Early Words Together:coming together nicely

The Early Words together project is in full swing at the Lichfield and South Staffs Children's Centres now. It is a superb new initiative from the National Literacy Trust to help families develop their skills in order to help their children at home. Studies have shown that parents are a huge influence on children's educational success, so if they can help from very early on, it will have a knock one effect to school progress and beyond. The NLT call it the 'home learning environment' or HLE.

The 6 week programme looks at the importance of sharing books, how nursery rhymes are  still important, mark making, choosing stories and also includes a visit from the library staff.

Many people think that libraries are quiet places where children should be seen and not heard but in fact, they actively encourage families. The library staff use puppets to show children the positives of joining the library so they can have access to new books every week.

The feedback from the families so far has been very positive, 'I think its really useful to know about these things,' said Anne-Marie, mum of 2 pre-schoolers. The sessions will be fully evaluated both internally and externally as part of a pilot project running until next March. If successful, it will be run nationwide.

Hanen: A tip for parents of young children who communicate without words

Take a look at this tip from Hanen

They offer sensible, practical advice and programmes to help parents and practitioners. Communication opportunities are everywhere. Have  a look at this one:

Sing songs with your child and build in opportunities for him to take turns

Sing simple songs with your child, especially ones with actions, like “Row Row Row your Boat”, and build in opportunities for him to participate. This is a fun way for him to learn to take his turn in an interaction, as well as to learn new words.

• Sing a new song the same way a few times so your child learns the song and its “high point”. High points are the most interesting parts of a song. In “Row, Row, Row your Boat”, the high points are the rocking back and forth while you and your child sit on the floor, holding outstretched hands, and saying the last word after a long pause – i.e., “dream”.

• Once your child is familiar with the song, pause before a high point and wait for him to respond.

For example, when singing “Row Row Row your Boat”, sing the song through once or twice and then, still holding his hands, WAIT for him to ask you to sing it again (he will probably make a sound or rock back and forth to ask you to do it again).

Or, you can start to sing the song while rocking back and forth, pausing mid-song so he can ask you to continue.

Or, you can slow down and pause before the last word (“dream”), so he can make a sound - any sound - to end the song.

• To take his turn during songs, your child may wriggle, make a sound, look at you, point to something or perform an action. Accept anything as his turn and then continue immediately. The most important thing is that he takes a turn and has fun while doing it.

Small Talk are licensed Hanen Trainers www.private-speech-therapy.co.uk Please let us know if you would like to know more about the training we could do for you

Tips for talking:by parents, for parents

A group of Stafford parents have been attending a unique, new course called Chuckle Talkers at one of the Sure Start Children’s Centres. It combines two of the service providers at the centre; Sara from Chuckle Productions and yours truly from Small Talk speech and language therapy. We have written a 10 part programme to look at encouraging speech, language and communication and gross/fine motor skills throughout the day. This was a pilot project and involved 10 families who have children under 5.

One of the main aims was to show that communication takes place in everyday situations all the time so that there is no need to make extra time for this. Parents can use the activities they do several times a day,  everyday e.g. parents change a baby or toddler’s nappy 5 or 6 times a day so if they know how to make this a communication opportunity, that’s 5/6 opportunities a day without extra time being involved. ‘Parents are extremely busy these days so it’s important not to give them extra to do, rather to get them to optimise what they do’, says Sara, ‘It’s quite stressful if you feel you need to make extra time when you’re already busy’. A current buzz word in management is to work smarter not harder and this applies here too. Sara has shown the parents how motor skills develop and the tie in with communication.

The families have looked at 10 different scenarios from a child’s day. The parents have had a classroom session and then joined the children for an imaginative journey to re-inforce what they’ve discussed. We have used a variety of videos to look at each aspect e.g. meal time, bedtime, story-time, music, and lots of discussion. By the end the parents were really good at identifying what made a good communication opportunity. We had looked at ICAN’s top tips for encouraging children’s communication but I was so impressed by their insight, I asked them to come up with their own.

Here are the 10 top tips written by parents for parents:

1.       Make talking fun

2.       Listen to your child

3.       Use simple language, keep sentences short

4.       Don’t use too many questions. A ‘handy’ rule is 1 question to 4 comments

5.       Give the child time to respond

6.       Let the child take the lead/go at their own pace

7.       Think about limiting the amount of TV a child watches. Only have it on when actually watching it and not as ‘wall-paper’ .

8.       Think about dummy use. May be limit to bed/nap times or when needs comfort and never when they’re talking

9.       Be kind to yourself, don’t set yourself unrealistic targets

10.   Don’t  compare yourself or your child to others. We are all different and develop at our own pace

The parents have suggested topics for a Level 2 of Chuckle Talkers, which hopefully will be carried out next term.