Category Archives: Articulation

Communication & Play Milestones: (Ages 2.5 to 3 Years)

By Chatterboxes

RECEPTIVE COMMUNICATION:

Understands the use of objects; for example:
- Show what you use to cook food or Show me what you watch.
- Show me what you can ride or Show me what you wear on your feet
Understands part/whole relationships, for example:
- The wheel on the bike
- The tail of the cat
Understands descriptive concepts, such as “big” “wet” and “little”
Follows 2 step related and unrelated commands, without cues:
- Get the cup and give it to me
- Take off your coat and hang it up.

EXPRESSIVE COMMUNICATION:

Uses Plurals, such as “horses” or “blocks” or “babies.”
Combines 3+ words in spontaneous speech.
Answers “What” and “Who” Questions
Uses Verb + ing
For example, “The girl is playing.”
Uses a variety of nouns, verbs, modifiers and pronouns in spontaneous utterances.
Uses prepositions
Understands the concepts of one vs. all. For example,
Give me just one block.
Put all of the blocks in the box.

PLAY:

Performs longer sequences of play activities
Acts out familiar routines
Pretends to perform the caregiver/parent routines.

For more information on our Evaluations & Therapy, or to schedule a visit for your child, visit www.TeamChatterboxes.com

Speech & Language Developmental Milestones

By Chatterboxes

Children’s Speech and Language Development follows a typical pattern of development. The below milestones are speech and language skills that children acquire starting as young as 6 months.

If you have concerns about your child’s speech and/or language development, please feel free to Contact our Team to talk in more detail about your child’s development.

The 4 Stages of the Learning Process

By Chatterboxes

When mastering new therapeutic skills or goals, your child typically advances through a predictable series of learning stages.

Initially, your child may be uncertain as he tries to use the target skill.

With his therapist’s feedback and lots of reinforcement, your child will become more fluent, accurate, and confident in using his new skill.

From a parent’s perspective, It can be very useful to think of these phases of learning as a hierarchy. The learning hierarchy (Haring, Lovitt, Eaton, & Hansen, 1978) has four stages: acquisition, fluency, generalization, and adaptation:

Stage 1: Acquisition:

Your child is starting to be able to complete the target skill correctly, but he is not yet accurate or fluent in the the skill.

The goal in therapy at this stage is to improve his accuracy.

Stage 2: Fluency:

Your child is now able to complete the target skill accurately, but he works slowly and thoughtfully in order to do so.

The goal of this phase in therapy is to increase the student’s speed of responding.

Stage 3: Generalization:

Your child is now accurate and fluent in using his new skill, but he will not typically do so in different settings/environments. Other times, your child may confuse this new target skill with other ‘similar’ skills.

The goal of this therapy phase is for your child to use the skill in the widest possible range of settings and situations, or to accurately discriminate between the target skill and ‘similar’ skills.

Stage 4: Adaptation:

Your child is accurate and fluent in using the target skill. He also uses the skill in many situations or settings. However, your child is not yet able to modify or adapt the skill to fit novel task-demands or situations.

The goal of this stage of therapy is for your child to be able to identify elements of previously learned skills that he can adapt to the new demands or situation.

Learn more about us at www.TeamChatterboxes.com

Private Speech Therapy vs School-Based Speech Therapy: How do they Stack Up? (Part 1 of 2)

By Chatterboxes

“Should I Stay with School Therapy or Should I go Private?”

Alot of parents are asking themselves this question at some point during their child’s speech therapy care. Parents may struggle to see progress with school speech therapy, Yet, going to a Private Practice entails an increased cost when compared with school-based therapy.

Training

Both a Private Speech-Language Pathologist and a School Based Speech Pathologist who are “CCC-SLP Certified” have the same level of educational training after all, so how can there be a difference in services?

Here’s why: The school SLP must work under the confines of her school district’s regulations. Due to the intense need for speech & language services at school, the Speech-Pathologist practicing in a Public School typically faces an ever-increasing set of demands during the school year; thus she’s presented with an expanded scope of practice. School SLP workload responsibilities include:

Therapy Timeline

By law, in Massachusetts, once the public school has received parental consent, the school has 30 working days to perform an Evaluation. Once the testing is complete, a team meeting must be scheduled within 45 school working days.

Time-Out. 75 Days? That’s a substantial period of ‘waiting’ time in a child’s academic school year.

In a private setting, an evaluation is typically scheduled within 1 week. The report is then produced in 7-10 days and therapy often begins the week after the evaluation.

Eligibility & Qualification

Your child needs to meet state issued eligibility standards to qualify for speech/language services in the Public Schools. In Massachusetts, “To be eligible for special education services, a student must first be found to have a disability which is causal to an inability to make effective progress in school.”

