There’s often this idea that autistic children have extensive vocabulary and knowledge, but this is not always the case. In fact, 30% of autistic children have language regression.
Goldberg (2003) suggested that speech and language regression refers to the decline in a young child’s speech and communication abilities. We know that regression in speech, language and communication skills often occur before the age of two years. 25% of autistic children develop language at word level between 12 and 18 months of age before losing this language they have learned. As you’re probably aware this regression in communication is a diagnostic indicator of Autism.
We understand that you want your child to progress, and you struggle to watch as their frustration grows as you feel helpless. I want to provide you with tips so that you can feel empowered to support your autistic child and reduce the impact their communication skills have on the family.
Reduce frustration by providing visuals to support their communication
Praise the ability to communicate. Focus on what they say not how they say it. E.g., good listening, nice talking.
Provide your child with choices (using real objects to represent your choices). E.g., do you want an apple or banana?
Your child must be motivated and have a purpose to communicate. So, ensure you use highly motivating objects for conversations
Provide them with opportunities to communicate. We need to teach children that if they want something, there’s a process that you need to have the opportunity to ask for it. We find that if parents understand what their child wants (without them asking), the object is given to them, and so there’s no reason for your child to ask.
There’s this idea that we need to teach children eye contact. This is not always the case. Your child is unique, we do not want to take their unique skills away.
Model words which are concrete. E.g., words such as ‘finished’, ‘more’. You can model these several times within the day. You can use a gesture to make the word more visual (see the images below). We know that autistic children are often visual learners.
Remember that if your child has speech, language and communication regression, it doesn’t mean your child will stay static.
It’s vital that you seek support from a qualified Speech and Language Therapist. We can tell you at what point in the communication development that your child is at. And we can support you through the process. We can provide you with an individualised plan specifically for your child to ensure you maximise their potential.
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.
You (as parents) often describe yourselves as being under constant pressure and stress when looking after your children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). You may find going out to do the simplest of tasks a challenge. And you will try to avoid social situations out of fear and anxiety. One of the most important factors to you is having like-minded people who understand your position as a parent with a young person with additional needs. Let’s look at some of the challenges you face and how I can support you and your family.
1. Challenging behaviour and going out to the shops
When your child displays challenging behaviour and won’t go into a shop without buying a toy that they insist on having, it can be tough on your family. You see people around you staring as you try to manage the situation. They do not understand the pressures you face, or that the simplest of tasks are a huge challenge.
I can support you by giving strategies to use when out and about. I know that using visuals is important for your child. They may not understand or take in language when they are in a heightened state of anxiety or feeling overwhelmed. You could print pictures of the places you’re going to and put them on an easily accessible chain. Then you could use that chain when out and about at the shops. You may want to introduce a visual timetable at home. That way your child or young person understands where they are going. This may lessen their anxiety and subsequent behaviour.
2. Your child is not able to communicate their needs to an unfamiliar communication partner
When your child has difficulty communicating to an unfamiliar person it can be hard to manage. You feel yourself explaining your situation repeatedly. I can provide your child with individualised strategies or communication aids which support your child to communicate with both familiar and unfamiliar communication partners. We’ll work together to find which communication methods work in different situations and how your child will use these to help their independence.
3. Being overwhelmed
Your child or young person may easily be overwhelmed which may contribute to behaviour changes. I’ll work with your family to understand what the behaviour means, looking at what happened before and what happened afterwards. We’ll not only look at the behaviour but at the environment as well. This can inform how you can support your child or young person in the future, to reduce sensory stimuli (if needed) and for them to feel emotionally regulated.
4. People avoid engaging with you
One of the hardest things as a parent is for others to avoid you. You see them crossing the street because they don’t know what to say to you. All you want is them to accept you, to maintain your identity as a person and not as a SEND parent. I can support you emotionally. I can give you advice on local support networks where you can find other parents in a similar situation.
We know the stresses that being a parent with a child with SEND comes with. Please know I am always here to support you, to find solutions so that when you’re next out and about. Your experience will be a little easier and you’ll feel less isolated.
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.
It feels like the Christmas festivities start earlier and earlier every year. This makes it harder for your child with communication difficulties to process what is happening. Whilst you can’t do anything about the events that happen around your child, you can start to put into practice strategies which may support them and allow them to regulate their emotions.
