You may be working on the wrong things! This usually means there’s something missing that you’ve not yet identified. The checklist in Let’s Talk About Talking will help you determine which of the 11 prelinguistic skills a child has mastered and which ones still need more work. The best part is that the activities and strategies are right there to help you move a child foward.

For SLPs…

If you’re new to early intervention or haven’t had the success you’d like, I have fantastic resources that you can use TODAY to help you achieve the results you want.

For help with first steps establishing interaction and engagement with toddlers who don’t participate or attend – Teach Me To Play WITH You

For a comprehensive list of every receptive and expressive milestone with strategies and ideas for how to target each goal – Teach Me To Talk: The Therapy Manual

For step-by-step instructions for helping a toddler become verbal – Building Verbal Imitation Skills in Toddlers

For specific help writing treatment plans and selecting goals for children with autism or characteristics – The Autism Workbook

For specific help writing treatment plans and selecting goals for nonverbal toddlers and preschoolers – Let’s Talk About Talking

For guidance with treating speech intelligiblity and articulation issues in toddlers and young preschoolers – FUNctional Phonology

The post Not moving forward? Try taking a step back! appeared first on teachmetotalk.com.

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Early Child Cognitive Development: Initial Findings in a Longitudinal Observational Study of Child Health

It’s still in preprint, but it’s making news.

Babies born during the pandemic have suffered a significant drop in verbal, motor, and overall cognitive development.

A scary drop.

As in from 100, an average standard score, to 78.

Wow.

Wow.

For those of you who don’t routinely interpret test scores, here’s the classic reference for IQ tests, although the numbers may differ slightly depending on which test is used:

• 130 and up: Very gifted

• 120 – 129: Gifted

• 111 – 119: Above-average intelligence

• 90 – 109: Average intelligence

• 80 – 89: Low-average intelligence

• 70 – 79: Borderline intelligence

• 69 and below: Extremely low intelligence

So… in real life language…

We’ve got a problem.

A gigantic worldwide problem.

Babies born during the pandemic ( that’s 2020 until… who knows?) are not learning (or walking or talking!) at the same pace as babies born before the pandemic.

The study is from Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University (for our readers around the world, Rhode Island a very small state in the Northeast US) as a part of a longitudinal, or ongoing, project to track child neurodevelopment beginning in 2011. Authors compared scores from the preceding decade (2011 – 2019) to babies born in 2020 and 2021 using The Mullen Scales of Early Learning, a well-known 5 domain developmental assessment that many therapists use and trust.

Scores were down across the board – in motor, cognitive, and verbal skills.

Guess who seems to be most affected?

Boys and kids in families with lower socioeconomic resources – not a surprise to those of us who see kids with learning differences.

Even in the absence of illness, environmental changes due to the pandemic are resulting in significant developmental delays. A year and a half of stay-home restrictions, school and educational/therapy program shut downs, masks, and social distancing, not to mention parental fears of illness and unemployment, have all taken a toll on everything – including how babies acquire new skills.

We should have known it was coming.

There have been very few opportunities for the kinds of experiences that drive early development- exploratory play outside, social interaction with new adults in new places, and playdates, birthday parties, and playgrounds with other kids.

I am hearing this at teachmetotalk.com too.

Initially during the early days of the pandemic, an occasional therapist would send me an email wondering about this very thing.

Now, I get several emails in a week that read something like this…

“I just went to see my grandchild this weekend and I am very worried. Although I have seen him often on FaceTime since he was born, I had no idea of how behind he is. He’s just turned 18 months old and I did not hear any words the entire time I was there. Mom and Dad are not concerned. What should I do?”

Or

“I’m an SLP and I am very worried about my neighbor’s baby who was born during the pandemic. She has rarely been outside their tiny apartment – not even to the store.”

Or

“I went in for a well-baby check today and my pediatrician said he would refer us for a speech eval, but he doesn’t think we can see someone for a few months because the waiting lists are so long. Should I be worried?”

As a therapist, I bet you’re hearing this too.

If not, you will!

I’m certainly not going to stop talking about it!

What are we going to do about this avalanche of toddlers and preschoolers with global delays coming our way?

We’re going to rise up and help!

SLPs and other EI professionals are uniquely qualified because we already understand babies and families and how little changes implemented consistently can make huge differences and pretty quickly too!

We have a TON of advice we can give families and I’ll start sharing those specifics soon – so you can share them too!

Until then…

The study is a pretty easy read – as far as research goes! – so here’s the link if you’d like to add it to your weekend to-do list.

Blessings to you…

Laura

The post COVID Babies appeared first on teachmetotalk.com.

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This information is from Let’s Talk About Talking, my most comprehensive resource for addressing all the foundational skills for talking. If you’re working with a child who is not communicating despite your best efforts, at least one of these 11 areas is disrupted and hasn’t been identified and addressed.

The good news is… I can help you with that!

In the therapy manual, you’ll determine what’s missing with simple checklists and descriptions and then find activities to help a child strengthen those skills.

What I can’t do in the therapy manual is provide specific toy pictures and links (since that kind of information can outdate so quickly!), but I can do that here, which is what I’m going to do!

But first, let me give you a description of the skill to help you decide if the child you’re working with needs help in this area.

