Did you know that caregiver education is essential to a child’s carryover/generalization of skills within the home, school, and community?

Creating understanding, responsive, respectful, and collaborative rapport with caregivers can yield to an environment where caregivers feel safe and encouraged to learn.

Clink the link below to gain insights on how a speech-language pathologist can integrate such an approach when providing caregiver training for augmentative and alternative communication and/or multimodal communication use (which involves all forms of communication use). 💞🤩✨💖

https://www.theinformedslp.com/reviews

Did you know that delayed echolalia is the first stage of gestalt language development?! It’s a building block not something that should be extinguished❣️

If you are looking for an introduction to gestalt language development checkout this free masterclass designed for parents and professionals❣️

This free class also discusses how child-led therapy can help support children’s overall language development❣️🤩
https://www.meaningfulspeech.com/offers/YpBHFc24/checkout

For a deep dive into the well-verified, decades long, qualitative research that details the differences between gestalt language processing and analytic language processing (the mainstream development of language through single word use) look no further than this amazing site which will grant you access to more educational resources 🤩:

https://communicationdevelopmentcenter.com/

An ACE score is a tally of different types of abuse, neglect, and other hallmarks of a rough childhood. According to the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, the rougher your childhood, the higher your score is likely to be and the higher your risk for later health problems. You can take the test below:

Take the quiz for yourself and learn what is does and does not mean:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/02/387007941/take-the-ace-quiz-and-learn-what-it-does-and-doesnt-mean

We can better support children’s needs by adopting and actively practicing trauma informed care.

Trauma-informed care recognizes and responds to the signs, symptoms, and risks of trauma to better support the health needs of patients who have experienced negative consequences from dangerous situations. It's a commitment to avoid repeating traumatic experiences and to help people regain a sense of safety, power, and self-worth despite the toxic stress they have been exposed to.

Read more here:
https://www.healthcaretoolbox.org/d-e-f-framework-trauma-informed-care

“Healthy development in the early years provides the building blocks for educational achievement, economic productivity, responsible citizenship, lifelong health, strong communities, and successful parenting of the next generation.”

“This three-part video series from the Center and the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child depicts how advances in neuroscience, molecular biology, and genomics now give us a much better understanding of how early experiences are built into our bodies and brains” -Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

Learn more here:
https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/three-core-concepts-in-early-development/

Did you know that exposure to trauma can have lifelong lasting impacts and even result in increased physical health risks as well shortened lifespan?

Former Surgeon General of California & Pediatrician, Nadine Burke Harris, expounds on the neurological impacts of trauma across the lifespan in the TEDTalk entitled “How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime” 💔📈📊🧠

“High doses of adversity not only affect brain structure and function, they affect the developing immune system, developing hormonal systems, and even the way our DNA is read and transcribed.” -Nadine Burke Harris

Watch TED Talk in full here:
https://youtu.be/95ovIJ3dsNk?si=ETLaH0e73Lhbika8

Did you know that childhood is a crucial period for not only speech language development but for building cognitive development?

During times of today when screentime is at an all time high, social communication skills, motor planning, and attention difficulties are being experienced by children worldwide like never before.

This summer, monitor your child’s overexposure to screen time and encourage your child’s participation in routine physical activities.

Scientific studies show, children who are more physically active have increased chances of demonstrating improvement in the following areas:
-focusing capabilities which include joint attention- coordinating one’s attention with others, attuning to stimuli and structured tasks presented for uninterrupted durations of time
-memory recall- retrieving information and/or experiences from the past
-emotional regulation- contributes to one’s ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experiences and process a variety of emotions; monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions
-executive functions- contributes to one’s ability to select and monitor behaviors that can facilitate the accomplishment of one’s goals
-social communication skills- interacting with others whether it be verbal and/or nonverbal communication in addition to understanding why and how one communicates

Improvements in all the aforementioned areas can yield to higher academic performance.

In 2020 after the George Floyd murder, I created an IG post titled "5 Ways to Support Black and Brown Children in Clinical and Education Settings." I repurposed the post into a poster to help service providers and educators better service multicultural children. You can get it here: https://tinyurl.com/supportBIPOCkids

I have retired and have hundreds of stories, activities, photos, images, art for speech and language and also for early teaching for teachers. I have set up a site to share these materials with others at a discount - normally $25 but now $15 if you use the code honeybunny10 at https://www.slpstorytellers.com/register-2/ I hope others can use these downloadable stories and activities as I did over the years and some I have created recently.

I have retired and have hundreds of stories, activities, photos, images, art for speech and language and also for early teaching for teachers. I have set up a site to share these materials with others at a discount - normally $25 but now $15 if you use the code honeybunny10 at https://www.slpstorytellers.com/register-2/ I hope others can use these downloadable stories and activities as I did over the years and some I have created recently.