In a Private Setting, your child does not need to be ‘eligible’ for our services. A parent calls with concern and we arrange for an Evaluation during a preferred time in your schedule.

The Evaluation Process

In a school-based testing situation, the SLP is confined to measuring performance solely based on standardized test results.

A private evaluation entails standardized testing (like in the schools), yet the Private Therapist has the discretion to include her Clinical Impressions. She has the ability to consider that your child may have had an off-day, or that he can exhibit a particular skill in play, but not during testing. You can also weigh in with your thoughts on your child’s performance, as chances are, you’re in the room.

With your parental consent, the private SLP can share her immediate impressions of your child’s evaluation results upon completion of the evaluation.

Therapeutic Environment

We all know that kids make progress when they are engaged and having fun. In a child- therapy situation one of the keys to success is the clinical environment. Do you know where your child’s school-therapy takes place? A hallway? A noisy classroom? An office? Background noise is distracting.

Interested in learning more about us? Visit: www.TeamChatterboxes.com

Private vs School Based Speech Therapy: How do they Compare? (Part 2 of 2)

By Chatterboxes

Part 2 of 2

Three’s a Crowd & Four’s a Party

It’s most likely that if your child is receiving speech therapy services at school, they are doing so in a group setting. Kids in the group may or may not be targeting similar therapeutic goals.

Imagine hearing, “Students: I’ll be modeling ‘How to Play Cards’ this session, but one of you will learn Gin Rummy, the other Poker, and Timmy, you’ll learn to play Hearts.”

Private speech sessions are typically one-to-one; whereas 100% of the SLP’s attention is focused on your child the entire 45-60 minute session. Home Programs, like these, are included with each session. After the session, parents are walked through the homework, and given suggestions on how to implement strategies for increased carryover of newly learned skills.

Caseloads & Workloads

It wouldn’t be uncommon for a School-Based SLP to provide services to 95 children in one week. At Chatterboxes, a full-time therapist provides 25-30 visits per week on average.

Aside from designing and executing therapy to her caseload of 95 students, the School-Based SLP is also responsible for attending IEP meetings and writing and revising IEP Reports for each student. High caseloads reduce a therapist’s availability of time for planning.

Whole Child Approach

At Chatterboxes, our private model gives us the ability for our Speech-Pathologists to carry lower caseloads while allowing for the therapist to treat the ‘whole child.”

At Chatterboxes, we incorporate a child’s daily hobbies and interests, such as home-life, siblings, family happenings, into the child’s Weekly Therapy and Home Program.

With parental permission, we involve the child’s teachers, babysitters, or siblings into our Therapy Program. Ensuring that all the people involved in the child’s life are educated on his or her goals and implementing strategies consistently provides the support a child needs to make progress.

While making therapy meaningful and relevant to a child’s interest and life from a subject perspective, our private-based model to treat the Whole-Child allows for a child to experience increased progress & carryover newly learned skills outside the therapy environment.

_______________________________

“To the doctor, the child is a typhoid patient; to the playground supervisor, a first

baseman; to the teacher, a learner of arithmetic. At times, he may be different things to

each of these specialists, but too rarely is he a whole child to any of them.”

—From the 1930 report of the White House

Conference on Children and Youth

Interested in learning more about our practice? Visit: www.TeamChatterboxes.com

5 Easy Methods to Target Irregular Past Tense Verbs with Dollhouse Play

By Chatterboxes

Many children exhibit difficulty learning irregular past tense verbs, because they don’t follow the typical “-ed” past tense rule. You might choose to incorporate targeting irregular past tense verbs into your play with your child for just 15-20 minutes each day, or you might repeat the target irregular past tense verbs frequently throughout the day, during conversation or daily routines. Try to focus on only a few verbs at a time (or just one at a time, if your child is exhibiting more difficulty).

5 Play Scenarios that Target Irregular Past Tense Verbs, Using a Toy Dollhouse:

1) Mealtime– It’s time to eat! Set up each wooden figurine around the family dinner table, while targeting the following irregular past tense verbs:

brought, ate, drank, made, fell, took

2) Bedtime– Pretend putting each family member to sleep for the night. You might model your child’s bedtime routine during play in order to practice the following irregular past tense verbs:

slept, woke, read

3) Outdoor Play– Have the family go outside to play while focusing on the following irregular past tense verbs:

slid, ran, caught, hid, swing, threw

4) Grocery Store– Pretend the family hops into the car and drives from the dollhouse to the pretend grocery store, focusing on the following words:

wrote (list), drove, bought, chose, found, saw