Why ‘Prosody’ Matters in Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)

ByLondon Speech and Feeding
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Prosody refers to the ‘music’ of speech — the rhythm, pitch, stress, and volume that convey meaning and emotion beyond the literal words themselves. Think about a monotone statement like ‘Really?’ compared to one with a rising inflection, expressing genuine curiosity.

When I work with children on producing speech sound sequences, we focus on mastering individual sounds and then putting them together into target words. A crucial element that can significantly impact a child’s speech production is ‘prosody’.

In CAS, where the difficulty lies in planning and executing the motor movements for speech, prosody can be a powerful tool for producing clearer words and phrases.

Here’s why working on prosody is an essential tool in CAS speech therapy:

1.  It aids Motor Learning:

Apraxia of Speech means that the planning and execution of speech movements are impaired. When we use exaggerated intonation or stress patterns while modelling words, we are providing additional prosodic variation and, therefore, additional auditory cues. These cues often help my student to carry out the correct motor movements for a word or syllable sequence.

For instance, I might say ‘ball’ with a high-pitched emphasis on the ‘b’ sound. This auditory cue might be more effective in guiding the child’s tongue placement than simply repeating the word without variation.

In this little video clip I get my student to say the word ‘snuggle’ (since we were working on that particular sound sequence: snuggle, snout, snore and sneeze) with a high voice and then a lower voice ‘like a bear’ — again it provides that extra auditory cue, but, in addition, the fun aspect also helps to take away the intense focus on a tricky movement pattern.

By now the new pathways have been laid through repeated practice and now automaticity takes over and without too much effort my student can suddenly produce a motor pattern. It’s magical when it happens and gives me such a thrill.

2. It makes speech more engaging and natural sounding:

Children with CAS often sound robotic or flat due to challenges with prosodic elements. By incorporating variations in pitch, volume, and rhythm during therapy, we can help achieve a more natural flow of speech

3. It makes it easier to express our emotions:

Children with CAS often struggle to express themselves emotionally; partly through the difficulty of producing clear words — period, but also in addition due to the difficulties or absence of musicality and rhythm in their speech.

Therefore, it is so important to incorporate activities focused on practising different emotions with varied intonation patterns. This can really empower our students to put emotions into their words.

Good words to practise are fun words like ‘Wow!’ or ‘Yeiih’ or power words and phrases like ‘No!’ or ‘Gimme that’ etc.

Making Therapy Fun and Engaging:

Speech therapy for CAS doesn’t have to be all drills and exercises (though to be fair sometimes we can’t quite get round to making each and every word huge fun though we try…).

I aim to make all my sessions fun and have intrinsic rewards built into the speech practice where possible.

Home practice tips:

Therapy shouldn’t exist in a bubble. Working on prosody during sessions is crucial, but it’s equally important to integrate these skills into everyday interactions. Parents and caregivers can model appropriate prosody during playtime, story time, or even simple conversations. This consistent reinforcement helps our children to generalise their newfound skills and use them naturally in their daily lives.

  • Sing songs and rhymes: Songs naturally incorporate variations in pitch and rhythm. Singing familiar songs and creating silly rhymes can be a delightful way to practise prosody.
  • Use puppets and toys: Assign different voices and personalities to puppets or toys. This encourages children to experiment with pitch and volume to differentiate characters.
  • Read aloud with enthusiasm: Model expressive reading, varying your voice for different characters and emphasising key words. This makes reading time engaging and helps children understand the power of prosody.

Please feel free to contact me if your child has speech sound difficulties. It is my passion. I love supporting children with apraxia.

Sonja McGeachie

Early Intervention Speech and Language Therapist

Feeding and Dysphagia (Swallowing) Specialist The London Speech and Feeding Practice

The London Speech and Feeding Practice

Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.

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    Your child’s communication journey

    ByLondon Speech and Feeding

    Understanding our neurodiversity-affirming, child-led approach

    Welcome to a different kind of therapy!

