What is Echolalia and Its Relation to Autism?
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Does it mean it’s Autism?
No, although echolalia is something that Autistic people tend to do… If your child echoes, it doesn’t automatically mean that your child is on the spectrum. In fact, typically developing children also echo and imitate us as a part of language development. Sometimes echolalia might occur in children with Tourette's syndrome as “verbal tics”.
Immediate Echolalia
This means your child immediately echoes what you’ve just said. People would describe their children as “parrots” when this happens. Which begs the question of whether the child understands the word or not. That’s why it’s better to teach children with gestures as well so at least they can grasp the meaning. If you see the child use the word...
Teaching Children To Speak In Sentences
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Work on expanding their vocabulary
Anyone who wants to speak in long and coherent sentences must work on their vocab. This is true for you or someone who’s learning a foreign language. Vocabulary is the building block, you cannot expand a sentence unless you know the word. Therefore, you should be always working on vocabulary. Children who are speech and language delayed have trouble with learning abstract words. This includes verbs, so be sure to teach as many verbs as possible.
Target specific sentence structures
When teaching children sentence building. It’s important that we stick to teaching 1 sentence structure at a time. That’s because children who are language delayed do not have the flexibility to learn different sentences in one go. If they did, they wouldn’t need our help in therapy. So target...
Preterm Babies and Speech Delay
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A 5 Minute Activity that gets Rid of Handpulling
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Developmental delayed not only in speech and language
Most preterm babies are at risk for developmental delays in physical, cognitive, social, speech and language. Parents should be alert about how these delays might interact with each other. For example, a child who might have coordination problems might also have their social skills affected.
Preterm babies require some time to catch up
Recent research shows that preterm children tend not to catch up to their peers even by school age. Of course, there are outliers but this is a general trend. This includes grammar skills, receptive and expressive language abilities and also reading and writing skills.
Parent involvement is crucial for language development
Like everything in life, you practice what you...
Will Your Speech Delayed Child Catch up?
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It depends on your child’s diagnosis and severity
As the saying goes “how long is a piece of string?” the answer is - it depends! Every child is different and their abilities vary. That’s why we need to know whether the diagnosis is in speech, language or both. Moreover, sometimes you’d be able to identify whether it’s a delay or a disorder. This needs to be determined by a qualified speech therapist.
In general, a delay implies that a child would catch up, whereas a disorder means that the development is out of order. However, the degree of severity will affect how long a child would need to be treated. Let’s say that your child has a speech disorder where he cannot articulate a few sounds only. For simplicity’s sake, maybe the /L/and /s/ sound, then you can expect that it wouldn’t take long for...
Rant About Speech Delay From Speech Therapist (Must Watch for Parents)
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Misconception about speech delay
Speech delay is an over-generalized term. What people mean is speech AND language delay. Most of the time, if a child cannot use words yet it’s considered a “language delay” because there’s a delay in learning to use language. Whereas, if your child cannot say certain sounds or has a lot of articulation errors - that should be considered a “Speech delay”.
Autism and red flags
Autism is scary. Many parents are incredibly afraid of the A-word. However, that should not be the thing that fuels your actions. Yes, there are a whole bunch of red flags and early signs of Autism. And when your child seems to be showing these signs, any parent would be fixated by that.
Eye contact and Responding to Name
Out of all the red flags, eye contact and whether the child responds to his/her name comes up all the...
3 Ways to Make Children Speak
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Using bubbles or a strong routine
When teaching a child to speak, we must have something of value. What does that mean? Children will be more likely to interact with you when you’re fun. And the fastest way to achieve that is to use something like bubbles.
By using a desirable object like bubbles, you can create a play routine. It’s something predictable, fun and what you do over and over.
Teach baby steps towards words
Many skip to teach children to speak words. If it were that easy, the child would have already started to speak themselves! So you should accept gestures and word approximations. What gestures? Teach “open” and “blow” if you’re using bubbles. It depends on what your child likes and what activity you’re trying to do.
Keep modelling the language you want to hear
To teach a child to...
Why Do Children Repeat Your Questions?
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Why do children repeat questions?
We all repeat parts or the whole question when we don’t understand something. It’s only human to ask for clarification. Now, you might say that we would say “could you repeat again?” or “I don’t understand”... However, children do not have the required vocabulary to say that to you. So most of the time when they repeat questions, it means that they do not understand the question.
It becomes a routine!
Another reason is that it has become a routine to copy what you say. Children use imitation to learn a language (actually all of us do). It’s typical for delayed children to inappropriately use a question to express something they are familiar with. For example, I had a student who would say “are you okay?” whenever he fell down. That’s because he heard it from the...
Why Children Won’t Answer “What Did You Do at School Today?”
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Speaking about “here and now”
Children who speak around 1-2 words per sentence/phrase have trouble grasping the concept of time. So when they describe, it’s usually talking about things that are here and now. What does that mean? It means they will only talk about things that are right in front of them. Most of the time, it’s “out of sight, out of mind”.
When to make the shift to there and then
Does your child speak about things that aren’t present? If s/he does, then it’s a good time to start referring to things that are there and then. “There and then” is the opposite of “here and now”. Do not ask questions about “there and then” but SPEAK and DESCRIBE in “there and then”. There’s a big difference because when you’re asking, children are put...
Why Language Learning is a Game of Giving
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Why some people can speak 3+ languages fluently
It really is all about the language environment the child is in. People who live in South East Asia are multi-lingual because of sheer exposure to different languages and culture. That’s why for your child to learn the language, you also need to provide a language-rich environment.
“Language is a behaviour” - we learn it when there’s a need to communicate
I once heard from an Indonesian who speaks 5 languages that language is a behaviour. What he meant was that it’s a habit. He had to use different languages with different people. This forced him to learn it. What you need to understand if a child is a language delayed, the whole language acquisition system is delayed and isn’t up to speed yet. You need to provide a need for your child to use language.
How to create a need?
You...
It Takes 2 to Talk Book Review
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In this video, we review the book “It Takes Two to Talk” from the Hanen Centre - get the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Takes-Two-Talk-Practical-Children-ebook/dp/B08BJ9ZW8W (not an affiliate link)