Sad to say goodbye..... for now!

I've had to say goodbye to 2 groups of children this week. I've been working with them since January and had come to really look forwards to both groups.
The first one was at Stretton Springs Pre-School where we've been delivering Languageland for nursery. We've had a small core of children plus a rotation of others so they could all 'have a turn' on the magic carpet. The sessions were for the staff, mainly to help share a speech and language therapist's knowledge to add what to what they already know.

The other group was a set of 12 children from Pirehill First School and their parents. These were a bright, wriggly group who needed extra help with confidence, attention, listening and other simple skills so that they can achieve their potential. I used a languageland style approach here too with homework. Feedback was very good with all the parents feeling that they had learned something.
Languageland is a programme that has been developed over a 7 year period by Newcastle under Lyme PCT. It is demonstration training so that the SLT can show staff simple techniques to help in their own groups/classroom. It is available from Blacksheep Press with a  special offer at the moment www.blacksheeppress.co.uk
The good news is that I can still keep in touch with both places, as they have valued what we've done. I'll be doing further training for parents and staff at Stretton Springs and plan to run some pre-school groups for the up-coming intake at Pirehill, so that they are ready to listen and learn when they start school in September.

Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter With Bedtime Stories

Welcome to our March guest blogger, Frances Evesham:

Bedtime stories pack a secret punch. Quiet and relaxing, they tick all the right boxes for your health and that of your child. Take ten minutes to de-stress yourself and help him learn language skills to make him as smart as he can be. Growing Up in Scotland research suggests that children involved in activities like storytelling with their parents at an early age, develop more quickly. 

Sleep
After his busy day, your child needs plenty of sleep. The daily noise and excitement may leave him over stimulated, agitated and over excited.  A bedtime story provides the perfect opportunity to switch off the TV, stop other busy activity and concentrate on your child. Your child will relax as he listens to the calm sound of your voice and Looks at the pictures in a book.  Even a baby in his first year benefits from this oasis of peaceful tranquillity and he tends to fall asleep more quickly.

Repetition
From birth, your baby enjoys listening to your voice. He finds it soothing and in his first few weeks, he settles down when you speak to him. Build on these early listening skills with short, repetitive bedtime stories. Your tiny baby’s brain already contains many billions of neurons. Pathways linking these neurons together develop rapidly during his first three years, through repetitive experiences and actions. Read or tell the same story many times over, to help those brain pathways develop.

Vocabulary and speech
Short sentences linked to pictures help your child recognise words and, as he grows older, they help him develop a wide vocabulary. Young children love long words, like “elephant” and “caterpillar”, words that imitate sounds, like “quack” and  “crash” and words that are fun to say, like “tick tock” and “pitter patter”.  As your child makes you repeat them many times, he learns to anticipate every word and insists that the story is identical every time you read.

Speech sounds
Hearing those words often and joining in with you as you say them, encourages him to exercise his speech muscles and try out tricky sound combinations.  Remember, it doesn’t matter that he won’t say all the sounds properly. Avoid the temptation to correct him. When he’s ready, he’ll get them right, and bedtime stories are a time for gentle enjoyment.

Relaxation
You gain as much from bedtime stories as your child does. Those few moments of quiet every day force you to forget household duties or work anxieties.  Aim to enjoy the time. Sit comfortably, with your happy child snuggled against you. Breathe slowly and quietly, noticing how his breathing also slows down.  Let your inner actor free, with your uncritical child as your audience.  Your child grows up and leaves home, and these memories will remain with you forever.

Learning about life
Try making up your own stories. Tell a tale about your child’s teddy and the adventures he has while the family sleeps, or make your child himself the centre of a story. As he grows older, story is a safe way to introduce information on difficult or scary topics, like death, moving house or bullying. Begin storytelling when your baby is small, and you lay down a habit to benefit him for years to come.

Some of my favourites:
We're Going on a Bear Hunt; Michael Rosen; 2003
The Very Hungry Caterpillar; Eric Carle; 1969
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?; Bill Martin Jr; 1996
Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear?; Martin Waddell; 2001

What stories do your children love?