Six ways to prepare your child for the Christmas festivities
Explore six ideas here:
1. Print off or buy a blank calendar to use at home
You can start to write in activities out of the usual routine and add a picture to allow your child to understand what it’s about. You can also use it as a countdown to Christmas Day to try to prevent ‘how long’ questions.
2. Make use of visual timetables
These are useful in everyday settings and activities but also when change occurs.
3. Be aware of any non-uniform days
Days like ‘Christmas Jumper Day’ can make your child feel uncomfortable and may affect their behaviour. By giving yourself time, you can have conversations with your child’s teacher to find a more suitable alternative. For example, they can wear a Christmas t-shirt that they find more comfortable.
4. Think about what will benefit your child
Do they like being surrounded by people or do they prefer a quiet space on a 1:1 basis? Christmas activities often involve lots of group work in school (e.g., rehearsing for carol concerts or plays). They might prefer to pre-record their part in the Christmas play or create pieces of art which can be used. At home, they may prefer one guest visiting at a time, rather than all at once.
5. Explore how your child is feeling
It’s important to find out how your young person is feeling and how these impact on the activities of that day. It might be that your child doesn’t like surprises and the intensity of opening gifts is too much for them. They may prefer gifts to be left unwrapped and given throughout the day, rather than all at once.
6. Consider sensory needs
Ensure your young person has everything they need to meet their sensory needs. This can be e.g. noise cancelling headphones, fidget toys, or comforting items. These will particularly be helpful with routines changing, often with little notice. If at home, you may wish to not put lights on the Christmas tree if visual stimuli become too much.
Remember clear communication between home, school and other family members is vital during this time. By having clear communication and expectations, your young person will feel more secure. And you can have a Christmas that is right for you and your family.
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.
Communication skills are critical in all areas of communication throughout childhood and into adulthood. They are needed for understanding, narrating, making predictions and to develop social skills, for example in understanding everyday language or talking in the classroom or socialising with peers. Children with communication needs can experience low self-esteem, potential behavioural difficulties, lower school attendance and attainment.
Communication skills have a strong impact on literacy. Let’s look at some of the facts:
50% of children with language delays also have challenges with literacy (Burns et al, 1999).
73% of poor readers in year three had a history of difficulties with phonemic awareness (the ability to hear, identify and manipulate sounds) or spoken language in pre-school (Catts et al, 1999).
The effect of expressive language on spelling and reading
The ability to read is very much dependent on competent language skills. Furthermore, a limited vocabulary will also have an impact on literacy skills. The more we know about a word, the easier it is to retrieve, recall, understand and use. So, if a young person has a poorer vocabulary, it’s likely that they will not have the same decoding skills as a peer with a richer set of vocabulary. By decoding we mean the ability to apply knowledge of letter-sound relationships including pronunciation of words. Decoding is a vital skill used in literacy.
Whilst learning to read is a key skill, it’s important to remember that a solid foundation is needed for success. We need to ensure that no steps are missed, otherwise there will be gaps in knowledge.
As your child moves further through the education system, they will be “reading to learn”. This is where young people with poorer language skills may show literacy difficulties (for example, reading comprehensions become more challenging, and their expressive language skills impact on their written abilities).
When should I seek advice or support?
Always seek the advice from a qualified professional such as a Speech and Language Therapist. You need appropriate advice for the age and stage of your child’s development and early intervention is of course key to success. It is never too late to ask for advice. The earlier you seek support, the better the outcome for your child in all areas (language, literacy, and emotional well-being).
Have you still got unanswered questions? Contact me here and we can have a look at your child’s phonemic awareness, auditory processing skills, verbal understanding and assess his/her ability and likelihood of reading and literacy struggles. If we find that your child has dyslexia I can refer on to a specialist colleague who can help you further.
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.
As professionals, when diagnosing young children with an Autistic Spectrum Condition, it is vital we work as a multi-disciplinary team, so you will likely see many professionals. This may include Educational Psychologist, Dietician, General Practitioner, Occupational Therapist, Paediatrician, Special Educational Needs Coordinator, Speech and Language Therapist and Social worker. Once the evidence is collated, then a diagnosis may be made.
