News with David Laurino

‘I…milk!’ my eldest son would say at about three years old, meaning of course, ‘I want milk.’ It’s hard to believe now that my articulate 10-year-old son was once diagnosed with a speech delay. At the time, however, I found it pretty traumatic when I saw his ability to vocalize lagging far behind his friends. At age two, his peers were forming two-word sentences while I was desperately writing a list of four or five words my son seemed to understand and pronounce.

My experience is not uncommon: In Ontario alone, 10 percent of children have some sort of speech or language delay. These range from sound substitution (making a t sound instead of a k, for instance) to being unable to use or understand language. How a given delay is treated depends both on the specific problem and its underlying cause.

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A parents makeover to stop back talk
Back talk is learned — and kids will keep using it when they know it works. So never give in to kids’ disrespectful behavior. Instead, use these steps to stop back talk, and then be relentless until it does stop. Commit immediately to stopping this behavior. Write a letter to yourself stating your commitment and read it often.

Identify how you typically respond to your kid’s back talk. Ask yourself why isn’t it working. Reread the four steps to squelching talking back. If possible, discuss them with your spouse or another parent. Now develop a plan to end it. Pass on your plan so everyone is on board together.

Recognize that in most cases, step one and two are mandatory for behavior makeovers. If step one and two successfully eliminate your kid’s back talk, then skip to step four. If not, try step three and set consequences that are appropriate for your child. Then apply it each time your kid back talks.

Keep up with your plan until you see change — and that’s usually three weeks. Track the behavior on a calendar to see if your plan is working and the back talk subsides. Be consistent and do not give in.

About Susan Henrichs

Susan Henrichs: Age 3
-vocabulary has increased dramatically
-uses plurals
-follows longer two- to three-step commands

Age 3 1
-uses four to five words in a sentence
-asks questions using ‘what,’ ‘where,’ ‘who’ and ‘why’
-can count up to three objects and identify primary colours
About David Laurino
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AD Kids Inc.

What to do:
“Research has concluded that the amount and kind of language children hear can slow down or accelerate their speech and language learning,” says Dougherty. “Children who are not stimulated by being talked to may develop language at a slower pace.”

Include your toddler in your daily errands. Talk to her about things you see as you are shopping, “Look at all those bananas. See the yellow bananas.” Talk to your toddler about your day, “Daddy has to go to a meeting this morning. When Daddy gets home tonight we can play a game.”

It’s important to know what a typical day is like at your child’s daycare. Talk to the provider about limiting television. Discuss how important it is to allow your child to use his words to ask for things. Ask the provider to give you information about your child’s day so that you can discuss it at home. “Did you play dollies today? What else did you play?”

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AD Kids: David MacDonald,* a Hamilton preschooler, couldn’t understand such questions as ‘What is he doing in the picture?’ or ‘Where is the ball?’ and couldn’t respond appropriately. After weeks of therapy, involving play-based interactive activities, such as special board games where players practise asking and answering questions in a natural way using vocabulary from the game, David learned to reliably answer ‘what’ and ‘where’ questions, and is now working on ‘who,’ ‘why’ and ‘how.’

What can be done?

What should you do if you think your child has a speech or language delay? You can contact your local preschool speech and language service. You can also see your family physician for assessment and possibly a referral to the nearest service in your community.

Sandra Seigel, a paediatrician in Dundas, Ont., encourages parents who are concerned about their children’s communication skills to address the issues early on ‘because it helps to tease out if these are just children who are a little bit slow at acquiring speech and language skills, but will catch up later on — which is the vast majority — or if there’s something more going on.’ Seigel feels that it is encouraging and significant if the child is a little bit behind in gaining language skills, but is gaining other milestones. An early screening helps pick up if there are other developmental delays such as social and motor development skills. ‘A lot of kids do catch up as they get older,’ says Seigel.

Early intervention certainly helped with my family. It started the ball rolling, slowly at first, but with increasing momentum and now it never seems to stop moving. These days, I eagerly look forward to evening chats with my son. Sitting on the edge of his bed at night, I love listening to him talk about what new skateboarding tricks he’s learned and what makes him happy. And that’s a development worth talking about.

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Participate in the Process
You shouldn’t feel as though you need to try and make your child crawl at an early age. In the long run, it doesn’t make any difference to his or her later development. However, you might as well have fun with your active, learning baby! There are lots of things you can do to be encouraging during this stage.

Entice your baby to move from one place to another by placing a toy (or yourself) just out of your baby’s reach. Get down on the floor with her, and tell her what a good job she’s doing – this is hard work!

You can also try putting a rolled towel under her chest while she’s on her stomach to help her keep her head up. This way she can look around during tummy time and enjoy herself more. When she tries to crawl, put your hand behind her feet so she has something to push against.

