Speech Therapy

Therapist:
Huh? Let’s put this on.

Anne Davis:
When I began as a speech language pathologist, you know, I had been trained and i knew that the best way to help a person to acquire language is in a natural environment and a meaningful social interaction.

Therapist:
The train or the boat? Say give... give... the boat. Boat, boat, boat. Oh, give the boat.

Anne Davis:
We’re not only looking at speech and language development, but we are also looking at the child´s social/emotionall development at that same time

Therapist:
Okay!

Caroline Lee:
Christy is a two and a half years old little girl with, um, autism. She can say a word, a noun, but she doesn´t know how to communicate like ¨hey, give me that?”. Sun. Give, give the sun. Give, sun. Ready, say “give”, give, give, the sun. Sun. Oh you got the sun. if I have a child who has sensory needs I will incorporate that and try and use language in there so that way they can request that. So she can say squeeze me and that’s still doing language but she’s also getting regular. She’s seeking that input that she needs. Because in the end of the day you need this child to be regular in order to really learn language. Go down. I really like using the parachute, um, because it’s something that’s visually stimulating and also they are learning about preposition and space. Wooooh. Up. woooohooo-wooohooo. And I’ll use affect or the inflection of your voice to help convey that “oh, it’s going up”, “oh, it’s going down”, and to help convey the message of what that concept is. Up, up. Down, down, whoah. Sometimes what you’ll do is you’ll put a little bit of a pausing for her to kind of fill the gap in there. So, um, she may not be so familiar with verbs but she does have her nouns. But showing her that the verbs and the nouns connect together. So you could say
“Oh, the bear is driving the....” and you can’t help but fill the rest of that. He’s driving the? 

Christy:
Motorcycle

Caroline Lee:
Wwoooh, awwww, yay, Christy! Good job

Therapist:
Good job

Caroline Lee:
Often times you’ll have children, they’ll just repeat the last thing that was said and that doesn’t become meaningful. And so getting them to, to challenge them to say like, “oh wait”, um, or have something different. It forces them to really pin point what it is they are trying to request. Do you want the puzzle? Or do you want the rocket?

Chrtisty:
Rocket!

Caroline Lee:
Rocket? okay, here.

Christy:
Rocket

Caroline Lee:
Here’s the rocket. Oh oh wait, no, you don’t want the rocket? Christy.

Christy:
Rocket

Caroline Lee:
I know, I think you’re trying to say puzzle. Puzzle... puzzle …puzzle.

Christy:
Puzzle!

Caroline Lee:
Oh okay, oh puzzle, you want the puzzle. She’s a bright little girl and I don’t have any concern in terms of her learning, uh, language so much. I think, the functional use of it and the social skills of of being able to engage and and make friends, that’s a big thing for her. We have two more, we need two more.

Anne Davis:
Therapy, and the therapy experience should be filled with joy and it should be filled with a range of emotions. As a clinician it’s not only my role to be teaching words and be helping a child to learn to actually produce those words. It’s to produce those words in that language in an emotional context, because that’s when true learning takes place.

Caroline Lee:
Itsy bitsy spider, went up, up the spider….

Christy:
Again 

Caroline Lee:
Again. Yay! You did it.