Growing Up in Scotland is following the progress of 5,000 babies born between June 2004 and May 2005.

Frances Evesham worked as a speech and language therapist for many years. Her Kindle eBook, How to help your child talk and grow smarter, explains how your child learns to talk and how you can help. Find out more at http://www.getmeoffthehook.com/speechcontacts/book.html

Hear hear!!

I was very concerned about the poor listening skills of children in primary schools so I decided to seek the views of colleagues in education. This was to reveiw an earlier study in the 1990s which I had been done with a colleague at the time, Sue Gowers. This is a brief report on the findings:

The Problem?

        189 Early Years Departments including Head Teachers, class Teaches, early years co-ordinators and special needs co-ordinators contributed their feelings. The 94% return rate for a questionnaire probably speaks for itself about the level of concern as typically, a response of around 32.5%

All of the schools were extremely worried: children generally have shorter attention span and most have difficulty listening. The problem is getting worse with children entering school ill-prepared for the demands of the classroom.

Many respondents blamed the constant blare of 24 hour TV with increased background noise causing children to switch off. Others felt that children’s senses were being over loaded with non-auditory stimulation. Most expressed a concern about the time children spend watching television & DVDs or playing computer type games. All felt that too much screen time including TV was partly to blame because children could just watch the pictures and didn’t need to listen.

On the whole respondents blamed parents for children’s poor attention and listening skills. Perhaps it’s the pressure of today’s busy lifestyle that necessitates leaving them in front of the TV as surrogate babysitter with little time set aside for conversation. 75% felt there were no social status differences.  Could it be that all families experience pressure but for different reasons? ‘Middle class’ parents are busy working to pay the mortgage, cars and holidays so they don’t have time to interact with their children, while others don’t realise they ought to?

Consequences?

As a result of poor attention and listening skills the class teacher has to begin by teaching them to listen. Unfortunately, it is assumed that children are equipped with the necessary abilities to learn but most school staff found that a great deal of time is taken up directing and re-focussing. In the 1970s it was felt that by the time a child arrived at school they had almost fully developed attention so that they could be drawing whilst listening to and understanding a completely separate instruction (Cooper, Moodley & Reynell 1978). These days the Teacher would have to ask them to put down their pencils, turn to the teacher, give the instruction and then tell them to continue the task.

As listening is a learned skill, children with learning difficulties will take longer than their peers to acquire it. Often extra work is needed for this group within the mainstream classroom. 
Probably as a result of poor auditory skills, there are many more speech and language problems in mainstream schools. Estimates vary but it is generally accepted that 7% of any class is likely to experience specific difficulty. Jean Gross Government Communication Tsar identified 1 in 6 3 year olds with identified difficulties but ‘many, many more’  with delays which hadn’t been picked up. Delays are almost becoming the norm. Bercow (2008) found up to 50% had communication difficulties which would impact on the children’s learning in school.

The Solution?

Ideally, one of the solutions is parental guidance when the children are younger which is why I set up Smart Talkers pre-school groups. One of the main aims is to show parents how to use ‘active listening’. We tend to think of listening as a passive skill but it actually an active learning task involving several aspects: good sitting, good looking, good waiting and good thinking. These were identified by Maggie Johnson who has done a great deal of work on this area including with children who have ADHD. Each part needs to be worked on in order. Realistically, however, the task of sorting the problem falls to the class teacher.

