Discussion at this month’s multidisciplinary salon focused on autism spectrum disorders (ASD). One topic we discussed was the diagnostic process and early detection.
Category Archives: Language
Multidisciplinary Salon
This year, I am launching a “Multidisciplinary Salon.” I came up with the idea when a friend, who lives in Berkeley, CA, told me about a friend who had very interesting discussions with others in his field over dinner. I thought it was a brilliant idea. I just couldn’t quite figure out how to accomplish …
That cry means…
When your baby cries she is communicating in the only way, she knows how. Listen closely. Her cries will be her first attempts to communicate. Often you will hear mothers say they can tell whether their baby is hungry, wet or tired. Next time your baby cries remember it’s not a cry, but communication, and …
Painful to Watch
I watched a movie called, “In Her Shoes” with Cameron Diaz as a character that drinks and can’t keep a job. The movie implies that this may be the result of poor reading abilities. She tries to hide her reading impairment from family and friends. Due to lack of self-esteem she feels her only value …
Speech-Language Therapy
Each person has different strengths and weaknesses.  Part of the speech language pathologist job is to help each person understand and use their strengths to overcome their weaknesses.  Discovering each person’s strengths is like uncovering pearls. The goal is to learn how to use an individuals  strength to decrease or navigate around their speech language deficit. It’s …
What did I learn?
In my last post I wrote about a woman I helped to re-learn to read. What did I learn from her? An injury to the brain can make us not like something that we once loved. Children with no acquired injury but with reading or language impairments, after years of failure often want to avoid …
Writing remediation
I work with many amazing students, but one student I worked with has been especially remarkable because of his persistence, determination, evolving self awareness, and hard work. He meets his disabilities head on with full awareness of his limits while refusing to let them stop him. He has a moderate to severe language-based learning disability …
Why do I need this anyway? Working with young adults:
I love working with teens and young adults! I work with all ages, but I love the challenge of working with teens. It’s a time when independence has to be nurtured. It’s no longer acceptable to just say, “This is what you will do?” It is a time when providing the rationale for what you …
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The greatest predictor of academic success
Did you know the greatest predictor of academic success is vocabulary development? However, the single most important indicator of success in life is social emotional intelligence. So for example if you have 2 people equally educated with similar vocabulary development the one with the better social skills will likely out perform the other. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21017939/ How …
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The sweet smell of success
Success! One of my high school clients with a moderate to severe language-based learning disability that looks similar to dyslexia, scored in the average range on a formal assessment for writing at the sentence level. This is so exciting! Last year formulating sentences with prepositions, adjectives and conjunctions was a huge challenge for this client. …