Skill #1 – Reacts to Events in the Environment

This means that a child acknowledges incoming sensory information in the surrounding environment. In everyday language, this is how a child reacts to things he or she can see, hear, touch, hold, and manipulate.

Questions to ask yourself to determine if a child reacts to environmental events:

• Does she notice when things happen?
• Will he alert to noises?
• Does he explore his world by looking, listening, and touching things?
• Can she hold a toy?
• Does he try to manipulate an item beyond getting it in his mouth?

Responding to environmental events is the initial milestone we look for in all children. When a child can do these things, we know that at the most fundamental level, his little brain is working. His eyes, ears, hands, and body are receiving information to be processed and there’s a noticeable reaction.

A child’s internal drive to explore should be obvious and dominate most of his waking moments throughout childhood, but especially in the first three years of a child’s life. New discoveries create new neural pathways in the brain. Educational and medical experts refer to this as cognitive development.

When I explain cognitive development to families I’m working with, I say that cognitive skills include how a child thinks, learns, remembers, and pays attention. Therapists may add terms like “processing” and “planning.” Parents may think about these brain-based skills as IQ or “how smart a child is.”

Reacting to environmental events is the cornerstone for developing cognition. This skill comes first and sets the stage for all other skills a child acquires, including language development. A child who is not alert and who is unresponsive is not developmentally ready to learn to understand and use words. More realistic wording for that sentence is that a child who does not respond to incoming information is “not even close” to being developmentally ready to learn language.

If you’re a therapist, that’s not news to you. However, I’ve worked with a few families with children with severe neurological disabilities or rare genetic conditions who did not understand the impact that these significant diagnoses have on language development. Even though they knew to expect physical disabilities and other developmental lags, some parents (and grandparents) had not yet faced the possibility that their child would have difficulty learning to understand words and talk.

Of course, children with identified physical limitations and muscle tone differences will have difficulty with this milestone due to problems coordinating their body movements as they attempt to handle toys and explore their environments. Modifications will have to made to help a child learn to move and react.

Any young child who does not react to environmental events has a severe developmental delay, no matter how old they are, since responding emerges very early during infancy. When this milestone is absent, it may mean that a child cannot see or cannot hear. Each of these disabilities can significantly impact a child’s development. Even partial blindness or a mild hearing loss can limit a child’s ability to explore his surroundings. Chronic, unidentified ear infections can cause hearing loss and must be resolved before some children begin to respond consistently to any kind of auditory stimulation. If there’s no known etiology to explain this lack of awareness, a comprehensive medical work-up is warranted.

If your child needs to work on improving his ability to react or if you’d like more information to help you decide, get Let’s Talk About Talking.

If a child consistently reacts to events in the environment, you’re ready to move on to the next skill…

RECOMMENDED TOYS for activities in Let’s Talk About Talking

Toys a Child Can See: Unbreakable mirror, pictures of faces, books with black and white pictures, vinyl books, touch and feel books, soft dolls and stuffed animals, toys with light

Unbreakable mirror – so important for tummy time for babies and any other child in this first developmental phase who is not yet consistently responding to the environment

High Contrast Toys and Soft Books for visual stimulation

Touch and Feel Books

Soft Dolls (good for looking at faces!)

Visual Stim Toys – Light  toys that are easily activated

Toys a Child Can Hear: Toys that crinkle, squeak, rattle, ring, and play music, a rain stick, Mom and Dad’s recorded voices

A Rain Stick… Ideas in Let’s Talk About Talking

Toys for recording voices are fanastic too!

Toys a Child Can Taste: Teething toys and any other object that’s safe to mouth and chew

Toys a Child Can Touch and Feel: Textured blankets, taggie toys, touch and feel books, rattles, bendy balls, links, squeezable toys, soft dolls/stuffed animals, vibrating pillows

Taggy toys are fantastic fidgets toys for this phrase and beyond

Vibrating Pillows – instructions in Let’s Talk About Talking

Vibrating Ball

For ideas for using each of these toys to facilitate prelinguistic skill #1, check out Let’s Talk About Talking.

The post Prelinguistic Skill #1 – Reacts to Events in the Environment… Toy List appeared first on teachmetotalk.com.

The longer I do this job, the more I’ve come to appreciate just how hard it is for moms to rise to the occasion and deliver her best day after day, week after week for a child who may never make enough progress so that she can attend an IFSP or IEP meeting and not want to cry, or die, or both.

Parenting a child with developmental delays takes some guts. And commitment. And strength that mothers of children who are typically developing may never, ever know.

To all of those moms of toddlers with developmental challenges, I want to give you a big round of applause and tell you just how awesome I think you are this Mother’s Day. No one knows how hard it really is to live a day of your life unless they too have done it.

I’ve also come to the point, both personally and professionally, that I can look at the worst moments I’ve seen with families as another opportunity to learn how I can best help a child.

Even moms who are obviously struggling have done something right. Unless therapy services are provided by court order, that mom somehow found a way to get her child help. For that decision alone, she deserves a huge dose of respect. Our colleagues who work in public schools will tell us that there are kids who show up on the first day of  kindergarten with significant language delays who have never been referred for an eval or seen for one minute of therapy.

I used to purposefully remind myself of that any time I’ve been tempted to make even the slightest judgments about a mom’s choices.  Now it’s second nature for me to remember: no matter what else has gone wrong in her world, if she’s out there looking for help for her kid, she’s doing something right!