    Your child’s communication journey

    The start of a new year often brings fresh hope, and sometimes fresh worries, for parents supporting their child’s communication. I am always genuinely excited to begin a new journey with children and their families, and I know that, for many parents, this kind of therapy may look very different from what they were expecting.

    Parents (and children!) are often surprised to discover that our sessions are playful, joyful, and intentionally low-pressure. You won’t see demands for eye contact, sitting still, or being told to ‘do it this way’ or ‘put the red square there’. Instead, you’ll see your child being met exactly where they are.

    For families who have previously experienced more adult-led or behaviour-based approaches including Applied Behaviour Therapy, this difference can feel unfamiliar at first. Because of that, I want to take a moment to prepare you for what child-led, neurodiversity-affirming therapy looks like, so you can feel confident, comfortable, and reassured from day one.

    Why doesn’t child-led therapy look like ‘traditional’ therapy?

    Many people picture speech and language therapy as sitting at a table, using flashcards, or practising words through repetition. While those approaches can work well for some children, they are often not effective or appropriate for many neurodivergent children—including children with autistic profiles, ADHD, or demand-sensitive nervous systems.

    Our approach is grounded in a simple and powerful truth:

    Children learn best when they feel safe, motivated, and emotionally connected.

    When a child’s nervous system feels calm and secure, learning becomes possible. When a child feels pressured or controlled, communication often shuts down, even if they can speak.

    🎯 Our purpose: Communication through connection

    Our goal is not simply to help your child say more words. Our goals go deeper and are built on strong foundations:

    • Trust and regulation: We focus on building a trusting relationship where your child feels safe, understood, and emotionally regulated. A calm nervous system is the starting point for all communication.
    • Motivation: We follow your child’s intrinsic motivation, the things they naturally enjoy to make communication meaningful, joyful, and purposeful.
    • Spontaneous communication: We create opportunities for your child to communicate because they want to, not because they are asked or instructed to.

    🧸 What to expect in a session

    Our sessions are intentionally child-led and often look very much like play.

    FeatureWhat it looks likeWhy we do this
    Minimal toysWe usually offer just 3–4 carefully chosen activities (such as bubbles, blocks, or sensory play).Less is more. Fewer choices reduce overwhelm and help children focus on what genuinely interests them.
    Child choosesYour child decides what to play with and how to engage.This immediately establishes us as a safe, non-demanding partner and increases motivation.
    The therapist’s roleWe join your child’s play, observing closely and responding naturally.We model language, share attention, and reflect your child’s experiences in a way that feels natural and supportive.
    No pressure or demandsThere are no ‘must-do’ tasks. If your child wants to spin, crash, line up toys, or repeat an activity, we follow.Reducing demands lowers anxiety and supports communication, particularly for children with demand-sensitive profiles.

    Is this really effective?

    It’s completely natural to wonder, ‘Are they just playing?’ The answer is yes, and very intentionally so.

    Our sessions are guided by nearly 30 years of speech and language therapy experience, alongside clear, achievable goals tailored to each individual child. Play is a child’s natural language and their most powerful learning tool.

    Within play, we are constantly creating opportunities to:

    • Build joint attention (sharing focus and interest)
    • Model language at the right level
    • Encourage back-and-forth communication
    • Develop a deep, authentic connection

    If your child has struggled to engage or communicate in more structured or demand-heavy settings, this child-led approach is often the key to unlocking their potential.

    💛 What this might look like at home

    You may notice that when pressure is reduced:

    • Your child begins communicating more during everyday routines
    • Language emerges through play, movement, or shared enjoyment
    • Communication feels more natural and less forced

    Small moments could be a shared smile, a look, a sound, a gesture. All matter. These are the building blocks of meaningful communication.

    📚 Resources for parents

    If you’d like to explore these ideas further, you may find the following helpful:

    I look forward to meeting you and your child. Please bring any questions, uncertainties, or curiosities to our first session, there is no such thing as a silly question. This is a journey we take together. Contact me via my contact form.

    Sonja McGeachie

    Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist

    Owner of The London Speech and Feeding Practice.

    Health Professions Council registered
    Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists Member
    Member of ASLTIP

    Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.

