CELEBRATING FEMALE ENTREPRENEURS: Nat West Every Woman Awards

It's great publicity to be nominated for National Awards and I've been persuaded to enter the 2010 Every Woman Awards 2010: http://www.everywoman.com/everywomanAwards/TheNatWesteverywomanAwards/
It feels slightly wrong because I enjoy what I do so much it doesn't feel like work!

'The NatWest everywoman Awards celebrates inspirational business women who have achieved significant success - particularly those who've had to overcome adversities such as financial constraints, social disadvantages or skills gaps. The Awards play an invaluable role in both recognising success and inspiring other women to venture into the field of business'.

I think most people would like to have their own business but there are many perils and pitfalls which have to be over-come on the way to success. It's certainly not the easy route! It is even harder if you are the only bread winner AND a single parent. I'm entering this competition because it might inspire other women to do the same.  That is: decide what they want to do and then find a way to achieve it despite set-backs and uncertainty, financial worries and family commitments.

There's still along way to go as I want to have at least 10 franchises for the Smart Talkers groups by this time next year and a further 10 by the end of 2012.

Are you really a good listener?

People today have difficulties listening and it's not just the children. This is a real problem and one of the issues the Small Talkers Groups, in the Smart Talker Range are designed to address. 

The key to being a good listener is to get the person with whom you are talking, to talk.  I  was reading 'Raising Happy Children' by Parker, J., & Stimpson, J. (1999) and I realised that I fall into some of the communication traps, when I should know better.

How many do you do?? Are you a good listener? 

It may help to check that you are not doing something else instead:

• Advising - “Tom wouldn’t let me play with him today.”   “I’d take no notice if I were you, go and play with Peter tomorrow instead”.
• Criticising - “Joe took my book and lied and said it was his and my teacher believed him!”   “Well I told you not to take it to school”.
• Dismissing - “Emily broke my bracelet.”   “Oh, it doesn’t matter. We can just get another one when we go shopping”
• Correcting - “It wasn’t fair at tea time, you are always nicer to Sally than you are to me!”  “You mean Breakfast time.”
• Ignoring - “I need mummy to take me to Claire’s house after school.”  “Come and help me to do the dishes”
• Distracting - “I’ve not been picked to be on the netball team and all my friends have.”   “Come and look at what I brought at the shops today and try not to think about it.”
• Reassuring - “I’m scared of the monsters under my bed.”  “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
• Praising - “I hate it when she comes into my room.”  “I’m sure you don’t mind because you are such a good big sister.” 

Everyone falls into one of these traps from time to time, but using replies such as these won't get the same results as really listening. Sometimes parents use these communication traps because they have run out of patience or time  or sometimes because they dont know any better. Whatever the reason, they can be very effective at stopping a child from talking.

Listening has the opposite aim - it encourages your child to talk. Encouraging your child to talk will help them to become a confident and effective communicator, a skill that will help them for their whole life. 


  

Ditch the Dummy!

I've just had another conversation with a parent of a 4 1/2 year old with poor speech about the use of dummies as a huge contributory factor to his problems. He had one until well over 3 years of age because the mother-in-law  said it would 'ruin his personality' if it was taken off him!! What complete and utter rubbish (I've calmed down now so I'm more polite because that wasn't what I was thinking at the time!). 

He's now left with no 'l' sound, 'ch' and 'j' are wrong and his tongue protrudes for 's', 'z' and 'sh'.  He's going to need months of therapy with lots of practise at home.

For the mother-in-law and anyone else who is unsure:

During your baby's early months a dummy can help to soothe. This is understandable, as most babies have a strong sucking reflex and the dummy can, in many cases, help to settle the child. It may not, however, be necessary even then! My babies didn't have one but if it helps to 'pacify'  at sleep times, then I see no real problem for up to a year old. After that, it should be dropped because the child needs to be able to make use of a full range of sounds which can only be achieved by letting the tongue move freely around the articulators (lips, gums, palate etc.) They should NEVER be used when the child is talking.

Using the dummy can lead to the following problems:


Teeth:

• incorrect positioning of teeth so that the bottom and top teeth at the front don't meet properly
• tooth decay (especially the front teeth) if the dummy is dipped into sweet things

Mouth breathing:

• your child may tend to breathe through their mouth rather than their nose. This is often linked to long-term dribbling

Speech and language problems:

• your child may not use the full range of tongue movements that are necessary for making all the speech sound your child has fewer opportunities to babble and use sounds to communicate with you
• much higher risk of acquiring speech sound difficulties 

I see lots of children dropped off at nurseries and who's dummies go in their bags at the door. They have quickly learned that they don't have a dummy there so they don't usually even ask for it. I also see a lot of parents collecting from nursery who retrieve the dummies from bags and install in the child's mouth before they've even said 'Hello'.

I know I hate them and you're probably thinking I'm being too harsh but I think we need to look at WHY they have them when they are able to talk. Are parents trying to shut up their child? 

We need to talk more, not less and anything that gets in the way of this should be discouraged.

