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The Keys to Supporting Great Communication Development Series: 6 months to 1 year

October 13, 2017 By Kerry Townley-O’Neill

Your little one has just turned 6 months.  Everyday she’s getting a little longer, a little stronger and you find yourself gazing at her all the time – she’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen and, somehow, she knows it.  She lies there, watching you watch her, senses alive in the pursuit of understanding; absorbing and interpreting new information constantly.  One day she will have a conversation with you, laugh, run and jump, and no longer spit up on you.  One day.

At such a young age, it might feel like your baby hits a new developmental milestone every day.  Within the first 6 months, normal language development is unique and the fundamental groundwork for a life of able communication is bring laid.

Language milestones can be broken up into three categories: receptive language, expressive language and social skills.  Below are some handy examples of normal communication development in a 6-month-old. You might recognise some (if not all) of these progressions in the way your baby communicates with you.

Receptive language refers to the way one receives and understands information – interpreting words, sentences and the meanings behind them into useful information.  During infancy, you will see the very beginnings of this in the way your little one starts to respond to the changes in tone of your voice and in her interest in environmental sounds.

On the productive end of the scale, we have expressive language: the ability to express what one means into understandable gestures, sounds, words and sentences.  For children aged 6 months and under, making simple noises, or babbling, to get attention is a prime example of expressive language.  You have already learned that she has a different cry to express different needs; her “hungry” cry is very different to her “tired” cry.

Engagement and interaction are signs of the development of social skills.  You may be able to think of moments when you realised that she was talking back at you in her own way or when she started smiling, gums and all, at family members. These are both great indicators that your baby is learning to socialise.

Fast forward another 6 months and simple arithmetic would say that you have a 1-year-old on your hands. She has changed so much! You can tell, not only by the fact that she moves like lightning and is now louder than life, but by the increased necessity of locks on cupboards and pop-up gates in your home. Her language milestones are progressing nicely too.

She listens when spoken to, recognises her own name and the names of familiar people and objects (i.e. Mum, Dad, ball, book, bottle), and attempts to make the familiar sounds of things like cars and animals. Her receptive language development allows her to understand words like “bye-bye”, “up” and “no”.

Expressive language is in check when she starts to say sounds like “da da, no no, go go” or tries to copy sounds that you make.  One of the wonderful indicators of healthy language development is that great laugh!

You may recognise her social skills in play as she engages in simple turn-taking when rolling a ball or brings a toy to you, inviting you into her game.  You notice intentionality in the way she responds to basic questions like “Where is the ball?”, uses gestures and maintains eye contact.

You watch her change before your eyes and, when you stop to think about it, she completely blows you away.  For someone so dependent, she seems to have a real handle on this whole growing thing – which begs the question, “How do I support her? How can I promote excellent communication skills that will help her say what she means with confidence?”  Please find below some practical tips for infants from 6 months to consider:

  1. Talk, talk, talk to your child! They say that immersion is the best way to learn a new language – so immerse her! Surround her with opportunities to encounter language in all forms.  Read to her, sing simple melodies and rhymes, play games with simple dialogue.
  2. Make sure she can see you talking to her. Doing this gives her a chance to watch the way your face moves to produce particular sounds.  Looking at people is a simple and powerful way that babies engage with intentionality.  Start to play ‘funny mouth’ games where you can show her how you activate facial muscles to create a funny mouth.  Push your lips forward, seal them shut, open your mouth wide, blow out your cheeks, poke your tongue out.  These actions inspire the beginnings of intentional facial movement and you may even get a laugh out of it too! (Let’s be honest, you’ve been unable to resist doing this one since she arrived – the approval of her smile or laugh is priceless! Now you have an explanation for any eye-rolling onlookers.)
  3. Label everything. No, I’m not asking you to grab the ol’ Brother handheld labeller out of the stationery drawer.  If your child notices the sound of a car in the driveway, imitate the sound followed by the simplest explanation and reinforcement, i.e. “Daddy’s/Mummy’s car ….  mmmmm (or, brrrrrrrummm) …. car …. Daddy/ Mummy home soon!”
  4. Use PLENTY of repetition! It may feel a bit painful but the more you repeat phrases, sounds and words in their correct context, the sooner she will grasp the meaning and try them out for herself.
  5. Take turns. Games like rolling a ball, shaking a rattle, making funny noises and putting toys into a basket require turn taking. These games model acceptable social interactions when it comes to play.  Putting language to the activity adds a new dimension to learning where your child is making connections between words and actions.  Use phrases like, “My turn …. Your turn” and “up… Up… UP!”
  6. Play with flavour. If you are breastfeeding, try eating a variety of foods.  Incredibly, the taste of what you ingest finds its way into your milk – this gives your baby the chance to experience new flavours even before she starts on solids.  When it comes time to begin solids, aim for variety.  Pay special attention to coughing on swallowing – this is, at the very least, a self-protective reflex.  The movement involved in eating solids trains the mouth and strengthens the tongue and surrounding muscles to support speech and articulation, but having solids pass through the throat for the first time is and new and sometimes uncomfortable experience that ALWAYS requires supervision. Coughing while swallowing may be an indicator of serious swallowing difficulties and should be investigated promptly.

If you have any questions or concerns about your infant’s communication development, consider connecting with your local Speech Pathologist or talking to your trusted Paediatrician.