    3
  • · ·

    Stage 2 NLA

    ByLondon Speech and Feeding
    Image by Freepik

    Last time we asked: is our child ready tp move to Stage 2 NLA (Natural Language Acquisition stage 2) and we looked at how we can know. Now we know: he/she is ready, they are mixing and matching those scripts quite liberally! Hurrah!

    So for example we hear phrases like:

    • ‘let’s go’+ ‘downstairs’
    • ‘it’s’ + ‘downstairs’
    • ‘I see it’ + ‘downstairs‘
    • ‘I want to’ + ‘shoes downstairs’ (I want to put my shoes on downstairs)

    To recap, it’s important to listen out to a variety of contexts because if we only hear the single version of a gestalt —this is so great, hurrah!— but that’s not yet Stage 2.

    What we can now do on a daily basis to help and support at this time:

    1. We need to offer more ‘mix and match’ phrases to help our child establish this new way of communicating.

    Good phrases:

    • It’s … raining / cooking / eating / washing / brushing
    • That’s … great / cool / amazing / wow / so good
    • Let’s … see / look / go / run / chase
    • How’bout … some food / playing / I’ll chase / sleeping / we read a book
    • I see a … bird / large car / fire engine
    • I wanna … have a biscuit / have a book / have a snuggle
    • We’re … going out / going home / going in the car / going upstairs

    Here in my video clip of train play I use:

    • Let’s go
    • It’s going up the hill
    • It’s coming down
    • Ooops it falls!
    • It’s stopping
    • Let’s put on another parcel
    • Ready steady go
    • Off we go
    • It’s come off!
    • Let’s fix it
    • I can do it
    • I don’t need help

    You can offer these gestalts either with an AAC as you can see me do in the video clip or you can just verbally offer these.

    2. Watch out for Pronoun confusion or reversal:

    Gestalt kids repeat gestalts, so we don’t want to create ‘pronoun reversal’.

    Instead model from a:

    • first person perspective: ‘I’ / ‘Our’ / ‘Us’
    • joint perspective: ‘We’ / ‘Let’s’ or a
    • neutral perspective: ‘It’

    You can turn almost any sentence into a good language model once you get used to it. And you can avoid ‘you’ and ‘your’ at the same time!

    So instead of saying, ‘Do you want to go to the park?’

    You could say:

    • We wanna go to the park?
    • Let’s go out?
    • Shall we go out / to the park?

    3. Start providing ‘variation’ in your language modelling:

    Instead of just modelling something one way, start thinking about offering a pattern in a couple of other ways, in a couple of different situations, then several ways in several different situations.

    Example: once you hear your child saying: ‘it’s raining’ and you know it’s a mitigation, because you don’t often say ‘it’s raining’, or haven’t said it in a while and you know your child says other ‘it’s’ phrases.

    Repeat: ‘it’s raining!’

    Then: ‘it’s’ + ‘raining hard’ / ‘it’s wet out there’ / ‘It’s’ + ‘raining lot’s’.

    Then later think of other combinations for ‘it’s’ + ‘something’:

    • (rice) ‘It’s’ + ‘cooking’
    • (water/tap) ‘It’s’ + ‘running’
    • (radio) ‘It’s’ + ‘singing
    • (dog) ‘It’s’ + ‘peeing’ / ‘it’s’ + ‘running’ / ‘it’s’ + ‘jumping’

    In my train video clip:

    • Let’s go
    • It’s going
    • Let’s make it go
    • Ready steady go
    • Oops its gone

    4. Use natural intonation that shows you really mean what you’re saying.

    You can be animated or try for musical if your child prefers that / doesn’t mind you singing —they might not like it if their hearing is pitch perfect and your singing is off key…—

    • ‘I’m’ + ‘trying to find you!’ (animated, goofy face)
    • ‘I’m’ +’ getting tired!’ (exaggerated stretch and yawn)
    • ‘I’m’ + ‘catching up with you!’ (animated goofy)
    • ‘I’m’ + ‘gonna get you!’ (animated goofy)
    • ‘I’m’ + ‘sad right now’ (exaggerated face and tone of voice)

    5. USE SILENCE!

    Important, I might not have said this before but we need to hold back sometimes (hard I know) and not constantly offer models. Let our child sit in a bit of silence with us there just observing and waiting for their own offers. This is a very important point. Silence is golden sometimes. Try it out. I am not talking about the silence that comes with a person scrolling on their phone though, we do need to be present and receptive.

