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About Karen Trengove

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So far Karen Trengove has created 43 blog entries.

Language Rich Homes

Creating a Language Rich Home

 From the moment we are born, we are ready to start soaking up speech and language from our caregiver and to lay down the blueprint for our later developing communication skills.  We can significantly and directly influence our children’s’ development by engaging in activities that encourage back and forth exchanges.  From early days this will involve facial expressions, gestures and tone of voice.  Soon after, we will start to have fun with back and forth vocal play, smiles and single words.  Spending time face to face with our babies and responding to their every noise, facial expression and action as a moment of communication will set your child up for success when it comes to later speech, language and communication skills.

Child-Lead Interactions

Let your child lead the way.  Focus upon what your child is doing or interested in.  Join in alongside and simple commentate or engage in ‘self talk’ to describe what is happening.  Keep your language simple and repetitive.  Reduce your use of questions and simply talk about what is happening and what your child is noticing or doing.  Where possible, let your child direct the activities or interactions in these early stages of communication development.  Acknowledge and interpret your child’s interests rather than insist upon your child following your ideas in play.  Imitate what your child is doing during play.

Strive for 5

Take turns talking.  Conversations deepen over multiple turns.  Take your child’s lead and wait for you turn to do or say something to keep the conversation going.  Prompt your child to continue by making comments such as “wow” “how amazing” “I like this” “oh no…” “what else?”  “and then what happened?”  ” I wonder….”

Aim to get 5 conversational turns as this is the point at which conversations tend to move from shallow small talk to deeper conversations.

Expansions

Expansion involves repeating your child’s statement and adding on words to expand their phrases into longer, more detailed sentences. You can add descriptive words (colour, size, shape), grammatical markers (e.g. -ing, is, ‘s possessive) or even more sophisticated vocabulary.  By adding new information, you can extend your child’s thinking and learning.

Limit other Distractions

Prioritise 1:1 time with your child each day and make it really count by putting your phone on the charger in another room, maybe move outside, turn off the television and provide your child with your full attention.  There is no toy or App that can replace a responsive, caring adult or carer who engages in play and reciprocal conversations with a child.  Watch your child’s speech, language and communication skills flourish as a result.

More more tips for talking….download our FREE resource https://learn2communicate.com.au/product/10-tips-for-talking-poster-series/

2024-08-11T03:38:09+00:00
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Moving beyond ‘Eye Contact’

Eye Contact – What do we mean by this term and is it ever appropriate to work on?

The term ‘eye contact’ is often referred to as an important skill that children must acquire on their way to becoming social participants in interactions.

‘Demonstrates appropriate eye contact’ often appears on child developmental checklists.

A lack of ‘eye contact’ has been also sometimes been associated with a range of developmental difficulties and differences including Autism Spectrum Disorder.

So what do we mean by the term ‘Eye Contact’ and what does ‘Demonstrating appropriate eye contact’ look like?

Let’s pause for a moment to consider how we use our eyes to help make sense of social situations.

We look at our conversational partner’s face to gauge information about their emotions, topic of interest and for hints of when it might be our turn to contribute to the conversation.

Much can be learned from noticing a partners’ facial expressions and, by following our partner’s eye gaze, we might better understand and tune into what they want to share with us.

Often our eye gaze will shift from our conversational partner, to an item of joint interest and back to our partner again.

Many of us feel slightly comfortable when staring intently into our conversational partner’s eyes for any length of time and the experience for our conversational partner when we do so can be equally awkward!

Eye Contact should perhaps be re-phrased to mean ‘thinking with your eyes’!

Here are a few reasons why:

 

Instead of teaching our children to ‘look at us when we or they speak’, we might try encouraging our children to notice what is visually meaningful or of significance to the particular joint situation we find ourselves in.

We can encourage our children to look more often and tune into what is important.

We can also provide our children with a warning signal that it will very soon be time to ‘tune in’ to a conversational partner.  Saying your child’s name to seek their attention is a good way to do so and, even more so, if you are within your child’s visual field when you state their name.