Beyond initial respect, what else can we do to support moms of toddlers with special needs?

Here’s a list I’ve come up with for professionals who work in early intervention. Our job is different from therapists who work with older children and adults. We’re the first very representation of our field, and we need to do things right from the start to help moms feel supported on what can be a very long road with a toddler with delays.

1. Answer her questions honestly.

A child may have been to many specialists before seeing you. For a multitude of reasons, pediatricians, geneticists, orthopedic docs and even neurologists who see a child with an involved history and multiple medical problems can neglect to tell parents that a child will not learn to talk on time. Don’t assume that a family knows what’s expected, even when there’s already a firm diagnosis in place.

You may be the very first professional a family sees beyond the pediatrician. It’s very likely you’ll be the only person who’s definitively confirming that things aren’t going well developmentally. Even when a mom has had a suspicion that her child is a late talker, you may be the first person to deliver the ‘official’ news.

No matter how many other people parents have seen or will see in the future, tell the truth. Give your honest opinion about what’s going on with a child with compassion and with the utmost sensitivity, always keeping in mind that you’re talking about someone’s baby.

This situation can be unsettling for some therapists, particularly when a child has significant delays.

Delivering this news will sometimes mean confirming the worst case scenario for a mom who’s already sick with worry. In grad school they didn’t tell you that part of your job title on some days is “Dream Killer.”

Being honest can make you very uncomfortable, but withholding information to spare your own uneasiness isn’t right.

Therapists in early intervention programs can sometimes feel that they are not in a position to offer an official diagnosis, yet they hold off on referring a child to another professional who could. Sometimes therapists themselves want to “wait and see.” That too, in my opinion, isn’t right. If a parent has questions you can’t answer, refer them to someone who can. It is our responsibility to help parents find answers to their questions, even when it’s painful for everyone involved.

There’s a bright side to being honest too…

Fortunately for those of us who are pediatric therapists, being honest also means that you get to share some pretty fantastic news:

Early intervention gives a child his very best shot at achieving his highest potential.

Early intervention works!

Neuroplasticity is a wonderful concept. By putting the right strategies in place with very young children, we can literally change their brains.

How cool is that?

Does that mean that all children we see for therapy will eventually function within normal limits? Certainly not, but we can usually tell parents with a high degree of confidence that getting services early will make a difference as opposed to no treatment at all.

2. Listen to a mom’s responses carefully.

As therapists we can ask the right questions, but we may miss very, very important information because we’re not really hearing a parent’s answers.

A mom’s responses can let you know that she doesn’t really understand the nature of her child’s issues. Don’t miss that opportunity to clarify and educate (and re-educate…). For most of us, it took a master’s degree to learn all that we know about child development. Years of experience have taught us what those classes didn’t. Moms don’t have this same knowledge base, so we need to share what we know as we ask and answer questions about her child.

A mom’s responses can also tell you that she doesn’t understand what you do and how your services can benefit her and her child. Take the time to explain exactly what her child is doing that differs from what you hope to see. Discuss your treatment plan and strategies every single session so that she sees what you see and knows what you want to accomplish during therapy.

If that differs from what mom sees and wants, you need to know! In this case, you’ll want to adjust your plan, her expectations, or both!

A mom’s responses can also tell you when she’s overwhelmed. If mom is telling you that a strategy doesn’t work, she didn’t have time to work with her child, or things are no better, listen to her! Figure out a way to make it easier for her to follow-through. Rarely does a mom who invests her time and energy into getting her child help not want to do her part too.

Occasionally a mom’s responses will tell you that she’s waiting on you to wave your “Magic Speech Therapy Wand” to “fix” what’s wrong, but even that illusion can be overturned with a gentle conversation. Thankfully, once a therapist becomes skilled at explaining therapy and gets a parent to buy into the treatment plan, that kind of unrealistic expectation becomes the exception rather than the rule.

3. For some moms “less is more.”

By this I don’t mean fewer visits or providers as some state early intervention programs have mandated.

I’m talking about the strategies and ideas we recommend for families during a visit.

In our zeal to help, we can overwhelm moms with too many recommendations and add to the sense that things are beyond their control.

As a therapist do you ever find yourself providing one great suggestion after another and are met with a deer in the headlights look? Do moms seem to shake their heads in agreement, but not follow through? Does a mom appear to be tuning you out when you speak to her?

When that’s the case, she’s telling you that she needs less, not more.

I’d rather a mom concentrate on a few, SIMPLE things that she can and will do with her child rather than giving her a whole list of things that will never get done.

Some moms can handle only one new idea at a time. I’ve finally learned this lesson and gauge my recommendations on what I’m seeing and hearing from a mom from visit to visit.

Less can be more for many moms and THAT’S OKAY.

4. Don’t just tell a mom how to help her child; show her!

In this age of the consultative model and the “No Toy Bag” rule in state early intervention programs, we’re forgetting a very important aspect of our jobs.

The mom you’re seeing doesn’t know how to do therapy with her kid!

She doesn’t have a degree in speech-language pathology, occupational therapy, or early childhood education. She doesn’t know what to do. Would you be there if she did???

A mom needs you to teach her how to work with her child.