You may be wondering what are some of the early signs of social communication difficulties? Whilst no autistic child is the same and we know Autism is very much a very wide spectrum of abilities and needs there are some autistic spectrum characteristics we do typically see in the early years of childhood. You may wish to think about these areas or presentations to help you prepare for the Speech and Language Therapy appointment.
Twelve questions
Does your child respond to their name?
Are they fixated with watching their hands?
Do they have sensory processing difficulties such as bright lights, food textures, or loud noises?
Are they meeting their milestones or are they delayed?
Do they flap their arms or legs when excited?
Have you noticed any rocking back and forth?
Do they blink excessively or display any facial tics?
Do they play with a particular sort of toy e.g. spinning toys?
Have you noticed that they lack interest in toys?
Have they regressed in their language? Perhaps you’ve noticed they are not using words that they have previously learnt.
Do they use gestures to communicate their needs? How do they communicate their wants and needs?
Do they appear to be in their own world?
You are not alone
These questions are by no means exhaustive and there are many more factors to consider. But it is important to trust your instincts as you are the expert on your child and know your child the best. Regardless of whether you see all of the above points or none, do not hesitate to have an assessment if you are concerned as, even if it turns out to be nothing to worry about, there is always at least one or two great pieces of advice I can offer you on the way and you will leave feeling hopeful and empowered. It’s always best to seek early intervention with communication difficulties. This allows strategies and support to be put in place. Never feel alone, always speak out.
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.
If your child is using 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. We call this process Natural Language Acquisition or Gestalt Language Processing.
Step by Step guide to Gestalt Learning
Let’s explore the following stages of Gestalt Processing:
Stage 1: communicative use of whole language gestalts
(e.g., “let’s get out of here”)
Children and young people in this stage use echolalia. They need to hear more gestalts or scripts. So, your job is to model, model, model and to use functional language that your child can repeat back.
Stage 2: mitigated into chunks and re-combining these chunks
(e.g., “let’s get” + “some more”) and (e.g., “let’s get” + “out of here”)
This is when you take parts of gestalts or phrases and then combine it with other parts.
Stage 3: further mitigation (single words recombining words, formulating two-word phrases)
(e.g., “get…more”)
They are going beyond their gestalts. Furthermore, they may begin to label different objects.
Stage 4: formulating first sentences
(e.g., “let’s get more toys”)
You may see more grammatical errors during this phase as they are creating unique sentences. Please don’t worry about this, it means they are playing and experimenting with language. As communication partners, you could model the correct form of the sentence.
Stages 5 & 6: formulating more complex sentences
(e.g., “how long do you want to play inside for?”)
You can see that language learning is a process, that is trialled and tested, used in different contexts for children to be able to learn and use language appropriately.
My next blog will give you activities ideas and how you might use them specifically with a Gestalt Language Processor.
Remember early intervention is vital. So, if you have any concerns, please seek the advice of a Speech and Language Therapist.
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.
When you have a child who uses Gestalts it is often difficult to think and adapt clinic activities into those to use at home. More importantly, you find that individualising your activities for your child who uses Gestalt are time-consuming. But you value its importance for their communication development.
You feel so busy, you are taking them to other appointments, or trying to get through your daily activities, all whilst still ensuring your child’s emotional needs are met. You know life should not get in the way of your child’s therapy activities at home, but it does. We know your spare time is precious and limited, so let us achieve your child’s or young person’s goals in the allotted time you have which meets their way of learning (using Gestalts).
We wanted to support you by exploring items which you may have at home, and we will give you some key phrases which you can start to model with your child. Whereas our last blog introduced the idea of gestalt language processors, we are now developing ideas to give you the tools to implement activities at home. We recognise how overwhelming it may feel, and this is one of the reasons to make activities as straight forward as possible. Therapy does not need to be complicated; it just needs to be carried out on a regular basis.
Explore the samples I’ve created to give you an idea of how this might look but please consult with a Speech and Language Therapist who knows about Gestalt Language Processing so that you can work together to develop great home activities for your child.
Want to learn more about gestalt language processing?
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.
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.
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?
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.
Below are two reviews I got from grateful clients over the past 4-6 weeks; this blog is more about how Feeding Therapy can help you than blowing my own trumpet…. though that said, it is always so nice and gratifying to hear when parents are happy and hopeful about their little one’s feeding journey. Feeding Therapy is a substantial part of my work as a Children’s Speech and Language Therapist. One of my specialist subjects is Autism and we find that many children on the Autism Spectrum are very specific about eating, and will often refuse a range of typical family foods in favour of a narrow range of foods/snacks.