Say your child’s name.

WAIT for your child to look in your direction.

THEN provide the instruction, make the comment or start the conversation.

Encouraging your child to notice what is visually important in the environment will also help to prompt your child to understand what is expected of him or her. For example, instead of saying “Oh! You are sitting on the puzzle pieces.  Move away so we can finish the puzzle”….try…. “Oh…your body is on top of the pieces” and WAIT for your child to LOOK and then use this new visual information to solve the problem independently.

This tiny little tweak in how we interact with our children helps them to better understand what they see and to use this information to develop social, conversational and behavioural skills.

My child really does struggle to direct any eye contact towards me!

Some children really do find any eye contact (even very fleeting eye contact) emotionally dysregulating.

It is important […]

2024-04-28T07:33:41+00:00
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Tell me a Story

Becoming a good story teller

The art of being a good story teller is well regarded across many cultures.

The stories we tell help us to connect with one another, to develop our relationships and friendships, to engage in conversations and to reflect upon past events (both real and imaginary).

Story telling happens frequently in our day to day interactions with others.  Take a moment to reflect upon this the next time you meet up with friend for coffee or catch up with a work colleague after the weekend!

Some stories are brief and may contain only short episodes relaying or recalling  ‘who did what, why, where and when with what resulting consequences’.

Other stories may involve communicating multiple causal and temporal relationships between ideas with the use of a variety of sophisticated, complex and precise language that is required to paint a detailed picture for the listener.

For our children, the stories that share have social importance.  Parents often want their children to tell them about their day.  Teachers need information about events that have happened and peers want to be engaged. Good storytellers are more accepted by peers and become more adapt at solving social problems as they grow older.

It makes social sense to encourage all children to not only listen to stories but to tell stories and share these with others.

Children’s story telling abilities in the early years are also very closely related to listening comprehension, receptive vocabulary and writing.  The links between narrative or story telling skills in preschool and later reading comprehension ability 10 years later are particularly strong.  Becoming a good story teller also requires refinement of other core skills that are important foundations for a range of academic and social abilities including attention, cognition, memory, inferencing and theory of mind.

Start by helping your child to understand and use story structure

Before you can help your child to develop more complexity in his or her vocabulary, sentence structure or grammar, it is helpful to firstly make sure that your child can tell and retell basic stories that include the following structural components:

Setting      (When does the story take place? Where does the story take place?)

Character    (Who is the character in the story)

Problem or Initiating Event     (What is the problem)

Plan     (What did the character decide to do in response to the problem)

Attempts     (What did the character do first, next, and then…)

Consequences     (What happened at the end?  How did the character’s feel?)

Ideas for teaching Story Structure

Parents and Educators can prompt / model and ask questions about story structure when sharing books with children.  Stop to model some think alouds e.g. “I wonder what he is thinking to do about this problem?”  “Where did this story start?” “How did the girl feel after she solved her problem?”  Being read to is wonderful but we can really increase the benefits when we direct our children’s attention to the narrative structure of the story.

Children, even those still very young, can be encouraged to ‘tell’ their favourite […]

2024-04-14T05:18:28+00:00
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Let’s go for a Walk!

We can nurture the language development of our children by doing something as simple as going for a walk

Physical movement engages multiple senses.  It stimulates brain connections and has also been linked to increased creativity and wellbeing.

Going for a walk is easy, fun to do and is also a lovely way to connect with your child.  Often when we are side by side, engaged in an activity of joint focus or attention, our children open up to us in ways that they might not if we are sitting face to face or asking direct questions.

We really shouldn’t need any further convincing that physical activity is good for us but did  you also know that something as simple as combining going for a walk with language facilitation techniques can also boost your child’s language development?

Follow your Child’s Interests

Slow down!

