Five Strategies to Encourage Your Child to Talk

 

Here are five simple strategies you can use to encourage your child to expand their expressive language at home.  At first, it may seem overwhelming to keep them all in your “toolbox.”  That’s okay!  I suggest focusing on implementing just one new strategy at day for a week.  As you practice and gain confidence, you’ll be able to juggle them all and really get your little one talking up a storm!

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Making Things Sticky

Many parents have had the experience of walking out of a great therapy session and then thinking one day later, “How were we supposed to work on that goal again?”  Likewise, many therapists have had the experience of déjà vu when they feel like their session is just a repeat of last week’s, with no progress toward speech, language, and listening targets.  When we introduce new skills in therapy, how can we ensure that children learn them and parents remember the techniques used to teach them in a way that is fun and meaningful for all?

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A “Why Not?” Attitude Toward Hearing Loss

Learning that your child has hearing loss can be a world-shaking event for parents.  The truth is, though millions of people around the world have hearing loss, most parents have little prior experience with people who are deaf or hard of hearing before discovering that their child is suddenly a member of this group.  Many people’s only experience with hearing loss is their hard-of-hearing grandfather whose hearing aids whistle all the time, or the person they’ve seen signing on TV, or even, sadly, deaf peddlers they’ve encountered on the street.  In short, families are plunged into an entirely unfamiliar world.

 
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Asking All the Right Questions

It’s said that there’s no such thing as a stupid question.  But for therapists who want to communicate well with the families they serve, there are certainly some ways to ask the questions that are smarter than others.  How can therapists ask the questions they need to get crucial information from families, and how can families ask their pressing questions in ways that help them become fully informed, empowered members of the therapy team?  There’s no such thing as a dumb question, but if we think more carefully about how we are asking, not just what we are asking, the lines of communication may become clearer.

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“That Kid” Who Won’t Sit Still: 12 Tips for Making Therapy Work

We’ve all met “That Kid.”  The one who has seemingly endless energy.  The one you have to brace yourself for before he enters the room.  The one who can never, ever seem to sit still for therapy.  What’s a therapist (or parent!) to do?

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Do You Teach Lipreading?

When I tell people that my job is teaching children with hearing loss to listen and talk without the use of sign language, it usually stops people in their tracks for a minute.  The first question I usually get is, “How?” which leads to a whole discussion about the auditory brain.  The second most frequently asked question is, “So you teach lipreading, right?”  Not exactly…

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How to Give a Communication Options Talk… Without Doing Most of the Talking

One of my favorite things to do as an Auditory Verbal Therapist is to meet with families of newly identified children for their initial evaluation.  It’s such a privilege for me to be able to walk alongside families as they take their first tentative steps into the world of hearing loss.  Thanks to universal newborn hearing screening, the families I see often have children who are just a few months old.  These families are dealing with not only the typical new parent emotions, exhaustion, and joy, but also the added shock of realizing that their baby has a hearing loss.  And on top of all that, they’re faced with the monumental question, “How do you want your child to communicate?”

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Get Me Outta Here! When It’s Time to Change Activities

The child is getting fussy, the parent is getting bored, and the therapist is starting to sweat.  It’s time to change activities, and stat.  But it’s not as simple as pulling out a new toy.  How you make the change makes a big difference.

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How to Plan and Implement a Successful Auditory Verbal Therapy Session

In the past, I’ve provided a “behind the scenes” look at the anatomy of an AVT session geared toward parents, but what if the responsibility for running the session is on your shoulders?  What does it take to actually plan and execute a successful AV session as the therapist?

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