Mostly, feeding difficulties are a combination and complex cocktail of factors that have contributed to the current status quo: sure, there may have been some physical problems to start off with, such as reflux causing the baby discomfort, constipation, a very tight tongue tie or a swallowing problem caused by neurological difficulties and of course sensory processing difficulties are also very physical experiences. We always begin with a very thorough case history taking and information gathering, followed by an oral assessment and observation of the actual swallow to establish what might have been – or still might be – the cause for the feeding difficulties.
In most of the cases I see in my practice, the original obvious cause is no longer present, especially with older children. So, if the swallowing is fine, the reflux is no longer present, the tongue was divided (twice!) why are they still not eating much, refusing to try new foods, only accept certain textures etc.
The answer is extremely complex and multi-faceted and this little blog is not covering any factors in detail (we would be here all night) -I mentioned sensory processing difficulties earlier on. These are mostly still present but often not acknowledged or recognised by parents. And it is certainly the case that one of the contributors is parental anxiety; this tends to run very high and has been for many months, sometimes years. This in turn often leads to very tense and unpleasant, endlessly long meal times and many times children are force-fed several times a day in order to “get something down there” as otherwise they would probably starve themselves.
Additionally, parents end up only offering a very narrow range of foods because that is all their child will eat. This ends up in a vicious cycle of children being fed porridge-style food for all meal times and of course they won’t progress to more mature foods if these mature foods are never on offer.
In order to help address and disentangle some of the issues I often introduce the “Division of Responsibility in Feeding” as researched and recommended by Ellyn Satter (The Satter Feeding Dynamics Model)
Here are the main points of her approach:
Children have a natural ability with eating, they eat as much as they need and they grow in the way that is right for them and they learn to eat what their parents eat. (E Satter). The parent is responsible for WHAT the child eats, WHERE and WHEN the child eats. The child is responsible for HOW MUCH they eat or WHETHER to eat. Satter proposes that parents should guide their child’s transition from nipple feeding through semi-solids, then thick and lumpy foods to finger foods and then on to normal family meals.
Please note: this model is only appropriate for children where the original physical cause is no longer present!
Of course it’s not easy! It requires a huge shift in thinking about feeding and it requires to trust our children to know what is best for them. This is very big for most parents, as it is not how we were brought up and it is not commonly known that babies and children know what is good for them!
However, it is certainly true that parents who follow this particular approach and make small, steady changes in the way the offer foods, and in the way they create family meal times differently, children make very nice, pleasing progress and over some months we often see remarkable positive changes.
I like to work in a team and especially for this type of problem it is essential to have a multi-disciplinary approach. A knowledgeable dietician is an enormous plus in any feeding team as is of course a
Paediatrician and/ or a Gastroenterologist and the most important people in the team are the parents!
Feeding Therapy is all about collaboration and a ‘team around the child” approach. When we have this in place and there is trust amongst the team members then we make fantastic progress.
I visited London Speech and Feeding a couple of days ago with my 8-month-old granddaughter and her mother. Sonja made us feel comfortable and at ease from our first introductions. She was able to pinpoint my granddaughter’s mum’s anxiety around weaning very quickly. She not only gave her the tools to do this successfully, but also really encouraged my granddaughter’s mum and instilled confidence that she had everything she needed to make this sometimes-difficult transition without further anxiety.
Sonja was very thorough in her initial assessment of my granddaughter’s physical milestones and her developing speech. My granddaughter felt very comfortable with Sonja and happily played along with her. Then came the big moment – trying out various foods! We were amazed to see just how easily my granddaughter, with Sonja’s expert encouragement, took to sampling the wonderful array of different delicious morsels Sonja had prepared for the session. My granddaughter even drank from a cup for the first time! Wonderful!
Sonja then emailed a summary of the session and an extensive array of resources with suggestions for my granddaughter’s mum which she has now put into action. My granddaughter’s mum couldn’t thank Sonja enough for her caring attitude, extensive knowledge, and warm professionalism. I have no hesitation in recommending Sonja, she’s a fantastic Feeding Therapist!
