- 9-12 Months: Shakes head "no" or pushes an undesired object away. My son does this with food (he typically will like any toy you give him). When he starts to push the food away (which is ok as long as he does it without spilling it everywhere), then I know he's trying to communicate that he has preferences and I have chosen incorrectly. He knows the gesture, but I verbally give him the language by saying something like, "you don't want this? Tell mommy, 'I don't want it.' " He's not talking yet, but I'm teaching him the words he could use in this instance. Remember, even if they aren't talking, they are little sponges and are learning all the time.
- 12-18 Months: Requests an object by pointing/gesturing and vocalizing a word approximation. These will be words that you begin to understand, but other people may not know. The best thing to do when little Suzy is pointing at a cup and saying, "di" for drink, then say, "Oh, you want a DRINK?" (DRINK is capitalized to show auditory highlighting - see blog post from June 14) "Ok, let's get a DRINK. You must be THIRSTY. Say, 'I want a drink please.' " You won't necessarily expect your child to repeat the entire sentence, but you are clarifying and expanding on your child's utterance.
- 18-24 Months: Says, "what's that?" to elicit attention. Your child is now telling you all the things he/she doesn't know the name for, but wants to learn. Think of it as adding words to his/her personal dictionary!!! A great thing to do is to tell your child the name of the object, what it does, what it looks like, what it feels like, etc. Tell your child as much information as possible while you are both engaged with the same object (and you have time to do so). The more you tell him/her, the more learning that occurs.
- 2-3 Years: Begins to add descriptive details. You can see that all the describing you've been doing over the past 2-3 years is now starting to come out in your child's speech. Keep up the good work! You could play the describing game. Have you and your child take turns describing an object until you can figure out what it is. Example: (describer): "I see something that is round, blue, it bounces, I play with it outside" (guesser): "it must be the ball that I see in your toy box!"
- 3-4 Years: Requests permission. Your child has always just gone and done things and you have had to correct and redirect. Well, now little Joey can ASK you if he can do something!!! If he doesn't ask and starts to move a stool to get something from a high shelf, then simply stop him and say, "Joey, I need you to ask for permission. That means that you ask me if you can get something or ask me to help you get something if it is out of reach. Ask me now and I'll help you get the crayons."
- 5-6 Years: Uses indirect requests. Now your child has begun to get "sneaky." He/she might say, "I really love going to the beach on days like this." They understand the idea of asking for something without using a question. This is a great way to start a conversation with your child. You could respond by saying, "You know, I love going to the beach too. What is your favorite part?" If going to the beach is out of the question, then sit down with a calendar and say, "Today is not good for going to the beach because we have soccer practice at 3 and that wouldn't give us a lot of time to enjoy the sand and water. Let's look at what we have going on and see which day would be best." Then you can help your child plan what you will need for the beach (bathing suit, sunblock, towels, blanket for sitting, umbrella for shade, lunches, snacks, drink, etc). By him/her generating the list of items and planning out what time you would need to leave for the beach, leave to come home, how much time you would have, etc are all EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING SKILLS!!!! These are higher order thinking skills that are very important. I'll be blogging about EF skills soon!
Pragmatics are the social rules that we follow as a society. It is the functional use of our language in everyday life. As you may know, children and adults on the Autism spectrum have difficulty in this area of language. Here are a few milestones to watch for as your kids develop. Along with the milestones, I'll give you some ideas on how to expand on this language. Remember that WE are our children's best model of language and WE are not only their parents, but their TEACHERS!!!
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All of my middle school kids (from two middle schools) have loved this game!! It's simple, but fun! The best part for you is that all you have to do is print it off and paste it in a file folder. You will need to collect two dice and game pieces for each child (you can use coins, colored chips from another game, or actual game pieces from another game).
I just used it as a motivator to get the kids to work. They would each have to do some work before taking a turn. Enjoy!!! Game Board with directions It can also be a great way to work on counting (the dots on the dice) and number recognition (on the game board). I was introduced to Little Stories this past week. It's a great website specifically FOR PARENTS!! The creator, Kim, describes the site as a, "community of information and support."
In a short video, she explains the "fill the page theory" that the entire site is based on. It's a really neat to site and also has a facebook page!! You can search for "little stories" on facebook to find the fb page and stay connected there. Her, "fill the page theory" emphasizes that kids need to have multiple experiences with the same word. They need to know that balls are not just one kind, but come in many sizes, colors, have many uses, are found in many areas, etc. What a great name for a concept that is so important! Treating voice disorders can be challenging because the patient has to "buy into" the changes that he/she has to make to their everyday life. I was treating a drill sergeant for vocal nodules. She yelled all the time, drank 3 monster drinks (full of caffeine) a day, and smoked. She understood that those things were causing her to have vocal nodules and was causing her to lose her voice. However, she couldn't make the leap to change her lifestyle. Therefore, she stopped coming... and I assume she still has vocal nodules.