When working with children with short attention spans, learning activities have to be restructured so that only short periods of concentration are required with many different activities designed to retain interest and attention. Maggie has written ‘How to get them to hang on to your every word’ which has some great class room techniques for all ages. However, the following general strategies will be useful:

General Strategies ·        Ensure you have full attention and eye contact ·        Keep the instructions short & simple so that the key words are kept to a minimum ·        Speak as slowly, clearly and naturally as possible ·        Give the child time to understand/process the information/instruction. It may be necessary to repeat even simple instructions several times in order for the child to process the information ·        Check they have understood what is expected of them ‘Comprehension monitoring’ ·        Try to develop the child overall confidence by praising him for things he is good at. Also try to make communication as pleasurable an experience as possible. When a child is nervous or anxious the ability to understand may be adversely affected ·        Keep external distractions to a minimum whist giving instructions ·        Use gesture and other non-verbal cues whenever possible e.g. facial expression pointing etc ·        Use visual clues and cues e.g. pictures of the tasks, picture timetable

 

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10 ways to develop your child's language skills

Guest blog by the Talking Matters Team, an excellent  group of speech pathologists from Australia

If you are waiting for an assessment or therapy to begin, or if you just want to help your child’s development every day, here are some simple things you can do that make a real difference to your child’s language skills.

1. Talk together every day. Talk to your child whenever you can, as you go about daily activities like cooking, bathing, dressing, eating, travelling to kindy or school, getting ready for bed. 

2. Get down to your child’s level. Ensure your child can see your face when you are talking to them. This helps them focus, lets them see and hear your words better and encourages them to copy you. 

3. Follow your child’s lead when you talk. Take some time to see what holds your child’s interests. Watch what they look at, touch, hear and reach for and talk with them about these things. 

4. Talk about what you are doing and ‘think out loud’. Talk in simple words about what you are doing as you do your daily activities to develop your child’s vocabulary. “I am cutting carrots into circles”. 

5. Be positive. Use lots of encouragement and tell your child what they have done well. Use specific words. “I like the way you used your words to ask for that”. “The red colour in that picture looks great”. 

6. Model new words. Tell your child the names of things they have not seen before. Teach them new action words when you do things together. Teach them describing words by talking about what they see, hear, touch, taste and smell. Include words about size, shape, colour and feel.

7. Recast your child’s errors. If your child makes a mistake when talking, repeat the sentence, fixing the mistake to show them the right way. Use a positive tone and repeat it a few times but keep it natural. E.g. Child “I runned”. Adult “Yes you ran, you ran very fast, you ran right to mummy”. Try repeating this same word a few more times later on, so your child gets lots of chances to hear it the right way.

8. Use lots of repetition. Young children learn though repetition. Repeat new ideas, words and concepts over and over. Repeat stories and songs too. Repeat new words and ideas in different places, times and situations to help your child learn the full meaning and understand different ways the word can be used.

9. Read lots of books together. Reading to your child is one of the best things you can do to help them learn. Make it a part of your day every day. Read new books but also old repeat old favourites. Choose books which suit your child’s age, language level and interests. Talk about what you read and ask your child questions.

10. Embrace new experiences. Try new places, games, songs, books and activities with your child. Do something special and different every chance you can as this opens up new words, ideas and concepts to talk about.  

The Talking Matters Online Store has language games to download, print and play. 

For more details on these ideas go to our website at www.talkingmatters.com.auand log into plus then go to language difficulties to download more information for free.

Talking Matters Team

Autism diagnosis helped by speech screen

A  device may be able to automatically screen young children for autism based on how they talk, U.S. researchers say. The small recorder fits into a child's pocket and analyzes the words the child says during the day, and a software program evaluates how the child makes certain sounds.

A team of researchers led by Kimbrough Oller of the University of Memphis analyzed more than 3 million syllabic utterances, collected from almost 1,500 all-day recordings from 232 children aged 10 months to 4 years.

The program correctly identified an existing autism diagnosis 86 percent of the time. The analysis also predicted the age of a typically developing child, said the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Although clinicians have been saying for many years that they think that autistic kids sound strange when they talk, there's been no practical way to use vocalization as a part of the diagnostic or screening procedure in working with autism," said Oller, professor of audiology and speech-language pathology.

Oller identified the speech patterns the device analyzes and helped develop the screening method.

The tests were conducted in English, but Oller said the technique may apply to other languages. "It hasn't actually been tried yet, but there's every reason to think it should," he said.

Doctors now diagnose autism by testing children for a range of behavioral and speech issues including how much they talk by a certain age and whether they make eye contact with other people.