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Sonja (and her lovely colleague, Sandra) were stupendous. I had brought my one-year-old son to see them as I was concerned that he wasn’t eating enough. They looked at his history and we ate together to make sure they had all the information they needed to give an accurate diagnosis. Whilst our outcome was that Henry was in fact doing brilliantly (and I just needed to chill out a bit!), I would imagine if there was something more serious going on, Sonja would make you feel just as supported and empowered as she did with us. Excellent follow-ups too. Money well spent for a bit of reassurance for a stressed out mama. Thank you, Sonja!
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.
Here is a very commonquestion/request that I get from most parentsI see: ‘Help! My childhas lots of toys!In fact we have so many toys we couldopen a shop but , alas, he/shedoesn’t play with anything for longer than a minute, even less than that! What can I do?’
My short answer to this is always: consider tidying most of the toys away and ROTATE them! This is my top tip for helping your little one sustain interest, focus, curiosity and creativity. Let me explain…
First up, I am not suggesting you sell all his/her littlegems on E-Bay (although…. ☺ ok let’s not go
there for now). NO, I simply recommend that instead of having ALL the toys out in the living room and all across the home, you put them into categories and groups and you pack them into boxes or containers so that you can find whatever you are looking for easily. So, all the construction toys – Lego’s magnetix, blocks etc go together; all vehicles, all animals and animal related items, etc etc you get the idea. (I am not suggesting you need to do a whole KONMARIon everything, (thoughto be honest I do think personally there is merit to her approach but I digress).
It works a treat not having ALL toys available at all times. Let me quickly tell you a little story about my childhood which may sound draconian to most of you, but we are talking late 50’s now in post war Germany….. What happened in my and many families for Christmas was this: your dolls house or railway tracks – and I am talking industrial tracks with electricity and proper little trains, your little shop or dolls-kitchen, all of it came down from the attic and was put up over night by one’s dad or uncle in possession of a screwdriver and some DIY skills, in readiness for the big event, this being the 24th of December, the Holy Evening. We children knew this, of course, and started talking about seeing our beloved toys again for Christmas and the period thereafter until about the 6th of January. We couldn’t wait to play with our toys and it was total bliss and happiness for about 4 weeks where we literally played day and evening with those toys. (We did get some new ones as well to be fair, but I cannot remember any of the new ones.) All that I now remember, in great detail and fondness, was my shop, my kitchenette (Victorian, splendid!), my dolls house and my cousin’s most fabulous intricate railway track. All of our toys occupied the entire basement of our home and this was where we played and played and played. Until the 6th of January. Oh yes… that was always a sad day of course when everything was packed away until…..December!!!! yep…. I vaguely recall there being a ‘special day-out’ with little treats arranged for us all and whilst away, the toys were taken up into the attic.
Like I say, it may seem somewhat outdated as an idea…but I actually am so glad I had that experience because I believe it has helped me with my language learning, my imaginative play, my ability to share and play with others, attention focus and last but not least it helped me learn to value my toys and appreciate the things I have more deeply than would otherwise have been the case (no research there, just my opinion).
Now I am not suggesting you do this, and indeed I never did this with my own kids either (I don’t have a large basement for starters)…. But I did rotate their toys quite a bit, inspired by the basic notion of my childhood experience.
The benefits are obvious if you think about it: apart from greatly reducing clutter at home, there are so many benefits of toy rotation for children. Just like us, children often find too many things all lying about unsettling; and especially our children with sensory processing difficulties can lose their sense of ease and calm very easily when overwhelmed by too many toys on offer. This is when they become restless and start roaming from one toy to the next without any focus or functional play. Additionally, just like adults, kids get bored with having the same toys or playing the same games, of course!
Anything that we always have available is by definition no longer novel or interesting.
Children who struggle to attend and listen due to developmental delays perhaps, or neuro-diverse development, possibly Attention Deficit or other diagnoses, have an increased tendency to roam, pick up and discard items as they often get distracted so very easily.
I recommend selecting a small range of toys for one week to start with. Ease your way in! Nothing is written in stone, it is not an exact science, rather more an intuitive strategy of picking what feels right for your child. If you have bags or boxes of small toy categories, as described earlier, now it becomes quite easy to decide on what toy groups to bring out.