Treating kids can be even harder. You are asking them not to: scream on the playground, yell while playing, yell to get someone's attention when they are in the other room, drink caffeine, eat snacks with caffeine, etc. To a kid, it's almost like you're asking them to give up their livelihood! Well, a good way to get them to understand that their voice can be delicate is to ask to go into a classroom and target all the kids at once (since we all know they yell on the playground). Kids like visuals and so showing them how our vocal chords work by using common objects can help. 1. Vocal Folds (VFs). For those of you who are not speech therapists, let me explain how your VFs work. They are essentially two parallel pieces of tissue that come together and push apart in a wave like motion. Here is a quick video on youtube if you would like to watch it. To show the kids how our VFs work, blow up a balloon. Let out a little bit of air and let the end of the balloon vibrate just a little bit. Let them put their hands on their throats and quietly say their name (but not in a whisper). They should be able to feel their vibrations in their own throat. Now push out the air of the balloon as hard as you can. It will make a farting noise, which they will probably think is hilarious. However, they can also see that the "vfs" (or the end of the balloon) is now being abused. That's what it's like when they are yelling on the playground. 2. Vocal Nodules. I usually explain vocal nodules as calluses for your vfs. Have the students hold up their two pointer fingers. Show them the motion the vfs should make during phonation (talking). Let them mimic that motion. Now, ask them what would happen if you were to rub too hard or bang your fingers together over and over and over for days and years on end. They would probably hurt, be damaged, get calluses, be bruised, swell up, etc. Is it as easy to use your fingers for everyday tasks if they are any of the aforementioned? No! Explain that when you yell, the same things can happen to your vfs: nodules (calluses), swelling, hurt, etc. 3. Caffeine. Why is caffeine bad for your vfs? Caffeine takes moisture from your body - including your vfs. Your vfs need to be hydrated to make sure they are working well. Ask the kids what happens when a hinge is dry? It squeaks!! What do you do for it? Put on WD40 (which is like water for us). To show what caffeine does, pour water in a glass. You can ask them what it is (water) and ask if they drink water. Tell them that the glass is like their body and the water is what they have consumed. Now get a big sponge (preferably the large round sponges that are very thick) and place it in the cup and in the water. Ask the students what is happening. The sponge is acting like the caffeine - it is soaking up all the water. 4. Non-caffeinated snacks. Now talk about which snacks/drinks have caffeine and which snacks do not. They will probably know that soda has caffeine, but you can show them non-caffeinated soda!! They may not know about tea or coffee yet. They also may not know that CHOCOLATE has caffeine! Give them a sweet snack that is not caffeinated so that they can see their world won't be only fruits and veggies for snacks from now on. :o) I've also included a worksheet you can bring in to the classroom (or use in therapy). It is under the "therapists" tab in the "voice" section. When children are learning, we want to use as many sense as possible. That's why I always advocate that each lesson strive to use all four letters: TVAK (Tactile, Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic). See my blog post from August 23 to read all about TVAK. When I was teaching the oral preschool classroom, I was always striving to get TVAK into every lesson. Each week we focused on a different letter. The kids would learn words that started with that letter, the sound it made, how to write it, etc. One of their favorite activities during circle time were my "sandpaper letters", which weren't always made from sandpaper. This was a great way to get "tactile" into a simple lesson of reviewing which letter we were learning about that week. I must thank Mrs. Gonzalez, my deaf education professor at TCU, for this one! How do you make them? As you can see by my picture, I didn't always use sandpaper. I experimented with other materials, but tried to make sure that if I didn't use sandpaper, the material I did use started with the letter I we were doing. That's why the "C" is made from Cotton!!! If you have access to dye cuts, then you can cut the letters from the dye cuts. If not, I would draw the letter backwards on the back of the sandpaper, cut it out and glue it onto cardstock. Voila! How do you use them? First you can let the kids feel the letters and talk about what it feels like - scratchy, soft, bumpy, etc. Then have each child say the letter name and the sound (make sure you are always teaching both). Then the kids would trace the letter with their index fingers (or index and middle fingers) the proper way. What do I mean by the proper way? I mean the way you would write the letter. It was amazing to see how the kids improved drastically over the course of a week in writing the letter simply by using these "sandpaper" letters each day!
You can use this activity with so many different kids! You can always expose pre-talkers to the different textures and talk about the textures. You could use it with early language kids to start them learning about what letters words begin with, their sounds, and how to write letters. You could also use this with elementary school kids who are struggling with writing skills. |
AuthorHilary is a speech-language pathologist who has a bachelor's in deaf education. She is a Christian, an Army wife, and a mother of two. Archives
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