    You will see this works wonders!

    Do get in touch if you would like some in-person or on-line 1:1 support with this. It can be overwhelming to figure it all out alone.

    You can also check my friend’s lovely handmade jewelry on her website.

    Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.

    1
  • · ·

    The Hanen Program® – The beauty of the ‘4 S’

    ByLondon Speech and Feeding
    Image by freepik

    One of my favourite pieces of advice I give to parents is the ‘4 S’, a strategy coined by the Hanen Program® which I teach, particularly the ‘More than Words’ programme which is designed for and aimed at parents of children with Social Communication Difficulties or Autism. It is honestly one of those golden nuggets that I use myself in my practice and I highly recommend it to all my parents. There is something about terms like the ‘4 S’ that is easy to recall and therefore use.

    Introduction

    The ‘4 S’ is a strategy that helps to clarify the words we use with our children so that they can notice us, hear us and understand what we are saying.

    Research shows that we use on average 120-200 words per minute during everyday conversation. That’s a lot! And our children who are still learning to communicate are often bombarded with endless speech coming at them all day long. If we take into account that many of our students are Gestalt Language Processors, we can see that picking out relevant chunks of what we are saying is not at all easy, and this contributes to our children’s delays.

    So let’s look at the ‘4 S’

    1. The first one is SAY LESS

    This means we should use shorter, simpler sentences with good grammar, for example, something like: ‘let’s get ready, time to put our shoes on’ instead of what we might be saying: ‘come on then darling, let’s put your shoes on we need to get going it’s dark outside’ or similar.

    Good grammar helps to give clues about what words mean and how they are used in sentences. So, instead of ‘shoes on’ say ‘let’s put our shoes on’.

    2. The second one is STRESS

    I hear you think ‘I am stressed!‘. – NO! here it means ‘highlight’. We use our voice to highlight the important words in our sentence or phrase. For example, when you say ‘this banana is so yummy’ you can stress the word ‘yummy’ by saying it a bit louder and you can make a gesture, like rubbing your tummy as you say it.

    3. The third one is GO SLOW

    This means to speak a bit slower than you normally would and add pauses. By slowing down the pace of our speaking we give our child time to think and understand what we are saying. When we allow for pauses after we have spoken, we are inviting our child to say something in response.

    4. The last one is SHOW

    Always remember to show actions, gestures, objects, and point to pictures while speaking to help support your child’s understanding. We can show our child what words mean by pointing to things or holding up objects whilst describing or talking about them.

    At this point I would also like to recommend the use of Core Boards, and particularly Electronic AAC devices, such as LAMP Words for Life or PODD. I have written about this in other blogs but can always be persuaded to say a bit more on the matter… 😊 It is such a big help to have an AAC talker available for both the child and the adult so we can find words and pictures to help support the words we are saying.

    For example, today when reading a book like The Hungry Caterpillar (so good!) I used my LAMP AAC talker to make comments as we were looking at the pages together with my student. Example: ‘Look! He is eating more cake he is very hungry’ using my AAC talker I was able to supplement my speech and at the same time I was inviting my minimally speaking child to press a button or two and reply with ‘cake!’ which they would not have said with their mouth otherwise.

    5. It does say ‘4 S’ but really it should be ‘5’ except the fifth is not an ‘S’

    The fifth is REPEAT.

    Repeat words and phrases often throughout the day. When learning a language we all need to hear words and phrases several times and in different situations before we can understand, remember, and then eventually use them. Our children are ‘new language learners’ and so we can apply the same principles that we would when learning a new foreign language ourselves.

    Any questions or need help with supporting your little one’s language please contact me via my contact form, or you could also check out www.hanen.org for advice and lots of inspiration.

