Creating Pictures from Words: “Along the road stood many spindly trees…” Visualization or mental images we create in our mind help us see and plan for our future, convey a story, and to comprehend.
Category Archives: Social Skills
Language is Everywhere
We have all had exhausting days as parents when all we want to do is get home, but at the same time when opportunity knocks its important to seize the moment to teach our children.
Management = Communication Leader
A primary role of management is communicating effectively with your team. Tom is management at his company. He is working on a deal with a senior manager and two junior level managers. One of the junior level managers is not performing to expectations.
Why is my child with ASD still having difficulty with writing?
Recently I received an email about someone on the autism spectrum who had writing difficulties, even after receiving tutoring from Sylvan Learning Center and their schools learning disability center. Part of the reason Sylvan might not work for clients on the autism spectrum is because traditional writing interventions do not address the communication issues inherent …
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Only Part of the Story: A Professional Assessment
I love TED Talks, and of course, I was interested in a talk by Amy Cuddle titled “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are? At the age of 19 Ms. Cuddle was in an extremely serious car accident that resulted in a traumatic brain injury. Afterward she was told that her IQ was lowered by 2 standard deviations. …
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Conveying Ideas
Schools sometimes make parents believe that speech and language issues disappear by 4th or 5th grade when they no longer want to provide specialized speech and language services; however, that is not true. Language needs increase and change in complexity over time, so in fourth and fifth grade the increase in complex language demands are …
Speech therapy and motherhood
As a speech therapist, becoming a mom has been the second greatest learning experience of my career. Motherhood helped me understand, the far reaching impact of poor verbal expression and the role of speech therapy. It’s not just about whether you acquire vocabulary, but about learning to use language in a flexible way in order …
Moving toward independence…
Coaching clients in social language through Skype at college is a new and exciting way to help build social skills and help students be successful at school. What is involved in this coaching approach? Initially the specific problems are indentified, such as how do I identify the kind of person I would like as a …
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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Could we take responsiblity for “bullying” by teaching social skills?
The children who tormented the child in South Hadley, similar to a student identified with pragmatic deficits, did not predict how Phoebe would react to their constant bullying, did not understand the back lash they would suffer if something happened to her, and were unable to put themselves into Phoebe’s shoes. Had those students participated …
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