Hi Kerry,
I can personally relate to your post. I don't know that any more structured therapy would be appropriate or possible for such youung children. In my department, my colleagues and I are currently discussing that even with children in the 3 year old age range it is difficult to do structured therapy.
Also I know the Hanen Program has some great videotapes parents may like which demonstrate the strategies - so it seems like a proper approach, not just 'playing'.
In our 2 and 3 year old late talkers groups we also add in makaton key word signing, and for those kids with really limited vocabulary some pictures to introduce some early AAC, with the knowledge that research suggests it facilitates rather than hindering it(commonly worried about by parents).
In addition, some stimulation of sound and nonsense syllable combinations using the Miccio pictures (I believe if you search previous posts you will find references to this approach) or the Nuffield pictures may be helpful to increase phonetic inventories and syllable shapes.
I also like to encourage noise making in general, e.g. 'toot toot' for toy cars, 'rah' for toy lions, 'la la la' singing into a pretend microphone - to increase sound production and reduce the pressure on the child to say words.
I have recently found quite a bit of literature on Milieu Teaching which is quite structured, for this age group.
Samantha Coleman
Speech Pathologist
Western Australia
Please do not forward, or publish, or distribute in ANY way,
posts to this electronic mailing list without the author's permission in writing.
0 comments:
Post a Comment