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I am delighted to report that we now have a readership of between 4000 and 4500 page views a month! If you have a child related educational toy, product, book or activity you would like to promote, please get in touch for advertising rates. The readership is world-wide and over the past 4 weeks is as follows:

United States 1,250 United Kingdom 1,130 France 925 Canada 105 Australia 80 India 55 Russia 51 Netherlands 50 Iran 40 Germany 36

Rest of world with less
than 30 each                                              920


We also have a team of fellow bloggers, parents, speech and language therapists /pathologists and assistants who would be happy to review books, products and materials, just get in touch!


info@smalltalk-ltd.co.uk

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Are boys more confident talkers? Is 'Kevin the teenage male' unfair?

The National Literacy Trust in conjuction with the Communication Trust have just published the results of an extensive survey which appears to contradict the stereo-typical male teenager. 'Kevin' was a Harry Enfield 1990s character who was pleasant and polite until he hit around 13 and then became moody, un-communicative, anti-parents, anti-school, anti-everything only talking by grunts or groans. Is this concept outdated and unfair now?  

The study looked at 6,865 young people between 8 and 16 found that boys are more confident communicators than girls, particularly when speaking in front  of their classmates and teachers.

69% of boys compared to 57% of girls said they were either ‘very confident’ or ‘confident’ when speaking in front of classmates. The research found that more boys than girls value and realise the importance of communication skills, believing that if you speak well it makes you seem more intelligent and that people judge you on the words and phrases that you use. Boys were also more confident in talking with teachers(81% compared with 78%).

 The research also discovered that:

• Boys are more likely than girls to strongly agree that communication skills are taken for granted (32% vs 23%).
• Boys see a danger that they will not be taken seriously if they don’t express their views clearly (66% of boys think this compared with 58% of girls).
• More boys are more likely to feel very confident explaining their point of view than girls (35% vs 29%).
• 47% of boys strongly agree that good communication skills give them confidence in social situations compared to only 39% of girls.
• Girls place less importance on being well-spoken - they are more likely than boys to disagree that those with ‘posh accents’ are better speakers (46% vs 39%).
• When asked about factors affecting good communication, girls are more likely to think it is important to see the other person’s face (69% girls vs 64% boys) while boys are more likely to think it is important to hear other people’s voices (84% boys vs 79% girls)
• Overall most young people believe the family play a crucial role in developing children’s communication skills. However, more boys than girls believe that children should just ‘pick up’ communication skills (19% vs 15%). 

Director of charity the National Literacy Trust, which works to improve reading, writing, speaking and listening skills, Jonathan Douglas, says:

“In the national year of communication, it’s heartening to see a new ‘voice conscious’ generation of boys emerging. While many people believe teenage boys are not the most articulate members of society, like Harry Enfield’s ’Kevin the teenager’ character, our research shows this is an outdated view. The survey paints a completely different picture of young males as confident communicators who are incredibly aware of the important role communication skills play in a successful school, work and social life.

“Sadly, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to gain the communication skills they need for success. This is why we are taking business volunteers into schools to work with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to help them develop the vital skills they need for working environments.”

Professional Director for The Communication Trust, Wendy Lee, says:

“Employers often bemoan the lack of young people’s communication skills. They want young people to enter the workplace with strong communication skills. This survey highlights how vital communication skills are to young people for success at school and work. It busts the myth that boys don’t value communication – they deserve more credit for being ‘communication conscious’.

“However, it is concerning that more boys than girls believe communication skills are something children should just be able to ‘pick up’. It is important to recognise that these skills do not develop by chance; adults play a fundamental role in supporting language and communication development. This ‘self taught’ attitude that boys have to communication is really important to highlight. Despite this survey finding boys in general are confident about communication, evidence shows that the proportion of boys to girls with speech, language and communication difficulties is around 4:1.

“These young people can become skilled at masking their difficulties to avoid being singled out or needing help. Struggling to communicate can be hugely frustrating and can lead to poor behaviour and low self confidence, again masking underlying difficulties. It is vital all young people, but particularly those vulnerable young people with communication difficulties, are supported to ensure they have the skills they need to do well in life.

The Hello campaign (the national year of communication) is run by The Communication Trust in partnership with Jean Gross, the Government’s Communication Champion. Hello exists to make children and young people’s communication development a priority during 2011 and beyond.