Not as easily said as done…particularly for busy parents and carers with hectic schedules and lengthy ‘to do’ lists.  If we can find the time to slow down and go for a walk with our child, we will never regret it.  If you can’t add this to your day, think about how you might incorporate it into your day e.g. park a little further from the school gate, walk up and down the aisles with your child when grocery shopping, walk around the oval whilst waiting for the coach to arrive for soccer training, or walk the family pet around the block together.  Even if your child is in a wheelchair or pram, they can still go for a ‘walk’ with you accompanying them.

Watch out for what your child is noticing and engage with these interests by commenting, labelling and modelling ‘think aloud’ statements such as “I wonder why there are so many butterflies today?” OR “I think it might rain soon.  Those clouds look very dark and gloomy.”

Copy Back and Add on

This is one of our favourite language facilitation techniques.

So simple to do!

When your child says something….simply copy it back and add on new words, more information or new ideas.

For example:

Child:  Look….truck

Carer:  Yes, a big red truck over there

OR

Child:  Noisy!

Carer:  That motorbike was very noisy!

WAIT!

Resist the urge to encourage your child to share information with you during your walks.  Silence and pauses work wonders.

Any perceived pressure to talk is released.

Your child can tune into the sounds in the environment and develop his or her mindfulness by noticing the birds, rustling leaves, traffic noise, crunching gravel beneath his or her feet etc…

This will help your child to develop important emotional regulation skills and will often result in more communication with you than if you jump in with a barrage of questions.

n.b. This also works wonders with adolescents who often go through a period of saying less than more to their parents and carers!

Enjoy yourself

Make the most of being outdoors walking with your child.

Notice your surroundings and perhaps take the opportunity to offer some gratitude for the lovely opportunity you have to share such precious moments […]

2024-03-27T02:51:19+00:00
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Screen Time and Toddlers

The Average Australian Toddler spends 2-3 hours engaging in screen time each day

Did anyone see this rather startling headline in last week’s news bulletins?

At the outset it certainly makes you sit up and take notice.

The results of a long term, large scale study of Australian toddlers linked screen time to toddlers being exposed to 194 fewer conversations or missing out on hearing more than 1000 words spoken by adults each day.

The study then went on to say that, for every extra minute of screen time, our 3 year olds were hearing 7 fewer words and speaking 5 fewer words.

Yes, this finding needs to be acknowledged and, most definitely, addressed if we are to provide our children with the best start in life but let’s not use this as evidence to prove ‘all screen time is damaging’ or to make carers and parents feel guilty for allowing or even encouraging their young children to engage with screens.

Let’s use this information in the following ways:

Create Language Rich Environments for our Children

We know that being exposed to a language rich environment is critical in supporting the development of language in the early years.  Early language development predicts outcomes for children in later life including academic, social and emotional outcomes.

Screens are here to stay so, instead of demonising them, let’s accept that fact and really make efforts to engage our children in language opportunities that boost vocabulary development, engagement in back and forth interactions and play.  We can do this at times where screens are out of sight and out of mind.

The simple act of adults also putting away their screens (phones, laptops and televisions) and consciously following the lead of their child’s interests, getting down to their child’s level and playing will also work wonders in setting children on a path of language development.

Make conversation, story time and play with your child a daily habit and think about how you model the use of screens in your own life! Language rich environments and screens can live harmoniously side by side but we need to make a concerted effort for that to happen.

Remember that no programme, App or youtube channel has as much value when it comes to language development as YOU!

Children rely on the adults in their lives to provide opportunities for back and forth interactions, communication of new words and thoughts that match a child’s interests and children look to use for cues about what new words might mean.

There is no digital programme out there that can tune into your child’s interests as well as you nor is there an App that can provide true interactive experiences with another human in that way that you can!

Our young children are sponges!

Children don’t have ‘off’ waking hours when it comes to their potential to learn.  They are constantly absorbing new words and meanings as long as they are awake. Engage your child in conversation to stimulate this learning during your everyday routines, play and during car trips.  This […]

2024-03-20T06:28:12+00:00
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Settling into a New School Year

Transitions can be tricky for many of us.  Starting a new school year can be a particularly challenging time for many children.