I will give you an example – you could think of it as a TOY DIET!… so, like a food diet, you think of your food groups that you need daily and you put a menu together that has one of each group; however most of us don’t have the exact same foods everyday, we vary it so it’s a nice, healthy and enjoyable balanced diet. The same with the toys, so for instance:
Toy Rotation ‘Diet’
Week 1
Construction Group: Legos/ Duplos (not a ton, but a nice amount so you can actually build something)
Puzzles: Animal Farm Puzzle Vehicles: Cars and the Car Run
Action figures: Mr and Mrs Potatoe head Musical Instruments: Cylophone
Mark-making: Bunch of crayons/paper plates
Books: I wrote to the Zoo/ Hungry Caterpillar
Week 2
Construction Group: Train tracks
Puzzles: Rainbow puzzle
Vehicles: Trains and Planes
Action figures: doll house figures
Musical Instruments: Drum set
Mark making: Bingo daubers and fun bingo sheets
Books: Bear Hunt/ Rainbow fish
Larger Toy Items
Don’t worry about rotating those: they can be a steady back-drop to the category items your child has available: today/this week it might be animals feeding in the kitchen. Next week it might be action figures or Mr and Mrs Potatoe Head. The following week, there might be playdough out so then that can be used in the kitchen together with some Paw Patrol figures, etc. Like I said: most of us do not have a handy and empty basement or attic to store away large amounts of stuff so we do need to be pragmatic.
Tidy Up
This is often simply too overwhelming for children and the best they can do, if you are very lucky, is to throw everything into one big box, which is not what you want!
However, if you have 4-5 clearly labelled boxes for each category, now Tidying up can become a nice little activity in and of itself. Example: let’s put all the cars into the red car box, let’s count how many cars we have! Let’s see if we can find all the cars that I have hidden and then put them into the red car box! Let’s see what colours our cars are as we tidy them away…..endless possibilities for a little language development as well as a tidy bedroom, you can see this is a WINNER! You’re welcome! ☺
How To Prepare
Should you ask your child for permission to rotate their toys?… Erm… no! I think that would be like asking your little sweet-toothed cherub if she minded having the 5th ice-cream taken away… we know the answer to that one! Just decide on it, get your boxes organised, perhaps a cabinet bought or made – Ikea do simple ones – and then one day when your child is out, or in bed, you can start collecting all the toys and sifting through them – you might even want to weed out a few as you realise they are broken, bits are missing, that one scratches the floorboards, that one makes too loud a noise…etc… and then hurrah ! You are left with a load of toys that are brilliant and good for rotating. Let the fun begin!
Electronics
A last little note on ELECTRONIC TOYS – they are, in my humble opinion, fiendishly attractive and all-consumingly fascinating for little ones…and they are mostly counterproductive to creative play. Children who are prone to repetitive behaviours, repetitive play and reduced attention span will often focus on these beeping, singing, pinging toys to the exclusion of everything and everyone else around them. This may not really be great for your child if he/she is struggling to jointly attend with other children or yourselves; or if your little one has sensory processing difficulties or lacks imaginative play.
I would highly recommend that you reduce those electronic books/toys to a minimum and only bring them out very occasionally, preferably when you yourself need a little break! The same goes for the television, laptop and tablet of course! Please consider REDUCING or entirely REMOVING all electronics from your toddler if you would like to help your child to play, to focus on a range of toys and to build their creativity and joint attention.
Summary
Rotating your child’s toys is a fantastically useful strategy that will help your child develop focus and play more independently, while also helping you reduce clutter in your home.
Simply make sure a good range of toy groups are available at any one time.
Carefully select only a few items of each group.
Don’t worry about rotating big toys. These toys providea great back-drop for your child’s creative play, almost as part of the furniture.
Keep the toys that are having a little breakout of reach and, if possible, out of sight. Out of sight is usually out of mind and therefore your child will be able to enjoy what is in front of them and not pester you all day for the thing they cannot have.
Think LESS IS MORE! There are no strict rules on how many items you can have out, but on average I would recommend one or two per category at the most.
Try to keep to a regular rotation and to make sure they have time to really explore their toys fully. Once a week is a good place to start.
Reduce/eliminate electronic toys – This is so important!
Trust and relax knowing that you are helping and facilitating your child to really enjoy their toys, and to deepen their creativity and focus.