Many of us don’t learn best from lecture or discussion alone. In fact, for some adults who are visual or hands-on learners, you’d might as well be the Charlie Brown teacher when you talk to them. All those parents hear you say is, “Wah wah wah wah.”

Parents need to SEE you do what you’re recommending. Then they probably need to think about it and watch some more. Finally, they’ll be ready to do it themselves with feedback to tweak what’s not going well.

Hands-off approaches are NOT what we’re trained to do as SLPs, OTs, and PTs in our educational programs. As a therapist, you’ll need to learn to defend why your direct intervention IS necessary to determine the best approaches for helping a child and his family. How do you know what works with a particular child unless you SEE it yourself?

Demonstrating and modeling treatment strategies with a child as the parent observes IS parent education. Don’t let anyone tell you that this is no longer needed and ineffective.

To prove my point, let me ask you this question: how did you learn to do therapy? Did you simply listen to a lecture and then proceed to the clinic to work with children, or were there observation hours involved first? Did you dive right in with clients after a few words of advice, or did your clinical supervisors watch you like a hawk and critique you until you got it right?

Exactly!

We listened to lectures, read, watched someone else do it first, and THEN we moved on to doing therapy ourselves.

That’s how every other adult learns to do therapy too.

The next time you’re in doubt, ask a child’s mother if she’d rather you tell her what to do or have you show her how to do it. I’ve never, ever met a mom who turns down the demonstration. You will never go wrong showing a parent exactly what to do with her child.

(If necessary for your program or agency, document that mom requested a visual model of the technique.)

5. Let a mom know that you’re there just as much for her as you are for her child.

This statement takes care of moms who don’t want to participate. By telling her that you’re there for her too, she becomes an important part of the treatment plan. You frequently ask for her comments, questions, and feedback throughout the visit. Her presence is welcomed in sessions, not mandated by the state or an agency policy.

The message of “we’re in this together” can be powerful.

While most of us are not social workers, psychologists, and most of us don’t really go to work looking to make new friends, some days, that’s what a mom needs more than anything. I’m all for maintaining boundaries and keeping things professional, but especially for those of us who do home visits in early intervention, we need to meet mom where she is and go from there.

This also reduces the possibility that moms feel “judged.”

Unless, of course, you’re doing just that. Many moms of children with special needs feel so much misplaced, unnecessary guilt over their child’s unavoidable situation that they can’t bear one more ounce of unreasonable pressure. Let go of any tendency to overtly or unconsciously blame parents for developmental issues, even if you do feel that there are things in a child’s environment that are less than optimal. Except for situations of severe abuse and neglect, almost every child on your caseload would likely have had a delay anyway, regardless of the kind of parenting he’s received. Period.

In case you’re thinking that these kinds of unfair criticisms don’t happen, how many times have you heard a therapist remark something like, “He gets away with everything at home. No wonder he’s the way he is.” Isn’t that a statement of judgment? Do we really want to go back to the time when we blamed a child’s mother for everything that goes wrong developmentally? If you’re in doubt, read the information on the causes of autism from the 1950’s and 1960’s. It’s scary!

When you do observe things that can be improved, give mom the information and assistance she needs to make the change and move on from there. Criticizing her week after week will probably only make things worse. Truth be told, she may think you’re not so great at your job either…

You’ve probably read this quote before, but it’s so applicable here:

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Making a mom feel heard, valued, and supported may be the best thing you ever do for a child on your caseload.

That’s important every day, but especially now!

If you haven’t told the moms of the kids you see “Happy Mother’s Day,” it’s not too late!

Start out your visits next week with those words. She may not have heard that greeting from anyone all weekend, and you may never know how much she desperately needs to hear it.

If you’re the mom of a toddler with developmental challenges, I want to tell you myself…

Happy Mother’s Day!

You’ve certainly earned it.

The post Supporting the Needs of Moms for Mother’s Day appeared first on teachmetotalk.com.

That’s the purpose of this post, to help you find a way to help your own late talker – or, if you’re a therapist like me, a whole caseload of toddlers with language delays!

Anytime you’re working on changing something, you need a plan! I’ve been a speech-language pathologist for over 28 years now, and early in my career, I recognized the need for a consistent way of designing my own treatment plans to make sure that I addressed every aspect of helping a child learn to communicate – especially those things that may not be as easy to identify as “he’s not saying any words.”

To keep myself on track, I developed a hierarchy or a plan for how to look at a child’s communication skills in a continuum knowing that everything a child learns is building a strong foundation for what comes next. I started sharing this hierarchy when I launched my website teachmetotalk.com in 2008 and began publishing my DVDs and therapy manuals. In 2010, I began teaching this hierarchy to therapists throughout the United States. (Now I just do that on YouTube!)

Today I want to briefly share that hierarchy with you and then show you how to apply this method or treatment plan using a specific activity.

Remember – what you’re doing, the specific activity, is not that important. You can use this method for ANY toy or everyday activity. The important thing is learning the 4 big areas you should be looking at and in what order to make the most impact for working with a toddler with language delays.

The four areas are:

Social & Interactive Skills

Receptive Language

Expressive Language

Speech Intelligibility

Let me briefly explain each area and tell you why it’s important for language development.

