You’d have to be crazy to say you live in Chicago for the winters, but you’re not crazy to say you love the holiday season in the city. From light parades to ice skating rinks, there are plenty of holiday activities to help get your family feeling festive. Here is a list of 10 holiday […]
Let’s be honest, who doesn’t love a good family game night? A little friendly competition, some yummy snacks and, of course, fun! As a pediatric speech therapist, I use games every day in my speech sessions. To be honest, I would be lost without them. Games are exciting, motivating, and best of all, they help […]
When you walk into your child’s therapy clinic, you see toys, games, slides, swings, bubbles, scooters….I could go on forever. There’s always an endless supply of things to keep children entertained, motivated, and mostly, to make sure they’re having fun while working towards their therapy goals. However, you don’t need fancy toys […]
Communication encompasses so much more than just talking. Our body language, intonation, gestures, and facial expressions say just as much as our words. The importance of gesturing has long been underestimated in the field of speech-language pathology. However, gestures are one of the very first forms of communication, and recent research has […]
Once your child develops an assortment of single words, his next step is to start combining those single words into two word utterances. It can be difficult for little ones to make the jump from one to two words. Here are a few tips to help him through the transition: Syllable repetitions […]
Pacifier. Binky. Paci. Buppy. Ga ga. Dee dee. Whatever you call it, many moms know it as Mommy’s best friend. Those little rubber plugs are miracle workers, they help to calm a fussy baby, soothe a sleepy baby, and relax a restless one. But when is it time to give it up? And why? And […]
So, your child had a speech-language evaluation and the therapist hands you the report. After a quick glance you see lots of numbers, percentile rankings, terms like “compared to same age peers”, “within the average range”, raw scores, standard scores, scaled scores, age-equivalents….whew. That is a lot of information to take in, process, and understand. […]
How many times have you tried to give your baby a bite of his food and he reaches for the spoon, ready to do it himself? Probably just about every time you feed him. When your baby is about 9 months old, he has begun to develop the fine motor skills needed to start feeding […]
One of my favorite tools to use in speech therapy is a wordless book. They have endless (okay, maybe not completely endless, there is a story in those pictures) possibilities for creating, imagining, predicting, and story telling. Here are the top 10 reasons why I LOVE wordless books for kids: 1. It’s reading before […]
Eating. What’s not to love? Whether it’s a gooey, cheesy slice of pizza or a warm cookie fresh out of the oven (yum!), let’s face it -humans love to eat. Little humans, ehh not so much. Little ones can be incredibly stubborn when it comes to eating, especially when they’re toddlers. What three year old […]