    Sonja McGeachie

    Early Intervention Speech and Language Therapist

    Feeding and Dysphagia (Swallowing) Specialist The London Speech and Feeding Practice

    The London Speech and Feeding Practice

    Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.

    1
  • · · ·

    The joy of container play: Exploring play development and understanding of how things work

    ByLondon Speech and Feeding
    The joy of container play
    Designed by Freepik

    Have you heard the term ‘Container play’? I use this very often with children in my sessions as it is so versatile and an enjoyable activity that can be done in parallel with a child or together. Container play is a powerful tool for fostering development in young children, especially those with developmental delays. This seemingly mundane activity provides a rich environment for sensory exploration, motor skill development, and cognitive growth.

    What is container play?

    Container play involves children interacting with various containers—boxes, buckets, bowls, cups, various bags, etc.—and filling, emptying, and transferring objects within and between them. Objects can include literally anything: small beads, bead chains, table tennis balls, wooden pegs, dinosaurs or any other little person toy, blocks of varying sizes, sand, water, or any other safe material. Larger containers obviously take larger items: socks, stuffed animals, bigger balls, bigger blocks etc really the choices are endless.

    Benefits for children with developmental delays:

    Sensory exploration:

    • Touch: Children explore different textures and temperatures of containers and objects.
    • Sight: They observe how objects look inside and outside the containers, how light reflects off them, and how colours change.
    • Sound: They listen to the sounds of objects clinking, rattling, and splashing.
    • Proprioception: Filling and emptying containers helps develop body awareness and spatial awareness.

    For neurodivergent children who might have sensory regulation difficulties, consider the following adaptions to accommodate your child’s sensory needs:

    • Over-stimulation: For children who are easily overstimulated, start with simple setups using a limited number of containers and objects. Gradually increase the complexity as they tolerate it.
    • Under-stimulation: For children who seek sensory input, provide a variety of textures and materials, such as sand, water, slime, or beans.
    • Temperature: Offer a variety of temperature options. Some children may enjoy warm water or cool sand.
    • Lighting: Adjust the lighting to create a calming or stimulating environment.
    • Focus on one sense at a time: Initially, focus on one sensory aspect, such as the feel of sand or the sound of water.
    • Weighted containers: Use heavy containers filled with rice or beans to provide deep pressure input.
    • Fidget toys: Incorporate fidget toys into the activity to provide sensory input and help with self-regulation.
    • Tactile exploration: Encourage exploration of different textures using objects with varying surfaces.

    Fine motor skill development:

    • Hand-eye coordination: Scooping, pouring, and transferring objects require precise hand-eye coordination.
    • Pincer grasp: Picking up small objects helps develop fine motor skills like the pincer grasp.
    • Strength and dexterity: Manipulating containers and objects strengthens hand muscles and improves dexterity. Opening and closing containers can be a huge area of interest; how does the top screw back on, or off?

    Cognitive development:

    • Cause and effect: Children learn that their actions (e.g., pouring water or sand) have consequences (e.g., the water spills).
    • Spatial awareness: They develop an understanding of concepts like inside, outside, full, empty, and over/under; also how big is the vessel and how much goes in before it’s full or spills over. How small is the vessel opening and what do I need to do to get the beads into the container.
    • Problem-solving: Children learn to solve problems, such as how to get an object out of a narrow container or how to transfer water without spilling.

    Social and emotional development:

    • Communication: Container play can encourage communication as children interact with others, sharing toys and commenting on their actions. Asking for help to open and close a container is often a great opportunity to practise ‘help me’ or ‘open it’
    • Turn-taking: Sharing containers and materials helps children learn to take turns and cooperate.
    • Sensory regulation: For children with sensory sensitivities, container play can be a calming and self-regulating activity.