Social & interactive skills are the foundation for communicating. Every time we communicate, it involves at least 2 people. Actually, this 1 on 1 interaction is the reason language evolved in the first place. We don’t need to know how to talk to do many of the solitary things we do every day, but as soon as another person enters the picture, communication becomes necessary. The first piece of that is realizing another person is there and then learning to enjoy that interaction. Social engagement begins very early in a baby’s life – on day one! Over the first several weeks and months, a baby shows evidence that he likes being with other people and seeks out others for the purpose of interacting. Those skills continue to grow and develop over a child’s first year.

However, sometimes a baby who has been pretty social begins to withdraw. He or she begins to avoid interaction and tune other people out – especially people outside her own family. Or it may be more subtle – a child used to smile and giggle and be super engaged, but then it shifts a little. He becomes more interested in toys or screens than people. He or she doesn’t learn to consistently respond to her name or pay attention as people talk to her. She doesn’t look at things when you point to them. There’s scattered eye contact so that it may difficult to get them to look at you. They look like they’re always busy with something else or not listening as you talk to them.

Let’s contrast this with toddlers who have typically developing social skills. They do respond to their names. They watch you often as you talk to them. They seek out other people to help them and try to communicate with facial expressions and their own body movements, even before they can talk.

When a child is not naturally social and interactive, he’s at a real disadvantage for learning to communicate because that foundational piece is missing. If a child you’re working with or your own child doesn’t frequently connect with you and a variety of other people, then this is the area where you should begin your plan. You’ll work to help a child learn to like (or at least tolerate) interacting with others. Without this piece, communication skills will not move forward.

Receptive Language

The next big area for language development is receptive language or how a child understands the words he hears. Babies and toddlers must first learn to understand words before they use those words to talk and communicate.

The best and most practical way to judge a child’s receptive language skills are by looking at how well he follow directions during everyday routines such as “Go get your shoes,” “Bring me the cup,” or “Let’s go take a bath.” Toddlers with typically developing language skills are completing these kinds of routine requests by the time they are 15 to 18 months old.

For therapists, there should also be evidence of a child’s ability to follow commands during sessions. If mom says, “He understands everything,” but I can’t get him to do anything for me during therapy, there’s a problem! You’ll want to tease that out. Is a parent overestimating a child’s comprehension skills? Many times, parents attribute a child’s lack of compliance to behavioral or personality issues like “He’s stubborn” or “She’s lazy,” but most of the time, that’s not the case. Even the most strong-willed toddlers with normal receptive language skills follow many different requests during everyday routines at home, especially when there’s something in it for them!

Receptive language is heavily dependent upon a child’s cognition – or how he thinks, learns, plans, and remembers. Toddlers with cognitive delays will always difficulty learning language. You’ll know to expect those challenges and adapt your teaching strategies to meet a child’s needs in this area. Your goal here will be teaching a child to understand new words and new concepts, not say those words just yet.

If a child does not understand language well enough to consistently follow directions, you’ve found your first preliminary goal! Teach a child to understand more words first and to follow simple commands. Here’s why and it’s pretty obvious when you think about it…

Remember… toddlers must first understand words before they can use words to communicate.

It’s highly unproductive to spend time trying to teach a toddler to say new words when he doesn’t understand those words. Any child who is 18 months old and can’t follow simple directions during familiar daily routines will very likely be diagnosed with moderate receptive language delays. Children who are 2 and aren’t following simple directions in everyday routines are at risk for significant receptive language delays. You’ll have to address this area first before you teach them to say more words.

Expressive Language

The 3rd area for language development is expressive language or how a child uses words – or even gestures or pictures – to communicate his own needs and his own ideas with others. Parents and therapists think about expressive language as the “talking” piece.

Before kids can talk, they need to be able to vocalize or use their little voices purposefully. Sometimes toddlers with speech disorders aren’t able to control their vocalizations. Everything is still very reflexive – like crying or even noises with sneezing or coughing. This has to become volitional – where a child understands that he can use his voice and imitate the sound you’ve made.

When babies first begin to babble and vocalize, the sounds are pretty random. Late talkers will continue to do that too. They may even jabber and use lots of jargon. The problem is that they haven’t learned to link meaning with those sounds yet. They don’t understand the direct imitation piece – meaning you say a word and then they say a word.

Verbal imitation is a big part of learning how to talk. It’s often a piece that’s missing too. But we can’t begin teaching a child to imitate with words – it comes at a much earlier developmental level. We first teach a child to imitate using actions with objects and with body movements. In typically developing toddlers, this process evolves over several months in the last half of the first year. It can take much longer in toddlers with developmental delays.

If a child you’re working with isn’t using very many words (but is socially engaged and does follow directions), then look at his or her verbal imitation skills. That could be your starting point. If that’s not practical or it seems like more of a stretch for a child, consider introducing strategies like sign language or picture systems or if this is likely to be a long-term issue, another kind of AAC device – a speech generating device or an app that speaks for the child when he selects the correct picture message.

Speech Intelligibility

The last big area is speech intelligibility or how well you can understand a child as he talks. Of course being understood is a big part of communicating! Speech-language pathologists think about this area as articulation – or getting the right sounds in the right places. Remember too that ALL toddlers can be difficult to understand when you’re an unfamiliar listener. Even parents may struggle to understand everything a child tries to say. The norms are pretty generous in this area. Parents may understand only about half of what a 24 month old says and closer to 75% by 2 ½ and then 90% by age 3.