After a lovely summer holiday in Australia, children are now well and truly into Term 1.  Most have settled in well but several may still be struggling to make a successful transition.  Here are few ideas for you to consider if this sounds like your child, a child you care for or perhaps a child in your classroom.

Acknowledge your child’s emotions

We all appreciate being heard and understood.  It is really important that you firstly accept and acknowledge your child’s emotions and try to see the challenge of starting or going back to school through your child’s eyes.

Label these emotions…give the emotions words to start helping your child to process what they are feeling.

For children who are very young or who have challenges such as Autism or Language Disorders, you might also need to ‘SHOW’ your child the emotion using your facial expressions and tone of voice very clearly.

Pausing to reflect and acknowledge what our child is feeling offers far more support than expecting our child to ‘get over it!’  Yes, school is a few weeks in now but transitions can take weeks and sometimes even months for some children.  Don’t try to rush them through.  Instead, support your child where he or she is at by providing an understanding and accepting response.

Create Positive Memories

Children learn when they are regulated, comfortable and secure.  If your child is working with an Occupational Therapist, encourage your child’s teacher to work closely with you and the OT to develop a regulation plan to support your child especially during those tricky transition periods to and from school each day.  If something has worked in the past, don’t hesitate to bring back that specific strategy and use it again. We often need to revisit strategies from time to time that we thought we would no longer need.

Help your child’s teacher to understand and read your child’s specific signs of dysregulation and work together to create a plan to support your child.

Ensure your child gets plenty of physical movement, fun and ‘down time’ when at home if at all possible over the next few weeks to allow their body systems to adjust to the new daily routine and expectations.  It is also important for these moments to be infused throughout the school day if at all possible.

Remember that many of our children learn and understand best when they ‘see’ as well as ‘hear’ what it is you have to say.  Instead of relying upon verbally explaining changes, routines and expectations only using spoken words; maybe use social stories with lots of photos and visual schedules to assist your child to understand and then eventually feel more relaxed about.

Finally, all of our children benefit from the adults in their lives being reliable and trusting.  When a child trusts you, they feel safe and you can’t regulate your emotions unless you have […]

2024-02-12T03:10:32+00:00
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The Opposite of Anxiety is not Calm

We all face stressors in our lives.

Some of us are lucky enough to be equipped with a well-developed prefrontal cortex which can support us in managing or regulating our emotional responses to these stressors.

Young children require the assistance and support of trusted adults in their lives at times when their emotions are in overdrive.

Children do not have well developed areas of their brain that allow them to reason, problem solve and reflect upon their thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

As the school holidays are now here in Australia, it is timely to remind ourselves that many children but particularly those with Autism are vulnerable to increased stress and anxiety when faced with

Uncertainty or a lack of Predictability.

 

The school holidays involve much uncertainty.  Routines are changed as are environments, people and food.  Large family and other gatherings take place.

Whilst most of us enjoy a holiday…Not many of us enjoy uncertainty or a lack of predictability in our lives.

Young children who are yet to fully develop their reasoning and emotional regulatory abilities are more vulnerable than adults to feeling stressed by a lack of certainty and predictability in their lives.  They may respond well however to trusted adults in their lives supporting them during these moments.

The key word in that last sentence = TRUST.

Let’s remind ourselves that children who are autistic are at particular risk of experiencing stress and overwhelm when their world feels uncertain.   They can be left in a state of hyper-caution.

In order to feel emotionally well regulated, one most first feel trust and safety.  It can be so difficult for children to develop trust in people, activities and experiences when they are in a state of confusion and hyper-vigilance.

At these times, when we observe children to be shutting down, melting down, or engaging in repetitive behaviours, we do well to first chase the ‘why’ ….

Why is the child behaving in this way?  What emotion might be driving the behaviour we are seeing the child exhibit.  What triggers might be causing that emotion to arise? What can we do that will best support the child in this moment?

