Hello and Happy Friday!

I would like to welcome Katie Yeh of Playing with Words 365 to our regular guest columnist team.  You can find her "debut" article in a 'Bonus SLP Corner' today.  Welcome, Katie!

I would also like to announce some exciting news!  PediaStaff will be unveiling our first Therapy App at AOTA 2012 in Indianapolis in April.   Its a toolbox for therapists, it's free, and it will feature, among other goodies, an IEP Calculator.   Can't make it to AOTA?  Watch these pages for a link at the end of the month.  We are pretty excited about it, and hope you will be too.

Here is our end of the month newsletter offering for you.  Have a great weekend! Feed My Inbox and have any feed you like delivered to your email inbox!

Have a great weekend and Take Care!

By: Becca Jarzynski, MS, CCC-SLP   

 

I've worked on social skills with quite a few children over the course of my twelve-year career as a pediatric speech-language pathologist.  The children I've worked with have had different behavioral challenges, varied levels of social understanding, and diverse language needs. And yet the vast majority of children, whether taught in groups or individually, have responded to a simple framework for teaching social skills:  Learn. Watch. Do.

 

Learn: Children who struggle with social skills often need explicit, step-by-step directions to understand what is expected of them in specific social situations.  Basic social skills can be broken down into discrete steps and explained to children concretely.  When I am helping a child learn a social skill, I almost always use visual prompts that capture the essence of each step as well.

 

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by Britt Collins, M.S. OTR/L

 

 

We have eight sensory systems that affect our ability to function.  Tactile, visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, vestibular, interoceptive and proprioceptive.  Today we are going to focus on the proprioceptive system but if you have further questions regarding any of the other systems, please visit www.spdfoundation.net to learn more.

 

Proprioception is the input to our muscles and joints that tell us where our body is in space.  If I was to tell you to close your eyes and I placed your right arm straight out in front of you, would you be able to match your left arm to it?  You should if you have good proprioceptors.  We get feedback to this system by learning as infants how to roll, crawl, cruise etc.  We also receive

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By: Stacy Menz 

 

Muscle tone is the resting state of your muscles.  When a child has low muscle tone it means that they need to put a lot more energy into getting their muscles to turn on to do what they want them to do.  I often try to explain this to parents by describing that feeling when you finally get to sink into the couch or your favorite arm chair and relax and then someone calls you from the other room and you have to rev up the energy to get up.  Think about having to do that every time

 

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by:   Lee A. Wilkinson, PhD, NCSP

There has been a dramatic worldwide increase in reported cases of autism over the past decade. Today, autism spectrum conditions affect approximately 1 to 2 % of the school-age population. Yet, compared to population estimates, identification rates have not kept pace in our schools. It is not unusual for school age children with milder forms of autism (e.g., Asperger syndrome, pervasive developmental disorder-NOS, high-functioning autistic disorder) to go undiagnosed. In fact, the proportion of school age children with significant autistic traits likely exceeds the number of students with a clinical diagnosis of ASD.

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by: Alejandro Brice, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

 

Introduction
Pragmatics is the ability to use language in specific contexts and for specific purposes (Brice, 1992). School based speech-language pathologists are often faced with the task of differentiating between English learners (ELs) and bilingual students with language learning disabilities. One method of achieving this outcome is to measure their pragmatic abilities, or social language use (Brice & Montgomery, 1996). However, assessment of language, particularly language use in social interaction, is a difficult task. In a review of currently available tests and procedures for use with students, Cummins (1984) stated that assessment must place "more emphasis on sensitive and informed interpretation of students' behavior" in everyday communication situations (p. 206).

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by Katie Yeh, M.S. CCC-SLP,  Playing With Words 365 

 

I feel like Everett, with the exception of walking, has hit every developmental milestone earlier than his older sister. He sat up, crawled and spoke his first word earlier than she did. Yeah yeah yeah, I know you aren't supposed to compare your children but I'm sorry: I am human and I will compare them sometimes. Plus, as a speech pathologist AND mommy, I have always been fascinated with development in general, so I find it interesting how my two children have developed a little differently.

 

At a year old, it was like a switch was turned on and Ev started pointing and "talking" about EVERYTHING. This kid is obsessed at pointing at things and "discussing" them with us. You know, very intelectual conversation. For example-"babababaguhdadadadada" or "guhguhguhguhbababababamamamamama".

 

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WQED in Pittsburgh did a story on Childhood Apraxia of Speech that aired in 2005.  Still a great piece today!

 Watch This Story on our Blog 

[Source:  The Daily Mail]

 

Twenty five words that every toddler should use have been listed by scientists.

 

The words and phrases, which cover toys, food, animals and, of course, include 'mummy' and 'daddy' and 'bye bye' are designed to detect youngsters who could struggle with words for years come.

 

Being slow to talk can also be a sign of deeper problems from deafness to autism.  

 

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