My child understands everything I say but the speech therapist says he has little verbal understanding:who is right?

Answer: you both are, but you are looking for different things. I hear this said so often that I though it would be a good idea to try to explain it .

1. There is a difference between verbal understanding and understanding the situation (situational understanding). Imagine you are in the middle of Russia but you only know a handful of words of Russian. You'd actually be OK most of the time as you would follow clues and cues, watch carefully what others were doing and follow, look at facial expression and body language including gestures. It would break down if someone asked you a question without any visual referent, no context or idea of what they were saying. 

It's like this for children. If you say, 'we're going in the car' but you have the car keys in your hands, you could say, 'ibbly dibbly doo.' and get the same result:the child knows what's happening. If you say, 'Fetch your red shoes from your bedroom cupboard next to your bed,' and they come back with them, ask yourself which bit the child understood. If they always wear those shoes for going out and they're kept in the same place, then the word 'shoe' could perhaps be the trigger rather than anything extra. I'm not saying situational understanding is bad, it's just different to actually understanding the words. It is also a big strength because it shows the child is aware. Situational and verbal understanding together is what we aim for.

2. Information carrying words (ICW):

When we talk about information carrying words, we mean the number of words in a sentence or phrase which the child has to understand in order to be able to carry out the command. It's about the choices given (thank you to Jayne Waterman at Little People Nursery for that description). If I have a  these pictures (from Black Sheep press Barrier games pack) and asked 'can you show me the little green ball?' They would only need 2 information carrying words as the choices are size and colour.

If we had the 2 sets of pictures and asked 'show me the little green ball' they now have 3 choices colour, size and object so the task is 3 information carrying words:

 

If we cut up those 2 sets of pictures and added the monkey and the flower:

The request 'put the little green ball on the monkey' would now be a choice of size, colour, object and place so 4 ICWs. This is school entry level!

We'll look at another example next time to make sure it's clear as it's such a  great concept which gives you an understanding of where the child is but also how to tailor what you say to make it easier for the child to understand.

http://www.blacksheeppress.co.uk/

Verbal reasoning....... how do we measure it?

The development of Verbal reasoning skills has fascinated me for a long, long time but I haven't found anything apart from Maggie Johnson's Canterbury and Thanet Scales  that I could really use to show the process or really explain the development to school staff.

I am working with a particular little boy, Peter aged 4years 11 months. who just can't understand language which is anything but concrete and in the 'here and now'. It hasn't been too big a problem until now he's in the third term in reception. He knows he should say something but when its his turn to answer a question he will just say anything that pops into his head. This is of course causing much hilarity among his peers and mixed reactions from staff. Is he doing it deliberatley, is he trying to wind them up? They really don't know how  they should be responding. The NHS SLT and I had been working on 'Why-because' activities especially those from Black Sheep press.

Last week, I was delighted to discover the Test of Abstract Language by Elks and McLachlan and used it yesterday to identify where Peter's specific difficulties lie.

There are 4 levels as identified by Blank, Rose and Berlin in 1978.

1.    Matching perception e.g. where's the lorry? Find me the train

2.    Selective analysis of perception e.g. finding object by function which on flies, putting pictures of related objects together, recall info from a statement Such as who, what, where,

3.    Level 3 following direction e.g. do this, planning and giving directions, formulate a story which links pictures, describe events and predict, assume the role of another e.g. what could he say, identify similarities, differences

4.    Level 4 requires abstract verbal problem solving e.g. why, inference, cause, explain why something can't happen

On the assessment Peter. struggled with some level 2 i.e. recalling who, what, where from a story.

For level 3 he could not formulate a story from pictures, describe and predict. Therefore he is between level 2 and 3. The ‘why because’ comes in level 4

Therefore, we need to rethink what we're doing and take it to the right level for him.

One of the things that occurred to me while I was reading the work by Blanc is that when something goes wrong especially bad behaviour in nursery and reception, we always ask children, ‘tell me what happened’ and ‘why did you do that’. These are both concepts beyond many young children especially when they're anxious. At this time their understanding will be blocked further (weakest link phenomenon).

We’d already been looking at what goes together and what doesn’t belong so we can keep doing that. We need to do more stories with questions and putting pictures into sequences/talking about them. I’ve got some lovely things on a narrative programme (Black Sheep press) that I will take into school and leave for them too.

See:http://www.elklan.co.uk/ for accredited courses we can deliver from Small Talk and  http://www.blacksheeppress.co.uk/

www.private-speech-therapy.co.uk