    Tips for engaging children in container play:

    • Create a safe and inviting environment. A shower curtain on the floor makes things easier for tidy up afterwards. And it allows for spillages.
    • Provide a variety of containers: Use different sizes, shapes, and materials. Use containers that are visually interesting and pleasing, perhaps a festive biscuit tin, or a tin that looks like train engine. Use see-through containers at first which make the filling and emptying more obvious. This is important for children who have no previous experience with this type of play and need to ‘warm up’ to it. Once a child loves and is used to container play you can go wild with all types of containers.
    • Offer a variety of objects: Include balls, blocks, sand, water, and other age-appropriate materials.
    • Join in the fun! Start off the process, show your child what the joy of the activity is for yourself, how fun it is to fill and empty containers, provide enough containers for your child to start playing alongside you, and comment on their actions.
    • Follow your child’s lead: Allow them to explore and experiment at their own pace.
    • Adapt activities: Adjust the level of challenge based on your child’s abilities and interests.

    Container play is a simple yet powerful tool that can support the overall development of young children, especially those with developmental delays. By providing a rich and engaging sensory experience, container play can help children build essential skills in motor, cognitive, social, and emotional domains.

    If you have any questions or would like to have more in-depths demonstration of this or other play styles for your child please contact me.

    I look forward to hearing from you.

    Sonja McGeachie

    Early Intervention Speech and Language Therapist

    Feeding and Dysphagia (Swallowing) Specialist The London Speech and Feeding Practice

    The London Speech and Feeding Practice

    Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.

    1
  • · ·

    LAMP Words for Life: A revolutionary AAC system

    ByLondon Speech and Feeding

    Introduction

    When working with non-speaking or minimally speaking children the LAMP Words for Life AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) system is my absolute go-to every time. For me it stands out as a revolutionary system that has transformed the lives of many of my non-speaking students. LAMP Words for Life is a ROBUST, comprehensive language-based AAC system and it is designed to help any user to express their thoughts, feelings, and needs effectively, thereby achieving maximal independence in their daily life. A winner!

    There is a whole host of AAC apps and systems out there and each has their own advantages and benefits for sure. I have tried a good number of other systems. I do also like certain features of other AAC systems for sure. For example GRID: I love the versatility of GRID and the ease of editing the system is fantastic.

    Why I think it works so well

    However, strangely I always return to LAMP when push comes to shove. I have thought very carefully about it and so here are my thoughts on why this is and why it works so well:

    1. Intuitive interface: LAMP Words for Life features are for me really user-friendly and it is easy to navigate and understand (this is very important for non-techy people). I think it makes sense and it is accessible to users of all ages and abilities. Yes the pictures are a little bit different to other symbol systems we use, especially here in the UK to be sure, and this is one of the reasons why it is good to have a variety of systems available, so that we can cater for students who are used to other symbols or do very well with specific symbol core boards. I have learned though that the pictures are not that important when using LAMP because the entire system is based on MOTOR PLANNING. And once one knows the motor plan to find a picture it is in our brain and we do not look at the picture any more. So, the motor plan to find a word is much more important when using LAMP than worrying about what the picture looks like.
    2. Comprehensive vocabulary: The system offers a vast vocabulary of words and phrases, covering a wide range of topics and contexts. This enables users to express themselves effectively on a variety of subjects. That said, almost every time I use LAMP there is a little word I need and it’s not on there. But that’s not a problem: for example, I was looking for ‘sunglasses’ the other day. Sure, there is ‘sun’ and ‘glasses’ but that would be two separate motor plans and for my student that would be too many for now, so it was very easy to quickly add the new word ‘sunglasses’ under ‘accessories’ or ‘beach wear’ — I added it within less than one minute. Likewise, there are a ton of words which cater for the US market, and I tend to change them to fit the UK vocabulary like ‘nappy’ for ‘diaper’. Or I delete them entirely if I feel my child will never need to use a certain word like ‘conference’ or ‘nun’. PS: should they get to a point of using the system as an adult independently then these words can surely be added again, or if my student ever moves to the US then the words can be changed back to US terms again without any problem.
    3. Grammar support: LAMP provides built-in grammar support, helping users construct grammatically correct sentences. This can be particularly beneficial for individuals with language processing difficulties. But what I love about the way LAMP is organised here is that, in contrast with other systems I have used, it does not PREDICT what you want to say, it lets the user decide and find the right grammatical structure. I appreciate this because, just like I hate my phone or email offering predictive text or offer corrections to my words, I really do not get the systems that offer automatically a grammar change which mostly I don’t want. Where that is the case, I am often confused and hindered in finding the correct wording. I love the simplicity of LAMP and at the same the complexity that can be achieved gradually with practice. LAMP is fully designed to enable a user to build up not only vocabulary but a full language system. On a course recently I was able to hear adult LAMP users speaking to the audience in full and quick grammatically well-rounded sentences on a host of topics.
    4. Customisation: LAMP can be customised to meet the individual needs of each user. This includes options for adjusting the vocabulary, layout, and accessibility features. It is not as easy to edit as GRID I will say and that can cause me a little bit of frustration at times, but on balance I still vastly prefer the system as a whole. It can also be customised quite well for Gestalt Language Processors. It takes a little bit of practice and thinking about how best to do this but I have found a way that works well which I demonstrate in the short video clip.
    5. Community support: LAMP Words for Life has a thriving community of users on Facebook and this is so valuable and inspiring. Therapists and families of LAMP users alike share experiences, provide resources, and offer encouragement. This can be a valuable source of support for both users and their families.
    6. Comprehensive support: LAMP Words for Life offers quick and thorough support services, including training, resources, and ongoing assistance. This is invaluable and reassuring for both users and caregivers.
    7. Research-based: The development of LAMP Words for Life is based on extensive research and evidence-based practices. This ensures that the system is grounded in sound scientific principles.

