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

All the way from America!!

Our Language Land training has been reported in an American on-line news channel newsfromus.com http://www.newsfrom.us/2010/04/22/getting-ready-for-school/ I'm not sure how or why they picked up the story but its good publicity!

Language Land was designed to be used by speech and language therapists as a training package for teachers and nursery staff. It provides a complete programme of demonstration training to help speech and language skills of all children in primary and nursery education, not just those with identified problems. The programme was trialled extensively and successfully in primary schools in Newcastle, Staffordshire, by its author, Angela Wright and her team, but I could find no evidence that anyone had used the nursery component of the programme so I piloted its use in local nurseries. The results were fantastic and we have plans to do more in other settings.

(Languageland is available from Black Sheep Press www.blacksheeppress.co.uk)

Signing in Nurseries

We're delighted to be doing some signing more work with the excellent Horn End nurseries. We start this week with Stafford and next week at Rugeley and Hixon.

We can do signing sessions for all age groups and training on functional signing for staff and parents.

We call our signing 'Smart Sign' which is based on Makaton with some supplementary BSL. We've had some amazing results recently at other places too such as Midway Academy in Uttoxeter and in the kindergarten at Vernon Lodge Preparatory School in Stretton, near Penkridge, where the children picked up the signs so easily.

We're looking forwards to introducing Smart Sign for babies and toddlers at Hixon Children's centre too this week. I'll keep you posted with progress, and of course, photos of the little ones!  

For more about our signing sessions www.smarttalkers.org.uk or for other nursery-based programmes
www.private-speech-therapy.co.uk

Summer holidays affects language development?

The American Association of Speech and Language Pathologists have released a very controversial statement which asserts that children from poorer backgrounds are detrimentally affected by the 6 weeks summer holiday (or vacation to use their term). They feel that without the quality interaction experienced at school or nursery, children's language skills suffer. As a result they have published a list of activities and suggestions for parents to follow

http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/Parent-Stim-Activities.htm

Is the same true here? What do you think?

Smart Talkers Video

Being interviewed by Andy Deveraux from Devmac about the groups. Thank you to Horn End Rugeley for letting us video there.

The video was done before the collective name change to Smart Talkers as it looked as if we couldn't trademark Small Talkers.... in fact we could, and we did!

It's a good insight into why I started the groups.

For more infornation about the groups www.smarttalkers.org.uk