The Speechie Spot, Bald Hills, takes appointments for all concerns regarding child communication development.  Chat with Speech Pathologist, Kerry Townley-O’Neill, for further tools, tips, therapy and family programs to teach your child to really own their communication skills!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: baby, communication development, infant

Dyslexia: The Visual Side of Things

September 28, 2017 By Kerry Townley-O’Neill

Photo by Ronaldo Oliveira on Unsplash

For those of us who haven’t experienced it, Dyslexia can be tricky to understand.  The stigma surrounding it can be unkind and largely misinformed.  Contrary to popular belief, dyslexia has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence.  Some of the most famous and influential individuals of our time have proudly owned their journeys as dyslexics in the name of raising awareness.  The likes of Professor Elizabeth Blackburn (Nobel Prize in Physiology/ Medicine 2009), Sir Richard Branson (Founder, Virgin Enterprises), Steve Jobs (Co-founder, Apple), John Lennon (Musician, The Beatles), Pablo Picasso (Artist), Keira Knightley (Award Winning Actress), Will Smith (Award Winning Actor), Agatha Christie (Author) and Albert Einstein (Theoretical Physicist) stand as proof that brilliance, talent and dyslexia can co-exist in an individual.

It is estimated that 10% of the Australian population is affected by dyslexia, with Aussie favourites Dick Smith (Businessman and Australian of the Year 1986), Jessica Watson (Solo Sailor), Alex Edmonson (Track Cyclist, Commonwealth Gold Medallist) and Jackie French (Author and Australian of the Year 2016) amongst the ranks.

Dyslexia is simply a persistent difficulty with reading, writing and spelling that asserts itself in many different combinations of symptoms at different levels of severity.  It is a highly hereditary condition that affects the way the brain processes what it sees.  Some people experience an ‘optical illusion’ where letters based on similar shapes (for example, a,e,o,s or m,n,h,u) are swapped, rotated and mirrored by the brain.  Others may find that sentences ‘move’ in waves as their eyes sweep along the lines, or that letters seem to run into each other to create an indecipherable muddle.  When letters cannot be told apart, they become extremely difficult to learn and recognise as individual characters with individual sounds.  Throw in the fact that the English language sound-letter correspondence is more than 1:1 (take k, c, qu for example), and some of us will find reading, writing and spelling seems like an impossible puzzle.  With the building blocks of language a cryptic mess, it suddenly becomes easy to see how such processing anarchy could result in primary dyslexic symptoms like lack of fluency in reading and writing, poor spelling, extremely slow reading with many mistakes, or difficulty in recognising single words on flash cards or lists.

Researchers worldwide are sifting through data in search of ways to ease the confusion for dyslexics, and now a wide range of information and compensation tools are available for all types of dyslexia.  With recording devices, audio books, varied fonts, podcasts, apps and computer programs readily available, not to mention the Health Professionals and Teachers equipped with customisable programs and techniques to share, the support is out there. Each of the professionals here at Pathways to Expression tackles a different aspect of dyslexia.  Some who struggle with visual dyslexia find that even the simplest changes to the text and its background colour can abate the effects of dyslexia instantly.

Graphic Designer, Christian Boer, has developed a type font especially for visual dyslexics called Dyslexie.  A dyslexic himself, Boer sought to slightly alter the appearance of individual letters to give them even more distinct features for the brain to take hold of, minimising the rotating, swapping and mirroring illusion.  Letters are bottom heavy, some of the rounder characters are slanted slightly in the same direction, and capital letters and punctuation are bold and larger than the rest of the text.  Letter and word spacing are also emphasised. Check out the sample below.

Notice the difference? This font is available now for home (FREE DOWNLOAD!), school and professional use on the Dyslexie website. His Ted x TALK goes further into how this works and why!

What you think about the Dyslexie font? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Stay tuned for more on Dyslexia, diagnosis and news on other compensation tools and techniques!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Language and Auditory Processing Disorders: 6 Simple Hints for a Smoother Homework Experience

August 29, 2017 By Kerry Townley-O’Neill

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Homework.  We seem to have a love/hate relationship with it.  As parents, we want our children to truly grasp what they are being taught in class, support our children in their learning and show a united front as we partner with their educators in hope to see them excel in school and life afterward.  We also want our kids to play – just ‘be’ and learn in the world around them. Watching our children bloom in the afternoon light, we see them come running up to house muddy and glowing with imagination and revelation, and we melt.  We are raising wonders.

The battle to get homework done, and done well, is real.  I am confident we can all remember a time in our youth when homework was the bane of our young existence and now we live it all over again from the other side of the table.  And yet, deep down, we know that the reinforcement that homework delivers is vital to truly understanding new concepts and being prepared to move forward with the rest of the class.  We urge our children to push forward in fear that they will be left behind.

Most children with a language or auditory processing disorder have been challenged the whole day at school and are understandably reluctant to start round two when they get home.  Even the simplest homework tasks can be really difficult when they are already exhausted.  Could you imagine being stuck in a job that was too difficult for you?  Where every day feels like you are drowning in your work – constantly having to complete tasks that you aren’t good at, then having to take them home with you to work on, and to top it off, you are accruing debt every day because you could not finish things quickly enough.  Pretty disheartening, right? Maybe the stress sounds familiar.

So, we ask, what do I do? If homework is fundamental to our education system and my child is floundering on the best of days, how can I help?  Read on for 6 simple thoughts to consider when it comes to homework. [Read more…]

Filed Under: homework Tagged With: auditory, homework, language, parenting, processing disorders, speech pathology

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Recent Posts

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  • The Keys to Supporting Great Communication Development Series: 5 years November 28, 2017
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  • The Keys to Supporting Great Communication Development Series: 2 years October 27, 2017
  • The Keys to Supporting Great Communication Development Series: 6 months to 1 year October 13, 2017

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