A child’s speech may be hard to understand for several reasons. Sometimes they’re just using jargon or jabbering which means there are only a few true words included. Those kids understand that they should talk – they just don’t have the vocabulary yet to say what they want to say. This could be an expressive problem, but it’s usually an indicator of a receptive language problem after the second birthday.

Kids may have specific sound errors which prevent them from being understood. It may go beyond just not being able to pronounce a certain sound yet. There are often error patterns – a child speaks only using vowels or he may be able to include a few consonant sounds at the beginning or some words and never the ending sounds. Or he may shorten words and omit entire syllables. Or there may be no pattern in his errors at all. His speech sound errors are inconsistent – he may say a word fine one time and then never again or every time he tries to say a word, it sounds a little different. There are several diagnoses associated with poor speech intelligibility. But we wouldn’t address this as the main focus for a child with delayed language until the other areas are firmly established.

Each of these 4 areas is an important part of language development.

When we don’t address a toddler’s area of weakness, it could be the reason why progress in learning to talk is much slower – even when a child is already in therapy.

I hope this post helped you understand as parents what may be going on with your child. For therapists… this is how I explain each area of language development to parents.

Need some help choosing resources? Here’s a great post with that information.

The post I Need A Plan! appeared first on teachmetotalk.com.

Playing peek-a-boo is a time-honored ritual between babies and parents. Many times parents of young children with developmental delays miss out on this fun because they’re not sure how to modify the game for a toddler with special needs. 

A mom may have instigated peek-a-boo a few times to try to quiet her fussy baby, but when her child didn’t seem to understand or respond, she assumed he didn’t like it and then she stopped trying. No one likes to do something when they think they’re not good at it…  

Helping a young child learn to play WITH an adult is a huge first step in helping him learn how to communicate. ALL communication begins with social interaction. Learning to play social games, like peek-a-boo, is the easiest and earliest phase of social interaction and engagement as a child begins to pay attention to and respond to others. Once a child learns to enjoy being with another person, he forms the foundation necessary to help him understand and use language.

Many professionals have written extensively about using relationships and emotional connections as the underlying theory in the treatment of children with social communication delays. This focus is exactly where “speech therapy” should begin for many toddlers.

In my practice as a speech-language pathologist who specializes in infants and toddlers, I spend as much time working with parents as I do children!

As early interventionists, we should use early therapy sessions to teach parents HOW to play these games with their own children. We do this first by modeling how to play the game with the child demonstrating the strategies we use to help a child learn to participate. We invite parents to play along too, so that they are comfortable. We show them how to read a child’s cues and adapt the game to meet the child where he or she is developmentally building on each tiny success. Finally, we coach parents to reinforce a child’s attempts so that they can continue to play together long after the therapy session is over.

Let me give you an example…

I teach parents to approach a game like peek-a-boo with several different steps, or goals, we want a child to achieve. In sessions, I don’t leave the way a parent plays to chance. I tell them specifically how we’re going to set up the game so that a child can learn to do one small part and then gradually add another small part until he or she is participating in (and loving!) an entire game.

This is how the game peek-a-boo is written in my therapy manual Teach Me to Play WITH You and it’s EXACTLY how I teach parents to play when I’m treating their child. Again, I provide detailed instructions so there are no lingering doubts about what goals we’re addressing, or even how we play.

PEEK-A-BOO (excerpt from Teach Me To Play WITH You)

How to Play:

Cover your child’s head with a blanket and then ask, Where’s _____?? Ask several times and build anticipation with your voice.

Jerk the blanket off with a big gesture and say, “Boo!” Specifically say, “Boo,” rather than “Peek-a-boo,” “Pee-pie,” or even, “There she is,” because “Boo” is a word your toddler is more likely to be able to say.

Child’s Goals:

Watch his responses. We want him to connect with you by looking at you, smiling, and laughing when you remove the blanket. If he doesn’t laugh, be more fun! Smile bigger! Squeal! Increase your own level of energy, animation, and excitement. Try a tickle or jiggle to get him going.

After a while, we want her to move or giggle in anticipation that you are going to take the blanket off her head.

Next we want him to try to remove the blanket by himself. Help him if he gets stuck.

After a few days playing this game, we want her to try to cover her own head when you give her the blanket to begin the game.

You can help him learn to initiate the game by saying, “Where’s _____?” when his head is even partially covered with a blanket at other times during the day.

An indication that he’s really “learned” the game comes when he initiates the game with you by reaching out on his own to get a blanket and then covering and uncovering himself. Place a blanket in front of him and ask, “Play boo?” If he doesn’t pick it up, point to the blanket so that he learns to get the blanket by himself to begin the game.

Toddlers learn through repetition. Young children with difficulty paying attention need even more repetition. Play this game over and over throughout the day with several repetitions each time so that he “learns” the game.

Saying “Boo” might not come right away, but if she’s doing all of the other parts, we know she’s understanding the routine, with or without the word. Keep trying to elicit this word by saying, “Boo” many times during play to help her learn to imitate you. Once you’ve played this game many times for several days, pause just before you say, “Boo!” Smile and look expectantly at your child as if to indicate that it’s her turn to say “Boo!” Since you’ve played this game many, many times now and she knows what comes next, your child may surprise you and say it on her own! 