I have an A4 'Dummy Free Zone' poster if anyone would like one 
enquiries@smalltalk-ltd.co.uk.

'Signing is not recommended,' says the Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists' Councillor for Research and Development

I'm very angry that  the Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists have made a decision on a matter of importance without recognising ANY proper research or the views of members and their experiences on the subject. On this occasion it's Baby Signing coming under their radar. They have stated that the RCSLT does not recommend signing with babies despite decades of Speech & Language Therapists using it with children and families with very positive outcomes.

The RCSLT refute the evidence by Karen Pine and her team, from the university of Hertfordshire, who showed without doubt that it helps children from disadvantaged backgrounds. She doesn't make wild claims e.g.that it enhances IQ as some of the American studies, but makes valid and sensible conclusions from suitable regulated and professional research.

It is a fact that we need to hi-light and reinforce ANY and every positive communicative practise between parent and baby and its this which is so makes signing so powerful. If a parent is signing (and talking at the same time) they are more likely to be watching and listening to their child and being more aware of both their interaction and their child's response.  This should be praised and encouraged and not condemned.

It looks like I need to write to Nursery World with a case study proving that its very positive to use sign with your baby! I don't need the RCSLT's approval or their recognition to be confident that it works... I KNOW IT DOES as a parent who used it with her own children and as a fully qualified, very experienced professional. Watch this space!

P.S. Thank you RCSLT for publishing the article about me in this months Bulletin.... lol!

It takes two....

'My speech problem, Your listening problem, and our frustration': 

An Australian study published this month by McCormack J, McLeod S, McAllister L, Harrison LJ. from the Charles Sturt University, reveals that a child's speech problem is just as much a listener problem:

They looked at the experience of 34 children and their family members to get a thorough understanding of the problems faced by both sides. 

There were three conclusions 1. The family were frustrated by the child's difficulties 2. The child was frustrated with their listening partner and 3. Mutual frustration caused by the speaking and listening problems. The authors looked at the solutions participants used to overcome the problems. These included: a) strategies to improve the child's speech sound accuracy (e.g., therapy, opportunity to practise), and b) strategies to improve the listener's understanding (e.g., using gestures, repetition, visual clues). 

They concluded, as we already knew, was that successful communication is dependant on the skills of speakers and listeners not just the child. 'Intervention with children who experience speech impairment needs to reflect this reciprocity by supporting both the speaker and the listener, and by addressing the frustration they experience'. The Therapists at Small Talk Speech and Language Therapy have always been mindful of this and work closely with families of children with speech difficulties.

What are your experiences of this? Are you as frustrated as your child? Does your child get fed-up of repeating himself?

Cure for Autism? .......not yet, I'm afraid

We are constantly being advised of the latest so-called 'cure' for autism and for many parents, who are desperate to have a 'normal' son or daughter, this must lead to a roundabout of reading, research and possibly expensive interventions, which inevitably will lead to further heart ache. 


This problem is now compounded by researchers who release snippets from their studies without waiting for the final conclusions. They are often aided by PR Departments at their educational establishments who seek to sensationalise... after all any publicity is good publicity in their eyes. They are failing to appreciate the terrible impact this may have on parents or maybe they just don't care.... 15 minutes of fame and all that!

Previously no-one would draw conclusions or seek to publicise incomplete work. It would have been frowned upon by peers and university elders. The New Scientist today advises caution and proper controlled research practices BEFORE coming to what may be  'false conclusions'. They begin with the success story of a little boy who was diagnosed with ASD at 2 and was subsequently 'cured' by a miracle diet. Further analysis showed this couldn't be true. It may have been a false diagnosis in the first place (another of my soap box topics!). 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627661.300-desperate-measures-the-lure-of-an-autism-cure.html?full=true

I read a quote the other day 'When you've met one person with autism....... You've met one person with autism!' Therapy approaches or other treatments that work for one may not work for another. I'm looking forwards to more quality research  from recognised and expert establishments because 'the tantalising possibility remains that something, somewhere out there, really does work, but ... trials so far have lacked the sophistication to separate effective treatments from the duds'.(Clare Lajinchere, 2010)  

How many words do you know?

Did you see the reported controversial claim from the Communication Tsar Jean Gross, that teenagers use a vocabulary of only 800 words? David Crystal, the Britsh linguistics expert refutes these claims and explains why it so hard to estimate how many words we have in our vocabuary store (lexicon).


He says, 'People know and use far more words than they (or communications czars) think they do. They forget about the whole year - about all the words to do with holidays, shopping, cars, animals, birthdays, Christmas... It's totally fallacious to think that the words you elicit from someone on a particular day or from a particular sample is an accurate index of all the words they know or use'.

He also points out that the world of a teenager is foreign to most of us so there are probably words they use of which we are not even aware. As my older son approaches his teens, his vocabulary differs to mine; I thought 'sick' was a bad thing but apparently it means 'super cool'........ so what do I know? 


How many words do you know? 


http://david-crystal.blogspot.com/2010/01/on-800-word-myth.html