—Recognize that you can make an enormous difference in this student’s life! Find out what the student’s strengths and interests are, and emphasize them. Create opportunities for success.

—If you are not part of the student’s IEP team, ask for a copy of his or her IEP. The student’s educational goals will be listed there, as well as the services and classroom accommodations he or she is to receive.

​—Make sure that needed accommodations are provided for classwork, homework, and testing. These will help the student learn successfully.

—Consult with others (e.g., special educators, the SLP) who can help you identify strategies for teaching and supporting this student, ways to adapt the curriculum, and how to address the student’s IEP goals in your classroom.

—Find out if your state or school district has materials or resources available to help educators address the learning needs of children with speech or language impairments. It’s amazing how many do!

—Communicate with the student’s parents. Regularly share information about how the student is doing at school and at home.
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[Reprinted from http://nichcy.org]

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—Meet with the school and develop an IEP to address your child’s needs. Be your child’s advocate. You know your son or daughter best, share what you know.

—Be well informed about the speech-language therapy your son or daughter is receiving. Talk with the SLP, find out how to augment and enrich the therapy at home and in other environments. Also find out what not to do!

—Give your child chores. Chores build confidence and ability. Keep your child’s age, attention span, and abilities in mind. Break down jobs into smaller steps. Explain what to do, step by step, until the job is done. Demonstrate. Provide help when it’s needed. Praise a job (or part of a job) well done.

—Listen to your child. Don’t rush to fill gaps or make corrections. Conversely, don’t force your child to speak. Be aware of the other ways in which communication takes place between people.

—Talk to other parents whose children have a similar speech or language impairment. Parents can share practical advice and emotional support.

—Keep in touch with your child’s teachers. Offer support. Demonstrate any assistive technology your child uses and provide any information teachers will need. Find out how you can augment your child’s school learning at home.

[Reprinted from http://nichcy.org]

First comes Robbie. He’s a cutie pie in the first grade and has recently been diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech—or CAS. CAS is a speech disorder marked by choppy speech. Robbie also talks in a monotone, making odd pauses as he tries to form words. Sometimes she can see him struggle. It’s not that the muscles of his tongue, lips, and jaw are weak. The difficulty lies in the brain and how it communicates to the muscles involved in producing speech. The muscles need to move in precise ways for speech to be intelligible. And that’s what she and Robbie are working on.

Next, Christina goes down the hall and meets with Pearl in her third grade classroom. While the other students are reading in small groups, she works with Pearl one on one, using the same storybook. Pearl has a speech disorder, too, but hers is called dysarthria. It causes Pearl’s speech to be slurred, very soft, breathy, and slow. Here, the cause is weak muscles of the tongue, lips, palate, and jaw. So that’s what Christina and Pearl work on—strengthening the muscles used to form sounds, words, and sentences, and improving Pearl’s articulation.

One more student to see—4th grader Mario, who has a stutter. She’s helping Mario learn to slow down his speech and control his breathing as he talks. Christina already sees improvement in his fluency.

Tomorrow she’ll go to a different school, and meet with different students. But for today, her day is…Robbie, Pearl, and Mario.

[Reprinted from http://nichcy.org]

Christy Himstreet, M.S., CCC-SLP
Scottish Rite Clinic for Childhood Language Disorders
1895 Camino del Rio South, San Diego, California 92108-3683

With the aid of therapy provided by the Scottish Rite, a child moves from anxious silence to happy speech.  No matter how long we work with children, there are always those special few that touch our hearts in ways that create lifelong memories. Rachel Aguilar is one of those children. Tiny and timid, she arrived at the San Diego Scottish Rite Clinic for Childhood Language Disorders almost one year ago.  Despite her petite and dainty stature, she seemed to have the anxiety of an adult. At just age three, she was already biting her nails and apparently worried well beyond her years. Undoubtedly, the cause of these problems was that Rachel could understand everything around her, but she was unable to communicate.

“She can say some words,” her mother stated on that first clinic visit, “she just won’t.”
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​This type of comment led the clinic’s therapists to investigate the possibility of Developmental Apraxia of Speech (DAS). This was Rachel’s eventual diagnosis. DAS can occur when nearly everything within a child’s communication is developing normally. The understanding of words and sentences is good. Their strength and range of motion of all the muscles and structures in their mouth and face are what they should be.

These children are even able to make as many different sounds as other children their age. Why then was Rachel struggling? DAS is a motor-planning problem for commanded motor execution. For example, Rachel could say “hi” automatically, but when commanded to, she was unable. What is remarkable about this condition is that she could cough or blow on command (a non-speech task), but could not say words that involved essentially the same kind of motor movement, like the word “who” or the storybook character “Pooh.” DAS is not just being shy. It is a neurological and/or linguistic problem that needs specific intervention.

What we do for DAS in speech therapy is to train non-speech vocalizations and gradually shape these into words. This “bridge” provides immediate success for the child.

Rachel was trained to blow colored feathers from her fingertips in a fun, non-speech game. Because of months of built- up anxiety about speaking, speaking tasks are not ever required of the child with DAS for the first few months of therapy. Speaking must be a purely voluntary experience for them. We continued this blowing game with tissues, cotton balls, and more feathers. Gradually the game became not just blowing with air, but with little puffs of the p sound. “Puh” was used for a while, then gradually “pooh.” At that point, the Winnie the Pooh puppet helped us. Then a “Pooh” game was introduced.

Now Rachel had the word “Pooh” and was using it when commanded. Letter-name sounds were trained as well. These help a child with DAS because they are still a non-speech sound movement. Fun hand signals were developed for each sound, and easy game-like sound patterns were practiced. Animal sounds were also trained and shaped into words. Rachel’s progress was most successful because of her strong family support. Parents and siblings understood ho w best to help Rachel and worked with her in a fun way and on a consistent basis. Rachel’s readiness for communication also helped with the success in therapy. After several months in individual therapy, Rachel worked with an age-matched peer for carryover of her new communication skills.

Success with communication has allowed Rachel to “come into her own,” as her mother says. Rachel is now happily communicating with children and adults as appropriate for a child her age. She tells long stories about preschool, her friends, and her family. She has developed a sense of humor and something of a leadership personality. Now she even tells the therapist what to do in therapy! Rachel still comes to therapy once a week and continues to work on sound and syllable patterns. We expect Rachel will be graduated from the San Diego clinic in the next six months. We are proud and excited for Rachel and her family. Thanks so much to Scottish Rite for allowing this excellence in service delivery and attention to specific communication problems like Rachel’s DAS. Without proper diagnosis and treatment, Rachel may not have been able to succeed with communication, and she might still be that shy, timid, over-anxious little person we met a year ago.