As with all of our play routines, eventually your child should play this game several times in a row before moving on to another game or toy with you during your 1:1 play time.

———————————————————————————

When we’ve established this game during sessions and parents report success with the basic routine at home, I make sure to give them great ideas for how to use this game in other ways. Therapists call this process “carry over” and it’s very important that we address carry over with each new skill and activity. So for a game like Peek-a-boo, here’s how carry over looks:

Ways to Expand the Game:

1. Hide under the blanket, and let your child take the blanket off your head. Say, “Where’s Mommy?” If your child doesn’t try to uncover you, uncover yourself. Better yet, have someone else help your child take the blanket off your head to teach him that he can do this part of the game.

2. Get a new person to play either role by being the person who hides or calls the child as he hides.

3. Play with another obstacle. Hide behind a pillow, a door, behind the shower curtain during bath, or behind the couch when your child is playing nearby. Call your child as you did before saying, “Where’s ____?” Or ask your child, “Where’s Mommy?” Then pop out and say, “Boo!”

4. When your child masters this game and can cover and uncover her own head easily, introduce the next activity, “Where Oh Where.”

By teaching a parent why and how to play these kinds of games, we exponentially increase therapy time for a child, and that’s when real progress occurs!

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If you need more help using and teaching early and easy social routines, I’ve written the instructions for most of the games I routinely use in speech therapy sessions in my therapy manual Teach Me To Play WITH You. For more information about this book, click here.

The post How to Play Peek-a-boo! Advice for Parents with Toddlers with Developmental Delays appeared first on teachmetotalk.com.

When I was talking about Christmas traditions with our youngest who has now left me and gone off to college, she fondly reminded me of making reindeer food on the night before Christmas.

Mind you, when we made reindeer food all those years, we did not have Pinterest to provide all of those creative recipes and printable poems.

When I, Laura Mize, humble working full-time mother of 3 introduced reindeer food, we used whatever my kids liked.

Some years it was oats plus glitter.

Some years it was oats plus playdoh creations.

Some years it was oats plus ribbon plus sparkles plus M & Ms.

Some years it was just oats.

Do you get my drift???

It was whatever this tired momma had left on Christmas Eve that seemed even the least bit magical to my 3 sweet babies.

So…

even if you feel like you can’t possibly pull off the perfect Mommy-blogger Pinterest version of reindeer food, you can still make it memorable for your own kids.

I didn’t even have a cute poem when I did it. I just talked lots about Santa’s reindeer and how they must be hungry and how we should leave food for them too since we’re leaving Santa cookies and then lots of “yum yum yum” as we poured and stirred and threw the food out on our front steps and whatever grass was left.

You can do it too!

It doesn’t have to be perfect…

It just has to be fun!

So raid your pantry or craft closet or junk drawer or whatever you have left today…

You can do it Momma!!!

Make it FUN!!

Happy Christmas Eve!

Laura

The post My Favorite Christmas Eve Tradition appeared first on teachmetotalk.com.

We have some exciting news!

Today Johnny and I released our original DVD Teach Me To Talk on YouTube for FREE.

Our hope is that parents and professionals around the world will be able to use this  practical information for working with infants and toddlers with language delays/disorders, particularly during this challenging season when most of our daily lives have been dramatically altered by this worldwide pandemic.

As a parent, I know you’re concerned that your child is not receiving therapy.

As a therapist, I know you’re concerned that “your children” are not receiving therapy.

While we can’t do anything about that, Johnny and I want to provide tools to help you as you work with your own child at home or continue to support families, whether that be through telehealth visits or sharing information via email, texts, and your own pages and websites.

If you haven’t seen the DVD, let me give you some details so that you can use and recommend it to families today.

The DVD teaches six simple strategies for training parents/caregivers of toddlers with language delays. Each strategy is introduced with “family-friendly” explanations and then demonstrated with multiple examples of sessions with toddlers during play-based activities. Basically, you’re sitting in on therapy.

In the absence of working directly with a child and his parents, watching a visual model of a new strategy can be a powerful teaching technique. I would know — because this is how I’ve taught thousands of parents (and therapists!) to do it since teachmetotalk.com’s launch 12 years ago!

Over the next several days, I’ll highlight each strategy for you and share how I use this information with families. For now, here’s a time listing of each section for reference:

Introduction: 0 – 2 Minutes

Playfulness: 2 – 17 Minutes

Sign Language: 17 – 31 Minutes

Modeling: 31 – 49 Minutes

Choices: 49 – 60 Minutes

Withholding: 60 – 72 Minutes

Expansion: 72 – 89 Minutes

Conclusion: 89 – 90 Minutes

Therapists – get 1.5 hours of CE credit for this course for only $5. The process is so easy! Watch the video. Pay the $5 CE fee. Complete the forms online and then receive your certificate via email. ASHA credit will be available for SLPs. See this link for details. 

Please, please, please feel free to share and post the link to the YouTube video with parents and families – it’s why we do the work we do! Here it is for easy copying:

Teach Me To Talk the DVD from teachmetotalk.com Laura Mize

Blessings to you today and everyday!