"Autism is a multi-factoral disorder and it has many behavioral dimensions to consider. And vocalization is clearly an important one," said Oller. "But I certainly don't think it should be used exclusively."

Oller, who studies language learning and language evolution, has identified how the formation of different syllables changes during a child's first four years.

Instead of saying "ba" as part of a longer word, for instance, a young child might at first say "ba-a," with "sort of a staccato or tremor kind of pattern," said Oller. The speech development of autistic children does not follow those typical patterns, the analysis shows.

The software distinguishes among speakers and processes sounds made only by the child being studied. The day-length recordings enable the researchers to examine a child's natural speech.

Parents send the recorder back to the company after the child has worn it for a day and the company analyzes the recording for language development progress and autism.

Infoture Inc developed the device and the software. The company dissolved in February 2009 and was reconstituted as the LENA Foundation, a not-for-profit organization, which continues to fund the research. The foundation sells the device along with clothing with a pocket to hold the recorder.

Oller received consultation fees from Infoture before it dissolved and several of the other researchers are employees of the LENA Foundation.

Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE66I4UN20100719

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The Year of Communication or the Year of cuts for speech therapy?

While most people are applauding the King's Speech as being pro-speech therapy and great for our cause, I came across a quote from Gill George, from Unite:

"This is the year of The King's Speech, with the attendant publicity forspeech and language therapy. It's also the year in which we speech therapists across England lose our jobs. Most of us don't work with royalty. We work with ordinary people – stammerers, stroke patients, small children, adults with learning disabilities. Speech therapy services are now being destroyed, through NHS cuts, and cuts in education and children's centre funding. George VI went private; our millionaire politicians presumably do the same. Most of us don't have that luxury".

What do you feel about this? Let me know.......

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Half of boys aren't ready for school and they're not catching up

This article caught my eye today, the research featured backs up another London University study which showed that poor language skills at aged 7 was a good predictor of later socio-economic well being... a very scary but real link! This one associates it with an even more blighted future too:

By Stephen Adams 6:30AM GMT 11 Feb 2011 The Daily Telegraph

Statistics from the Department for Education show that 53 per cent of boys have not reached a "good level of development" by five, compared to 35 per cent of girls. Combined, the figure is 44 per cent.

Children are assessed by teachers to see if they can carry out basic skills like writing their name and reciting letters of the alphabet.

Yesterday, a leading public health adviser warned that the life-long impact of failing to reach this earliest of grades was "horrendous".

Sir Michael Marmot, professor of public health at University College London, said: "Only about 50 per cent of children are rated by their teachers as having achieved a good level of development by the age of five.

"You know what that means? Poorer level of early school development; poorer performance at every school stage; lower status; living in a poor area.

"It all starts at the beginning of life and works through the life course. This is horrendous really."

Those who failed at school also tend to live shorter lives that are blighted earlier by disability.

A year ago Sir Michael unveiled a review, called Fair Society, Healthy Lives, into how to even out the differences in people's health across geographical areas and social classes.

Giving pre-school children "the best start in life" was the highest priority recommendation, as targeting them has the biggest effect.

Sir Michael proposed increasing spending on this age group with measures such as "more parenting support programmes, a well-trained early years work force and high quality early years care".

The work we are doing at Small Talk Speech & Language Therapy and Smart Talkers pre-school groups is all aimed to address these issues.  We have a comprehensive package of programmes and activities to train staff by demonstration, help parents and above all share examples of good practise to benefit the children. For more about us www.private-speech-therapy.co.uk and www.smarttalkers.org.uk.

or ring 0844 704 5888

Related articles

• Half of boys failing at school by five (telegraph.co.uk)
• Pre-schoolers 'still ahead at 15' (bbc.co.uk)
• Almost half of boys falling behind in school at five, research reveals (dailymail.co.uk)
• Child development concerns raised (bbc.co.uk)
• 60% of poorest children fail to reach good level of behaviour, says study (guardian.co.uk)

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