    Conclusion

    To conclude LAMP Words for Life is a powerful AAC which provides us with a means of effective communication, language development, and social interaction. Whether you are a parent of a non-speaking child or a speech therapist looking for innovative AAC solutions, LAMP Words for Life is worth exploring.

    Example on how to use AAC at story time

    Feel free to contact me if you need help with your child.

    Sonja McGeachie

    Early Intervention Speech and Language Therapist

    Feeding and Dysphagia (Swallowing) Specialist The London Speech and Feeding Practice

    The London Speech and Feeding Practice

    Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.

    1
  • · ·

    Explore how to improve communication skills for a Gestalt Language Processor

    ByLondon Speech and Feeding

    Let’s break it down into steps to make these complicated words easier to understand. Once you have a deeper understanding, you will then be able to support your child or young person develop their communication skills in the best way as a Gestalt Language Processor. Remember not every child will be a Gestalt Language Processor; if your child uses echolalia and/or has a diagnosis of autism then your child’s way of processing language is most likely different to the classic way children typically learn language.

    Let’s start with understanding what each of these words “Gestalt Language Processors” mean.

    Gestalt: “the way a thing has been placed or put together”

    Language: “a system of human communication”

    Processors: “responds to and processes basic instruction”

    So, let’s put those meanings together. “Gestalt Language Processors are children who process early language in strings of sounds or chunks.” They tend not to process single words.

    It is important to understand this way of processing communication because between 75-90% of children with Autistic Spectrum Conditions process language in this way (Blanc, 2012). We know that it’s important for young people to have their voice heard and to be able to express themselves. So, it’s vital that they move from echolalia to self-generated communication to be able to do this. This means that our children’s communication partners play a vital role in supporting their child’s language. We can support our children by modelling phrases until the child has learnt the process themselves.

    Speech Therpaist in London

    Let’s explore an example together

    X (who is a gestalt language processor) and his family love to feed the ducks in their spare time; this is an activity that takes place regularly. Let’s look at how you, as the adults, could support X in his communication. Look at the phrases that are used. They are meaningful to the activity with repetition used throughout.

    Top tip: You could think of an activity you and your child or young person take part in on a regular basis and brainstorm some key phrases that you could use.

    Need a boost in confidence to support your child’s gestalt language processing?

    Contact me.

    Find a speech and language therapist for your child in London. Are you concerned about your child’s speech, feeding or communication skills and don’t know where to turn? Please contact me and we can discuss how I can help you or visit my services page.

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