The Communication Trust is made up of 40 leading voluntary organisations with expertise in speech, language and communication. Independent charity the National Literacy Trust is a member of The Communication Trust and is working closely withHello to ensure that every young person in the UK develops the speaking and literacy skills they need for a bright, happy and successful future.

The National Literacy Trust takes business volunteers into secondary schools where they help students develop communication skills for the workplace by taking part in a series of creative workshops. The approach is yielding impressive results with the young people taking part gaining both skills and confidence.

Milad, a pupil at Rosedale College in Hayes says: “I definitely think (the project) is a positive thing, it really helps you to gain confidence. I used to think communication was just something that happens – being taught it improves your confidence level as a person.  Going for a job interview now I would know how to talk. I’d be who I am but talk to some people differently.”

What do you think? Is this your experience? Are boys generally more confident than girls? Id welcome your comments and ideas please

Accessible, online CPD for speech and language professionals from around the world

Sign up today to receive the second edition of S & L World: the global bulletin for Speech Therapy/Pathology

Thank you to everyone who sent me such lovely comments about the second edition of the magazine. I am pleased with the design as well as the content but it's great to hear other people say it too. I actually only act as collator for the contributions from speech and language therapists/pathologists all over the world so can't take any credit for it ......well, I did write something small about blogging for this one as I'm obviously interested in that! 

We really need to get to know what's out there on the 'techno' side of our work and the articles from Barbra Fernades, Rebecca Bright, Tanya Coyle, Shareka Bentham, Deb Taylor Tomarakos and Kimberley Murphy explain it very well.  

We must not forget the other contributions too from Adrienne Bamberger,  Chad Turingan and Stephanie Staples as well as an interview with Helen Barrett ........plus reviews, letters & more!

For those of you who have not yet done so, but would like to, the link is  www.slworldbulletin.com/order.php

 

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Is your child's environment communication friendly?

The Hello campaign aims to increase our awareness and understanding of communication and how to best develop it. A child's environment can be crucial. See www.hello.org.uk for further information. The following is their guidance on what to consider to optimise the environment.

Elements to consider:

• Space, light and layout

Is there good light, with a comfortable temperature and not too many visual distractions

• Noise levels

Are noise levels conducive to learning – what can be done to minimise necessary noise?

• Use of visual support, this may include

1. A colour coded map of school or setting , colour-coded directions, photographs of staff members,photographs/ symbols used to support routines, e.g. washing hands, getting ready for PE
2. Visual timetables used for daily / weekly activities
3. Objects, pictures and symbols used to teach vocabulary, to make stories more active and support engagement in other lessons
4. Displays are used throughout school or setting to support learning

• Adults who can prioritise communication, this may include adults who

1. Have knowledge of language development.
2. Understand the language levels of the children and the language demands in the environment.
3. Can adapt their language so it is not a barrier to learning or communication.
4. Give children strategies to say when they don’t understand

• Routines

1. Are children aware of rules and expectations?
2.  Do they know daily routines; could these be supported visually?
3. Are children given opportunities within lessons to say when they don’t understand?
4. Are they explicitly taught how to listen, how to work together in groups? 
5. Are there opportunities for children to interact and use language in different situations, with different people at an appropriate level?

Small Talk Speech & Language Therapy are able to offer audits of the environment, for more information please contact info@smalltalk-ltd.co.uk www.private-speech-therapy.co.uk

Calling all Child Minders! Please take our survey

Small Talk Speech & Language Therapy run a variety of training courses. We are looking to survey Staffordshire Child Minders to see what their views and needs might be:

Click here to take survey

We are happy to travel to do training too. For more information www.private-speech-therapy.co.uk

Is my child being rude? .... may be not!

Picture the scene.... your 10 year old points to a rather large lady in the supermarket and says, 'She's got an enormous bottom!' You're shocked and highly embarrassed that your child could be so rude. But it may not be rudeness, it might be that he doesn't know how to use language appropriately in social situations and was just being honest. Many of the children I work with have such problems and I have to quite thick skinned on occasion!

A child may be able to use long complicated sentences with excellent vocabulary, no speech sound difficulties but still have a communication problem - it may be that has not mastered the rules for social language, also called pragmatic use of language or pragmatics . 