By taking that moment to reflect before we respond, we can better understand where a child’s behaviour is truly coming from. Then we can respond in a manner that supports the child to feel safe.

Our children will only respond to our efforts to support them if they trust us.

 

Barry Prizant (Speech Language Pathologist and author of my favourite text on ASD ‘Uniquely Human’) https://barryprizant.com/uniquely-human/provides some terrific tips that I often refer to.   I have summarised them for you below from an old article her penned for the Autism Spectrum Quarterly (2009).  Still as helpful today as it was then.  I hope these tips help you, a family friend or a colleague to better understand and support our children who face challenges associated with Autism:

Acknowledge Communicative Attempts

A core element of a trusting relationship is the feeling that others ‘hear’ or ‘get’ you.  It can sometimes be tricky to decipher the non-conventional […]

2023-12-16T05:34:52+00:00
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Helping Children with ASD learn to greet others

Another Lesson Learned from Abroad

Children with ASD often have difficulty in interacting with others.  They can find playing with other children quite challenging for a variety of reasons and participation in exchanges that go back and forth across multiple turns can be difficult.

Greetings are often the first step in those back and forth exchanges.  All children but particularly those with ASD may really benefit from our support to learn this skill; a skill that so many of us take for granted.

Teaching children how, when and why to greet different communication partners can be the first step to help them develop more meaningful relationships with others.

Many of us with offer a friendly ‘hello’ as the first step in many of our interactions with others.  It may be a nod of the head, a raised hand, or a smile as you pass someone on the street or in the hallway at work.  It may be a more formal ‘Good afternoon…how are you’ as you greet a client in your waiting room or a ‘Hello….XXX speaking’ as you answer a phonecall.  Your greeting may be an informal ‘Hey…how are you?’ going to a friend or colleague.   Each generation seems to have different social rules and expectations around how to greet.

Yes, the ‘simple’ act of greeting is not so simple at all!

  1. How does your child with ASD communicate?

Let’s start from a strengths base.

Is your child able to use spoken words?

Can your child use eye contact to communicate his or her interests?

Can your child use gestures or key word signs?

Does your child use an AAC device to communicate with others?

  1. Is your child greeting others?  

If so, who does your child greet?

When does your child greet people?

If not, who is your child most familiar with?  Who does your child show a strong emotional connection to?  What people in your child’s environment does he or she appear to be comfortable around?

3.  What will I encourage my child to do and/or say to greet others?

We have identified how your child communicates?

If you are now wanting to encourage your child to start greeting others with greater success and frequency, start by modelling for them how you want them to do so.  Make sure you choose a method and style of communication that is within your child’s toolbox.  For example, if your child uses an AAC device, you can model how to use this device to say hello to people.  Your child will watch and learn.  If your child can use gestures, you can model how to wave and smile at people you greet.  If your child can use spoken words, you can model how to wave and say ‘hello’.  If your child prefers to give a High 5, then this is what you can model!

Choose moments and people when your child is well regulated emotionally.  We want your child to feel good at these moments so that they associate greetings with moments of positivity and human connection.

Don’t pressure your child to […]

2023-11-06T00:45:14+00:00
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The importance of ‘Hello’

Lessons Learned from Abroad

I have recently returned from the trip of a life time; a long awaited trip to France to watch the Rugby World Cup with my husband and tour the south of France.  It is the first time we have travelled abroad since having children many years ago so was very special for us both.  I took quite some time off blogging whilst I was away and just soaked up as much as I could from being immersed in a different culture and language.

Not being at all proficient in the French language, I was interested to see first hand how powerful the simple act of saying ‘Hello’ was.

“Bonjour!” with a smile was the most important word for us to learn and use when travelling in France.  I am guessing that it may be the most important communication starter in any language….