Let me know, drop me a line and tell me how you are getting on with this. I would love to know!
🙂
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.
“Attention Autism” is an Early Years Intervention designed by Gina Davies, Specialist Speech and Language Therapist. Gina created this amazing therapy approach based on her many years of working with children on the autism spectrum. It aims to develop natural and spontaneous communication through the use of highly motivating activities. These activities offer your child an IRRESISTABLE INVITATION to engage and attend to.
I love using this approach and have trained in all of the stages including the Curiosity Stage which is for another blog. I use it frequently with all children who have trouble attending, listening, sitting or waiting regardless of whether they are neuro-diverse or neuro-typical, this activity and method is so great for all children!!
Why is it important for our children to attend and listen?
It is commonly assumed that, as our child has passed their hearing tests he/she will be able to listen and respond to being called, being questioned or asked to do something. However, all children I see in my practice have reduced joint attention skills, which means that whilst their hearing is often good, even brilliant to the point that they can often hear a faint noise somewhere outside the house like a distant train rushing by – but strangely they can’t seem to hear their name being called. Parents often ask me why this is the case, why can my child not turn round when I call him?
The reason lies in the difference between hearing and listening. Listening is a skill that needs to be learned and practiced. As a child develops, their hearing tunes into (listening) the sounds and noises they hear on a daily basis. This is how a child develops understanding of the speech sounds they hear every day (which then form the basis of their native language); they also get to know “their door bell, dog barking next door, daddy coming up the stairs” and so on. They tune into those common every day sounds and noises and gradually start to copy speech sounds to form words. So listening is tuning our ears to the sounds that surround us. In contrast, many of us have to work in large office spaces or noisy environment, perhaps even a café, etc, where we are able to tune out those environmental noises and sounds that surround us, for otherwise we will not get that report/piece of work done in time! Our focus means that we become single-minded and single-channelled concentrating on our work and so we do not hear people chat and clutter all around us.
Tuning in and out is a skill that we learn and some of us are better than it that others, it comes largely with practice but also with motivation – I go back to the report that needs doing by end of the day – my motivation is strong and I can now focus and blend out all around me so that I get the work done. Other times when I am not so motivated I might doodle and tune into what is being said at the table next to me, because my focus is not that strongly dedicated to my work.
Many children who are delayed in their development and especially children on the neuro-diverse continuum have difficulty with tuning in. By contrast, they are very good at being single-minded, single focused on what it is they are wanting/needing to do at any one point. And so they cannot listen to sounds, speech, noises around them very easily at all. They are fully absorbed in their activity and are not able to look and listen to mum/dad calling their name. Once we understand this we can start helping our children to practise tuning in a bit more bit by bit and day by day.
Enter the Attention Autism approach!
There are 4 stages to this method:
Stage 1: The Bucket to Focus Attention
The first stage involves filling a bucket with visually engaging toys that aim to help children learn how to focus their attention. Three toys will be presented to the child/group one at a time and the therapist will make simple comments about each toy to help introduce them to the children and expand their vocabulary.
Important to know: the Attention Autism approach does not require the child to look at the adult, or to sustain eye-gaze on the objects. Instead engagement may be indicated by non-verbal signals such as seeming alert and interested, and looking frequently at the object.
Stage 2: The Attention Builder
At this stage the child/group is introduced to visually stimulating activities. This stage aims to build and sustain attention for a longer period of time. Activities may include ideas such as:
Flour castles which can be built like sandcastles, using flour, a bowl and moulds
Erupting volcano activity
Wriggly worms foam – pile shaving foam onto an upside down plastic flower pot with the holes taped over; then slowly press down another plastic flower pot over the shaving foam and the foam will come through the top holes looking like wriggly worms, especially if you have dropped a bit of food colouring on top of the foam
Important: children are not required to make eye contact or sit still during these activities. The focus is on engagement, in whatever way the child demonstrates this.
Stage 3: The Interactive Game – Turn-Taking and Shifting Attention
The therapist demonstrates a simple engaging activity and invites children up to have a turn. This may be the same activity from stage 2 or something new. The aim is for children to learn to shift their attention from the group/sitting experience to doing something and then going back to sitting again.