Laura

teachmetotalk.com

**All product sales fund our free, mission-based speech therapy clinic in rural central Kentucky for underserved infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Thank you!

Working heartily today… Col. 3:23

The post FREE Teach Me To Talk the DVD on YouTube appeared first on teachmetotalk.com.

Thank you.

I so hope that you find what you’re looking for! My work is full of “how to’s” and very practical advice for parents and therapists who work with young children with language delays.

But right now the words I’m thinking of sharing have more to do with being a person, a mom, a wife, and just like you – one of God’s children placed on this earth during this specific moment in time – rather than with being a speech-language pathologist.

Last week, I remembered a verse that you’ve probably seen as you scrolled through Instagram or Pinterest…

Perhaps you were created for a time such as this. 

Have you thought about that?

It is not an accident that you’re here right now and in charge of whatever it is that you’re responsible for in this season of your life.

So if you’re feeling overwhelmed, confused, or downright scared, stop those thoughts.

Speak truth to yourself.

You were made for this. 

You were.

No matter what the fear says –  on TV, on the internet, or in your own mind – you are here right now on purpose.

You are chosen.

So go do whatever it is that you are supposed to be doing.

If you’re a mom, take care of your children.

If you’re a wife, take care of your husband.

If you’re a daughter, a sister, a friend, a neighbor, (or a therapist forced into telehealth!) whatever you are, right now, today, just do what you’re supposed to do.

While you’re doing it, be strong.

Make that shift, even if you don’t feel strong.

The biggest part of being strong (and wise!) is moving away from your own feelings and into action.

That’s my hope and prayer for you – that you’ll make the shift.

Very intentionally and purposefully.

Shift to strong.

Do what you’re supposed to be doing.

Laura

(The verse is Esther 4:14 if you want to read it for yourself!)

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During this time of uncertainty when so many parents are asking what it is that they should be doing for their children, tell them this:

BE PRESENT.

It’s always your best strategy.

I love it!

I wish I had said it first!

But now I can say it to you and I know that’s why I heard it.

No matter what we’re trying to do for our kids (or teach parents to do for their kids!), being present, being fully invested in whatever it is that you’re doing with a child, is your starting point.

Don’t rush.

Don’t think about the ten other things you still need to do.

Stay in the moment.

When you’re giving a child a bath, enjoy the bath too. Feel the warm water on your skin. Smell the baby shampoo. Splash. Play. Linger for a while, even a long while, before moving on.

When you’re changing another diaper, take the time to sing a song. Count little toes. Blow on that sweet baby belly. Give one last hug before your little one runs away.

When you’re tempted to yell about picking up the same toys over and over again, make it a game, not a chore. “I see a car. Who can get it first?”  

That extra effort – to be fully present and engaged and pleasant – may turn out to be one of your child’s favorite memories.

Weeks, or months, or years from now, that thought may be a vivid reminder of how very much you love them.

It may even come to be one of your favorite memories too.

I can teach you lots of other strategies to work on a child’s language skills during those times, but it always starts with being “in.”

You’ll miss it if you’re not careful!

Be present.

Laura

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It’s not particularly profound, but it can be a game-changer for any session, with any kid, on any day.

Here it is…

No matter what you’re working on,

No matter how old or young a child is,

No matter what’s going “wrong” with the kid, the day, or YOU….

GO FOR JOY!

Make it your #1 priority in sessions.

Especially when nothing seems to be going right.

We all have those days, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve worked 2 weeks or 20 years, there are sessions, and entire days, and unfortunately, entire weeks, when nothing seems to flow.

Everyone is cranky. Or sick. Or cranky because we’re sick!

Families come late. Families don’t come at all.

It’s too cold. It’s too hot.

You’ve planned what you think is going to be a flawless session, and your little friend is not loving it like you thought.

There are tears. There are fears.

And my favorite crisis… blow out diapers that hault everything!

But in the middle of all that, I try to remind myself to stop, breathe, and…

Go… For… Joy!

Getting everyone, (Including me! Especially me!) emotionally regulated – which is a fancy way of saying back on track and happy – is the very best outcome we could pursue.

As I said, it’s my go-to strategy when everything is going badly.

What works even better is heading off the bad by focusing on things that could result in joy when you sense trouble is brewing. The meltdown is coming.

Going for joy looks different for every kid, and figuring that out is what makes this job so interesting!

I’ll be giving you some ideas for what works for me next week in a later post, but until then, try it.

Go for joy.

Focus on making the child happy and sharing those moments.

You don’t have to totally forego your goals or your plan to do it.

We’ll talk about that later too.

I hope you saw the picture for this post. It’s an example of some of the joy I was blessed with today…

This is my sweet little friend Mey, who may be one of the happiest children I’ve ever treated…

Every Tuesday and Thursday, she RUNS into our office with a big smile and her excited proclamation of “1… 3… Go!”

She’s a handful… in constant motion.

(But when she’s moving, she’s usually talking!)

She rarely gets upset… until it’s time to sing the “Bye bye Song” which she’s not fond of because it means that it’s over. She hides behind the mom of another little friend and displays her best pouty face for about 30 seconds before she recovers and is ready to go some more.

I want to be like that. Don’t you?

Joy.

Go find yourself some too!

Laura

Psalm 5:11

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The 11 prelinguistic skills that predict when a child will begin to talk.

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