The simple act of being able to greet someone with a smile and word (be that verbal or non verbal) helps to offer warmth, positive connection and a start to any social interaction.  We started with a greeting when interacting with  Uber drivers, those in cafes and restaurants who were pouring our coffee or serving us our pastries and with those who passed us by on the street or at the various tourist locations we visited

  1. Do we focus on teaching the social communication act of greetings with our children? 

I am sure we do but I will be doing so now with far more gusto and intention than previously.

Why?

We managed to ‘get by’ with ‘Bonjour’ and ‘Merci’ as our only French words.  These words started and ended many of our social interactions successfully and in a positive, warm manner.

Learning these simple, positive communication rituals early teaches children how to start a conversation with another human in an appropriate manner.  Often when a child moves past ‘Hello’ , they start to feel more confident to engage.  It certainly breaks down that first hurdle which is so important for our hesitant and less able communicators.

Saying ‘hello’ doesn’t have to be verbal.  It can be communicated with eyes, hands (a wave) or even your body.  If we positively interpret a child’s attempts to greet us in whichever way they are able to, we will encourage this behaviour to grow.

For those children who find that saying ‘hello’ feels awkward or uncomfortable, we can continue to model this when they are with us.  Resist the urge to pressure your children to say ‘hello’ as we want them to associate greetings with positive emotions; not with angst or fear.

  1. How can I teach ‘hello’?

You can start by making it your intention to explicitly model saying ‘hello’ to others when your child is in your presence.  Use an animated voice and happy smiling face as you do so that your child is more likely to notice and learn from your modelling.

You can prompt your child to say ‘hello’ to others but start with those communication partners that your child […]

2023-10-29T05:26:31+00:00
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Teaching Early Reading and Spelling Skills: Frequently Asked Questions

There are so many good, evidence based programmes available now to support parents and educators in developing early reading and spelling skills.

These are based upon teaching phonics in a systematic, explicit manner.

If you don’t have the background knowledge about why a specific scope and sequence needs to be followed however, when things go ‘wrong’ (which they will invariably do for approximately 10% of children in any classroom), you won’t know how to adjust your teaching to ensure that all children learn and make steady progress.

Let us help by answering some of the most frequently asked questions about supporting children’s early reading and spelling skills when things don’t go as planned.

  1. What is the difference between phonological awareness and phonics?

Phonological Awareness: As we have mentioned in previous Chatterbox blogposts here ,  this term  refers to the ability to recognise and manipulate the sounds of spoken language, such as segmenting words into syllables, and identifying individual sounds (phonemes) within words. It’s a vital pre-reading skill that children require before they can then map ‘letters’ (also referred to as graphemes) to their speech sounds for the purposes of spelling and reading.

Phonics: Phonics, on the other hand, involves connecting these sounds (phonemes) to written letters (graphemes). It’s about learning the relationships between letters and the sounds they represent.

There is a difference between these two concepts and children need BOTH if they are to be successful in acquiring early literacy skills.

  1. What are the most important foundational phonological awareness skills to master?

Ideally, children will master the ability to segment words into syllables, identify sounds in various word positions and segment as well as blend sounds within words. If you had to pick the most important of these early developing skills of these to master, it would have to be the ability to segment (break words apart into component individual sounds) and blend (stretch these sounds back together to form a word) as these two skills link beautifully to spelling and reading.

So many children we meet have good awareness of individual speech sounds and the letters used to represent these (i.e. phonics), however without the phonemic awareness skills of segmentation and blending, they are unable to progress to spelling and reading simple words.

  • 3. How does speech link to literacy?

Speech and literacy are closely connected.

Reading and spelling essentially involves translating spoken language into written form.

Helping children to ‘crack the code’ involves showing them how their speech sounds map to the written form.

  1. How to help children read and spell words with less regular spellings

When encountering irregular or challenging words, so many of us are tempted to make comments such as “This is a tricky word.  You just need to remember it”.

Contrary to common belief…Very few words need be described in this way.

Sure, many words use less regular / common spellings of sounds but it is far more helpful to explain this to children with comments such as “This word has some tricky parts.  […]

2023-08-27T23:24:48+00:00
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