“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.

Our latest blog discusses using playful methods in speech therapy to boost communication skills. It emphasizes the effectiveness of wordplay, games, and puzzles for enhancing language learning and client engagement. Click here to read the blog:
https://content.liricare.com/games-in-speech-therapy/

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are always on the lookout for creative methods to boost engagement and enhance therapy results. Using humor in speech-language therapy sessions stands out as a powerful technique to meet these objectives. This blog delves into the importance of humor in speech therapy, highlighting how it can aid clients facing communication difficulties.

https://content.liricare.com/humor-in-speech-therapy/

Rare Disease Day !
Rare diseases pose special challenges which impact patients, the clinicians who care for them, and the investigators who study their conditions. Although rare diseases—defined as affecting < 200,000 US adults1—are individually uncommon, they are common in the aggregate, with nearly 7,000 such rare diseases affecting 25 to 30 million US adults, altogether 9% to 12% of the US population.1 Rare pulmonary diseases comprise an important subset and include, for example, alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD), primary ciliary dyskinesia, lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM), Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome, Birt-Hogg-Dube syndrome, pulmonary Langerhans cell histiocytosis, and hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia, among many others.

The challenge of these rare diseases is captured in the names of organizations charged with their oversight, that is; the branch of the Food and Drug Administration that oversees rare disease treatments is called the Office of Orphan Products Development, the designated group of the National Institutes of Health is called the Office of Rare Diseases, and the legislation that directs regulatory requirements for drugs and devices for these conditions is called the Orphan Disease Act. Orphan diseases may lack support and advocacy just as orphans lack parents.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chest.2017.12.018

As we continue our discussion on suicide prevention for Black children and youth, we must consider the ways SLPs can prevent suicide for CLD students in youth. One crucial way to do this is to create a safe space for children of color. Here are some tips adapted from Online Psychology@Pepperdine:

Regulate your own emotions. “Can you calmly talk about race?” We can help children feel calm and safe in our presence when we choose to regulate our own emotions about challenging topics.

Put up posters that support inclusion. Representation matters! “Featuring imagery and ideas that promote inclusion can give students a sense of belonging and cue that they are welcome” (OnlinePsychology@Pepperdine, 2021).

Create treatment plans that are inclusive of many identities: Introduce books written by authors of color. Use stories and assignments that highlight the histories of other cultures.

Assign writing prompts or discussions that encourage reflections/emotional regulation: This is the bottom line! We want to encourage students to use their expressive language skills and express their emotions (e.g., “To not hold their emotions in”). SLPs can have students practice identifying and labeling their emotions either confidentially or with peers.

Allow students to access a safe space: Find a location on your campus that helps the student feel safe or calm. This may be the classroom of a specific teacher they trust or a physical space like the library or counselors room.

Encourage students to take a timeout. Sometimes our students simply need a breather. According to the article, “if students can self-identify when they’re feeling overwhelmed, they can leave and come back when they’re ready.”

Establish an anonymous reporting system: Children are becoming more aware of microaggressions and overt racism at school and in other mainstream environments. Allow students to feel safe to report a racist incident and take it seriously through investigation. Do your best to ensure the student remains anonymous.

Recruit the help of teachers of color: Educators have a powerful skill for connecting with the students we serve. As SLPs, we can ask for help from our colleagues who “reflect and affirm the identities of students.” This, in turn, helps promote kinship, confidence, and safety for students.

Citation:

Pepperdine University. (2021, April 13). Helping Children of Color Heal from Collective Trauma [web log]. https://onlinegrad.pepperdine.edu/blog/children-of-color-collective-trauma-recovery/#supporting.