Pragmatics involve three major communication skills:

• Using language for different purposes, such as
  • greeting (e.g. hello, goodbye)
  • informing (e.g. I'm going home)
  • demanding (e.g. Take me home)
  • promising (e.g. I'm going to take you home)
  • requesting (e.g. I would like to go home, please)
• Modifying language according to the needs of a listener or situation, such as
  • giving background information to an unfamiliar listener
  • speaking differently in a classroom than on a playground
• Following rules for conversations and storytelling, such as
  • taking turns in conversation
  • introducing topics of conversation 
  • staying on topic
  • starting conversations appropriately
  • finishing conversations e.g. not walking away mid-sentence
  • how to use and read verbal and nonverbal signals
  • how close to stand to someone when speaking
  • how to use facial expressions and eye contact

These rules vary across cultures and within cultures. It is important to understand the rules of your communication partner. In a previous job, I employed Eastern European staff and was un-prepared for the differences especially in inter-personal space.

An individual with pragmatic problems may:

• say inappropriate or unrelated things during conversations
• tell stories in a disorganised way
• have 'boring language' with little variety in language use

Younger children will have difficulties with this, we all have examples of our 3 year olds where they've have hugely embarrassed us by telling a complete stranger on the phone that 'Mummy's having  a poo!'  or such-like. However, if problems in social language use occur often and seem inappropriate considering the child's age, a pragmatic disorder may exist. 


Children with autism will have difficulty with social use of language but it does not mean that someone with social language problems necessarily has ASD. Pragmatic disorders will often appear alongside other language problems such as word-finding difficulties. These problems can lead to isolation and avoidance by others. 

Speech and language therapists can assess to see if there is a problem, decide the extent of the difficulty, look at any additional factors and draw up an action plan to help. 


I really like the work of British Therapist Alex Kelly, who has some excellent resources http://www.alexkelly.biz/ see links below.


If you are concerned about your child's social communication or any other aspect of their speech, language or communication www.private-speech-therapy.co.uk or check the yellow pages for the nearest NHS clinic.

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Related articles

• Pragmatic vs. Semantic Meaning: Sorting It Out (brighthub.com)
• Double Talk (psychologytoday.com)
• Empty Language? There's No Such Thing (bigthink.com)
• Language Manners (thenotsosimplerandomthoughts.wordpress.com)

Why we hate forwards facing push-chairs

This has long been a bone of contention among speech and language therapists and the basis of many a discussion between Franky and me. Here is an extract from the New York Times which sums up our concerns very well:

By TARA PARKER-POPE from the New York Times

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesShould baby face forward or back?

What direction does your child’s stroller face? New research raises questions about stroller design and the role it may play in a child’s language development.

M. Suzanne Zeedyk, a senior lecturer in developmental psychology at the University of Dundee in Scotland, studied the way 2,700 families interact with their infants and toddlers while pushing them in strollers. She found that caregivers were less likely to speak to infants when the child was facing forward, compared with strollers where the baby faces the caregiver — what she calls a toward-facing journey. In a small controlled experiment, the researchers gave 20 mothers and infants ages 9 to 24 months a chance to use both types of strollers, and recorded their conversations. She wrote about her findings in a recent Op-Ed article in The Times.

Mothers talked to their children twice as much during the 15-minute toward-facing journey, and they also laughed more. The babies laughed more, too.

Of course, infants do not spend all their time in strollers, but anecdotal evidence suggests that babies can easily spend a couple of hours a day in them. And research tells us that children’s vocabulary development is governed almost entirely by the daily conversations parents have with them. When a stroller pusher can’t easily see the things that attract a baby’s attention, valuable opportunities for interaction can be missed.

Ms. Zeedyk notes that forward-facing strollers are a relatively new development. In the 19th century, strollers were designed so that infants faced the person pushing them. But the development of convenient collapsible strollers changed that, because engineering constraints required the baby to face forward to look at the world, rather than a parent or caregiver.

Ms. Zeedyk notes that her findings raise more questions than answers, but she hopes stroller manufacturers will work to develop a collapsible stroller that faces both ways.

Meanwhile, the findings already encourage us to think again about how babies experience stroller rides — and other forms of transportation like car seats, shopping carts and slings. Parents needn’t feel worried, but instead curious about the elements of the environment that attract their children’s interest. The core message of our findings is simple: Talk to your baby whenever you get the chance — and whichever direction your stroller faces.

To read the full report, go to “One Ride Forward, Two Steps Back.”.
This forms part of one of the sessions of the Baby Talker sessions we run from Smart Talkers www.smarttalkers.org.uk

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