With April being Autism Awareness month, we figured we could highlight how Speech Therapy can benefit children diagnosed with autism. Speech covers a wide variety of topics; however one major topic that we work on is pragmatic (social) skills. Children are taught how to handle certain social situations, how to communicate and understand others and simply learn the aspects of life as they come. Children with autism typically have an increased difficulty with communication. Speech Therapy allows them to learn how to communicate both verbally and nonverbal. Verbal communication is helping them understand language, i.e proper grammar(pronouns, irregular/regular verbs), auditory processing and figurative language(idioms, multiple meaning words). As for nonverbal communication this allows children to learn how to maintain appropriate body posture, eye contact and body awareness when in a conversation with others. Sometimes children with autism are awesome with communication and pragmatic skills. They might just have difficulty with their articulation, meaning it can be difficult for others to understand them. Speech Therapy offers children the ability to learn how to understand where their tongue, mouth and lips need to go to be able to produce certain sounds. Speech Therapy provides children with autism the gateway to being able to communicate, understand and learn about the world around them.

Crystal Espinal BS, SLPA

If you think your child might have hearing loss or even if your child has been diagnosed with hearing loss, parents often don’t know what to do. Speak with your pediatrician to come up with a plan for your child if they have any type of hearing loss. Seeing an audiologist and a Speech-Language Pathologist should help you through that decision-making process.

A Speech-Language Pathologist can help your child with their language skills to communicate. The key is early intervention with hearing loss. A child with mild hearing loss may not be hearing certain sounds in the English language. Whether it is through sign language, cued speech, oral communication or a mixture, communication is key for living with hearing loss.

Seeing a Speech-Language Pathologist on a weekly basis can provide support for your child and teach your child speech and listening skills. Even if your child has a IEP with in the school system and is receiving help in school, seeing a Speech-Language Pathologists one-on-one will provide your child with tools to communicate.

A Speech-Language Pathologist will work on helping your child expand their vocabulary. They will work on exercises that help them learn the individual sounds of each letter in a word and how to pronounce the word. Speech-Language Pathologists also work on visual cues to help listen in situations that can be helpful for a hard-of-hearing child.

Having a child with hearing loss can be frustrating and concerning, but with a plan and proper help your child can learn to communicate and be successful in everyday activities.

How to Use “Indirect Correction” to Improve Speech and Language Skills

Does your child become frustrated when you correct his or her speech?  If so, would you like to try a technique other than direct correction?  When corrected, some children become really frustrated and will say “Never mind” or “That’s what I said!”.  You can try what is called “Indirect Correction” to help your child and avoid some of the frustration!

With direct correction, you let your child know that what they have said is not clear or grammatically complete.  For example, with direct correction, if your child says “I like tars” you say, “No they are not ‘tars’ they are “cars”.  With direct correction, if your child says “Her is my friend”, you say “No, it is not ‘her’, it is ‘she’”.  Although direct correction provides instruction, it can make children feel like their message is not being listened to and they are being criticized when they attempt to communicate.

With indirect correction, you conversationally repeat back what your child has said, with correct use of grammar and pronunciation.  This way, your child is able to hear the correct way to say something, without interrupting the flow of conversation and causing frustration.   This article will now give examples of indirect correction for articulation and indirect correction for language.

With indirect correction of articulation, you can repeat back conversationally what your child has said but without the articulation errors.  For example, if your child says “The wabbit is wunning”, you can repeat it back conversationally with “Yes, the rabbit is running”, placing emphasis on the “R” sound.  If your child says “I wanna rea the cah in the hah”, you can say “Great, I love to read the Cat in the Hat!”, with emphasis on the final consonants.  By doing this you are acknowledging your child’s statement, giving them a chance to let you know if you did not understand them, and you are modelling the correct pronunciation.

With indirect correction of language, you can repeat back conversationally what your child has said with correct grammar.  For example, if your child says “Her running”, you can repeat it back conversationally with “Yes, she is running.”, with emphasis on the words “she” and “is”.  If your child says “I falled down”, you can repeat it back conversationally with “Uh-oh, you fell down.”, with emphasis on the word “fell”.  This acknowledges your child’s statement and what your child wants you to know without interrupting the flow of conversation, while helping your child hear correct grammar.

Although direct correction can be useful, especially during speech and language homework practice time, it can be overwhelming when used frequently during conversation.  If your child is becoming frustrated by direct correction during conversation, you might want to give indirect correction a try!

Cynthia Pollard MS, CCC-SLP

Milestone Tracker app by the CDC

A new app created by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) called Milestone Tracker makes it easier to keep track of how your child is developing from ages 2 months through 5 years, a very critical period of development!

This app is available for both Apple and Android and is absolutely FREE! You choose your child’s age and it goes through a few skills that he/she is expected to have achieved. Your answers are then summarized into a list that you can email yourself or even show your doctor/therapist if you have any concerns. The app also gives tips and activities that are appropriate to your child’s age to continue to support development. You can review milestones in specific developmental areas including: Social/Emotional, Language/Communication, Movement/Physical, and Cognitive (learning, thinking, problem-solving). A bonus: you can add multiple children to the app to track all of their milestones separately as well as track appointments, such as doctor visits.

Milestone Tracker: https://www.cdc.gov/mobile/mobileapp.html

The CDC has additional resources that are extremely useful in tracking, supporting, and advocating for your child’s development. “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/index.html

As always, if you have any concerns for your child’s development, you should speak with his/her primary healthcare provider and/or therapist right away.

(This blog post is part 4 of 4 in the short mini-series about therapy processes)

If it is determined by the evaluating therapist that the patient would benefit from ongoing therapy, the next step would be scheduling the patient for ongoing therapy.  As previously mentioned in our prior blog post, due to therapist’s schedule and availability, the evaluating therapist may not always be the therapist who treats the patient. It is not uncommon for this to happen, and if it does, the treating therapist/assistant will be given a copy of the patient’s evaluation and plan of care. This way the treating therapist/assistant knows what the patient’s plan of care and goals are, in addition to how to set up for the patient’s sessions. While the OT completes the initial evaluation, both Occupational Therapists (OT) & Certified Occupational Therapy Assistants (COTA) are licensed and trained to provide ongoing therapy. The same goes for Speech, while the SLP completes the initial evaluation, both Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) & Speech Language Pathologist Assisant (SLPA) are licensed and trained to provide ongoing therapy. Sonoran Sun Pediatric Therapy is truly blessed to have amazing, knowledgeable, kind, and caring therapist and assistants to meet any patient’s needs.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions or concerns regarding scheduling ongoing therapy.

Michael Jankowski, MS, OTR/L
Occupational Therapy Director