Stage 4: Individual Activity
In the final stage of Attention Autism, the adult models an activity, and then each child is given the same equipment to use themselves. They do not have to copy exactly what the adult modelled. The aim is for the child watching to have a go independently with confidence, and then to take their materials back to the leading adult at the end. The activity should be engaging and enjoyable for the children. The Attention Autism approach aims to foster an interest in learning new things and to inspire communication in whatever form works for the child.
Ideally this should be practised 4-5 times a week aside from the therapy session. But I have seen it work with just 2-3 practice repeats per week. It can be tough in the beginning until your child gets used to the “no touch just look” rule but with a little bit of practice usually children do sit well for the first part of the Bucket activity within about 10 sessions and after that you are on a roll!
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.
This is a surprisingly common speech error and it can be corrected really well in my experience. I have helped lots of children of all ages learn how to control their tongue movements and produce clear, sharp /S/ sounds and good /SH/ sounds.
Initial consideration
There are some factors which need to be considered before we can dive into therapy proper and these are they, in a nutshell:
The student is not currently displaying negative oral habits such as thumb sucking or excessive sucking on clothing. This is because thumb sucking exerts pressure on the teeth and therefore can, over time, push teeth out of their natural order/position.
The student does not have a restricted lingual frenulum or tongue tie which can cause at times restricted movements of the tongue (pending on how tight the frenulum is attaching the tongue to the base of the oral cavity); equally a labial frenulum or lip-tie can restrict lip movement and therefore physically restrict good speech sound production.
The student does not have enlarged tonsils as they can sometimes push a tongue forward and also cause open mouth posture and open mouth breathing.
The student’s motivation to change their speech pattern is high. (this is an important factor though with younger students I can get round this with a lot of fun games and good parental involvement!)
When I do an Oral Assessment of my student these are the first factors I want to look at and consider. Often I will refer to other agencies such as Orthodontists, dentists or ENT specialists to advise and help with some of these factors before we can get going. However, there are strategies that we can work on almost straight away.
Most of my Lisp students present with an open mouth posture: that is where the student has their mouth always slightly open for breathing. Over time the tongue starts to fall forward and rests on the front teeth or the bottom lip instead of finding a comfortable resting place either at the alveolar ridge (the bumpy spot behind the upper front teeth) or, alternatively, resting at the bottom of the mouth behind the lower front teeth.
Another common problem is that the tongue is not moving independently from the jaw and so is reluctant to pull back or lift up inside the mouth as the tongue is guided in movement by the jaw.
Combine those two factors and your tongue is not pulling back, or lifting up or doing very much at all without the jaw moving as well. This makes for unclear speech sounds, especially all the sounds we make at the front with our tongue or with our lips: /B/ /P/ /L/ /N/ and of course /S/ and /SH/ are particularly hard to make. We often also struggle with the /Y/ sound so ‘LELLOW’ instead of ‘yellow’.
Do not fear!
But no fear, these problems can be treated over time for sure! We often start with lip, tongue, and jaw exercises that help to move the tongue independently from the Jaw, our student learns that the tongue is a muscle and can be trained to do amazing acrobatic things in the mouth! WOW! It can actually pull back, lift up, and come down again all on its own!
We work on breathing, holding our breath for a bit then pushing it out and then holding it again.
And when it comes to the actual /S/ sound I often try and go a NEW route bypassing the Snake-Sound route if that is what had previously been tried and failed so that we can create completely new sound patterns in our brain and think about our sounds in a completely new way.
We then work on producing the sound /S/ on its own for a bit, at the end of words, then on either side of complimentary sounds, for instance : ‘EASY” – the sound patterns here are EEE-S–EE : the /EEE/ sound is complimentary to the /S/ sound as the tongue is at the right hight for the /S/ already once you have it in place for /EEE/ -……see?! EASY!
And gradually we work towards saying the /S/ sound clearly at the front of short words, then phrases and then sentences.
The process takes some time and it depends on how ready the student is. This varies of course hugely so I can never promise the exact number of sessions we will take to get that Lisp fixed. A lot depends on home practice in between sessions, and this is of course crucial to all therapy! Every day 15-20 mins practice is a good average time to aim for and when this is done it shortens the therapy block drastically.
I always give plenty of home work so there is never a chance of it getting boring or there being “nothing to do”!
Do contact me. I really enjoy working with this type of student and get a great kick out of FIXING THAT LISP!
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.