Remember, she’ll learn at her own pace, there’s no need to hurry anything. As a parent, you’re there to offer support and a nurturing environment, while your baby figures out what’s best for her.

About AD Kids Inc.

The finer points of good table manners are all but lost on a toddler!

Which fork to use? Why use a fork when you have two perfectly useful hands!
Napkin on your lap? Who cares about a napkin when you’re up to your ears in yummy spaghetti sauce!
Indeed, by adult standards, most toddlers have a long way to go when it comes to mastering table manners. But don’t despair–with patience and encouragement, your toddler just might grow up knowing how to use a finger bowl! With an early start on Table Manners 101, you can do wonders in establishing meal-time etiquette that’ll last a lifetime.

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Be Patient With A Toddler’s Idea of Manners
Encourage good manners, but always be patient and empathetic to a toddler’s young perspective on things. It helps to realize a toddler’s insights on table manners such as:

Culinary Curiosity Toddlers have a natural urge to experiment with new things–and food is no exception. From a toddler’s point of view, potatoes need squishing just as much as modeling dough!

Susan Henrichs

About AD Kids: But language delays aren’t always the result of hearing impairment. In some children, the physiological systems responsible for communication sometimes take longer than usual to mature. My son was one of these ‘late bloomers.’

These types of communication problems generally fall into one of two types:

Expressive language delays occur when a child has difficulty sending a verbal message. A two-year-old whose language is limited to only one or two words or a child who talks a lot but is difficult to understand are both examples of expressive language delays.

Gabriel from Dundas, Ont., was diagnosed as having an expressive language delay when he was 18 months old. His mother, Leslie Hodges, noticed that compared with his peers, Gabriel seemed unable to say any words. With the help of a speech-language pathologist, Gabriel worked with his family to learn to pronounce consonants and ‘to remember where those sounds were in a word,’ says Hodges. Now nine, Gabriel is doing well. ‘He’s reading now,’ says Hodges, ‘at a lower grade-four level, but he is reading.’

Receptive language delays affect a child’s ability to make sense of messages that are sent or to follow instructions. ‘A child who is two years old and can’t identify body parts yet’ is typical of this kind of language delay, explains Basiliki Passaretti, a speech-language pathologist in Hamilton.
David Laurino
AD Kids Inc. Information
AD Kids Inc. Info

12 to 18 months

As of his first birthday, your child is likely using one to five words and knows what they mean. By 14 months, that working vocabulary may grow to seven words, and he may have up to 20 “words” (these may be more like sounds) that only he and someone close to him can understand. He’ll even practice inflection, raising his tone when asking a question. He might say “Up-py?” when he asks to be carried, for example.
He’s realizing the importance of talking and what a powerful tool it is to communicate his needs. Until he learns more words to get his ideas and desires across, he’ll likely combine his speech with gestures to show what he wants; for example, he’ll reach his arms toward his favorite toy and say “Ball.” In fact, some toddlers develop a whole “sign language” of gestures to communicate with their parents. You may notice your child covering his face when he’s embarrassed or pounding on the table when he’s mad. And don’t worry if your toddler gets frustrated when he’s struggling to get his meaning across; this is actually a healthy sign that he’s trying hard to communicate and cares whether you understand him or not.

By 16 months, most toddlers start producing many common consonant sounds, such as t, d, n, w, t, h. Learning to make these sounds is a watershed event, one that leads to the rapid vocabulary spurt that most children go through starting around 18 months. Don’t expect to hear all these sounds in actual words yet, but you may hear him repeating them when he’s alone in his crib or playing with his toys.

David Laurino
AD Kids: Perhaps the biggest hallmark of independence is learning to walk at around age 1, according to Alan Fogel, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah. “Baby learns he can walk away from Mom and walk back when he wants to — suddenly he is in control of his own destiny.” But that’s really just the very beginning. At around 18 months, your child reaches the “my way or the highway” stage: There are a number of tasks he can do, but not with any real skill, and your participation is probably not welcome.

So where does all this confidence come from? At this age, a large variety of skills start to come together. Your child’s increasing vocabulary allows him to tell you what he wants. He’s been walking long enough so that he feels surefooted; his small- and large-motor skills work together more smoothly; and he’s handled enough tasks, such as making a block tower, that he feels pretty confident about mastering his environment.

That’s great, but there are lots of things that your toddler can’t do very well. He’s not able to judge what kinds of tasks are too difficult for him to complete, and he certainly doesn’t have enough control over his emotions to deal gracefully with obstacles to his independence. To compound all of this, he’s less than thrilled when you try to help him along or secure his safety. (He doesn’t yet understand that climbing up the front of the fridge could be disastrous.) So each day can bring a new victory — or frustration — as your child balances what he wants to do with what he can do. Every day is an internal battle for him over who’s in charge: him or others.

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