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About Karen Trengove

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So far Karen Trengove has created 42 blog entries.

Roaring Fun: Extending Dinosaur Playtimes

Does your child love playing with toy Dinosaurs but the play doesn’t seem to be moving beyond ‘roar’?

The benefits of imaginative play and the clear links between this type of play and early language development are well documented.  So many of our children love playing with toy animals and dinosaurs seem to be a crowd favourite in our clinics at the moment.

Imaginative play goes far beyond simply portraying dinosaurs as fierce creatures in battle yet many of our children seem to get ‘stuck’ on this type of play when playing with these toy creatures.

By modelling some new ways of playing with dinosaurs, we can encourage our children to  develop their play skills, learn important emotional regulation skills, interact cooperatively with their playmates and develop language abilities.

Here are some alternative ideas that you may not have yet considered that promote cooperative play, empathy, and creative problem-solving.  If your child continues to prefer the theme of rough, fierce play with dinosaurs…..don’t despair.  We have ideas for you to use that will involve both following your child’s lead and extending his or her language skills as you do!

Dino Family time

Encourage your child to re-enact familiar routines with their toy dinosaurs.  Instead of requesting that your child follow your spoken instructions, you are likely to have far more success if you model this type of play alongside your child with your own dinosaur.  Try involving your dinosaur in taking a bath, going for a walk,  dancing to music, getting dressed with some dolls clothes, getting ready for bed, eating a meal, having a tea party etc…  The possibilities are endless and help your child to consolidate their comprehension of the steps involved in the routines that are already part of their everyday activities.

Dinosaur Superheroes

Why not combine two different types of ‘popular’ play for young children by having dinosaurs become stuck (in a box, in a muddy bog, at the top of a tree, on a rooftop, in a deep valley)… Each of these imaginary places can be easily created with a bit of imagination.  The deep valley can involve a dinosaur being stuck in the crevices of a large bean bag.  The muddy bog might be plush carpet and the top of a tree might be your bench top!  Have fun calling out out for help and labelling emotions such as feeling brave, worried, frightened, scared, worried, relieved, grateful. It is never to early to start exposing your child to these words that label our emotions.  Problem solving skills can also be explored when you both work out how the dinosaur is to be rescued.

Family Adventures

Once your child has noticed and is becoming interested in these new ways of playing with the dinosaurs, you can assign different family roles to different dinosaurs.  The family of dinosaurs might go to the beach, play at the park, get on a bus, do the shopping etc…  Have fun using different props to extend your play.  Remember to keep following your child’s lead.  […]

2023-07-31T21:02:32+00:00
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‘Comfortable’ is not always best for us….or our children!

Most of us like operating within our comfort zone.

The comfort zone is a cozy space where we feel safe and familiar. While it provides a sense of security, staying within its confines is not necessarily good for us.  In the short term it can give us that dopamine hit that feels lovely but it doesn’t always serve our long term goals well to always choose what is comfortable.

This is true in many areas of our life.

Choosing the most comfortable, cushioned running shoes doesn’t tend to result in strong feet that can walk along a beach easily when you are older.

Choosing to lie on the lounge to watch TV of an evening is rarely as good for us as going to bed that little bit earlier.

We are told that choosing to sit rather than stand doesn’t support our long term health and posture.

Choosing the less healthy food options can feel great in the moment but not so great if we do this for a lifetime.

Both children and adults can fall into this trap; fearing change and avoiding new experiences.  No one likes to be uncomfortable so we naturally tend to avoid putting ourselves into these situations.

As parents, we rarely want to see our children experience tricky emotions when out of their comfort zone as we ourselves know how challenging this can be.  It is essential however that we recognise that true growth and learning occurs when we stretch ourselves beyond the boundaries of our comfort zone.  This is true not only for us but for our children.

For children who need to learn new speech and language skills, the capacity to move beyond their comfort zone is often required.  When working with younger children, we can often weave facilitation of their development into play and everyday routines.  Children may not even realise that this is ‘intervention’ when adults do this well.  However, as children get that little bit older and move into their preschool years, speech therapy often requires repetitive practice and speech drills in order to change existing speech patterns and encourage new skills to develop.

Learning new speech sounds can be difficult for children as can learning new concepts at school or learning to read and spell.  It can feel uncomfortable when learning new skills.  This inevitably requires us to support our children to stretch beyond their comfort zones.

We all react differently when we feel uncomfortable.  If children can be supported to process rather than avoid these emotions then we are much more likely to see steady progress towards achieving therapy goals as well as the development of other important skills that will set your child up for a lifetime.

The Power of Taking Risks

Trying to do something that feels difficult involves taking a risk.  A risk that many children find difficult to take is that of risking failure but needing to try multiple times before achieving a goal helps children to learn resilience and problem-solving abilities  Developing the confidence to face challenges head-on is a skill that will certainly […]

2023-07-23T23:15:48+00:00
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When on a WAITING LIST for Speech Pathology….What you can do!

Have you been told that the WAITING TIME for your child to see a Speech Pathologist is lengthy?

Unfortunately the demand for Speech Pathology services continues to far exceed the demand in many parts of Australia.  You are not alone.

All over this country there are children of all ages waiting far too long for the support they need to develop speech, language and communication skills.

We all know that Early Identification and Early Intervention are both crucial if we are to help our children reach their potential.

So

….you can either throw your hands in the air and sit and wait

Or

….think outside the square and choose to be proactive in this waiting phase

This problem requires a few creative solutions but there is no reason why your child, a child you educate or care for cannot access support immediately.

Here are some ideas that you may have not yet considered:

Speech Pathologists are not the only professionals who can help your child!

Yes, that’s correct.  Everyone has a role in nurturing the speech, language and communication skills of children.

Start by building your own knowledge and skills around all things child communication by keeping an eye out on our Facebook and Instagram social media channels.

Take a deep dive into our WEBSITE where we share checklists, access to free texts as well as a weekly Chatterbox blog covering a wide range of topics.

Many speech pathology and allied health practices such as ours are employing and training non- Speech Pathologists with backgrounds in early childhood, education or disability to become Speech Pathology Therapy Assistants.  As Therapy Assistants come from a wide variety of backgrounds, it can often be easier to recruit them than qualified Speech Pathologists.  Therapy Assistants can deliver programmes to clients that are deemed suitable for such a service with close Speech Pathology supervision.

If your child or a child you educate is waiting for Speech Pathology, it may be worth asking

‘Does your practice provide a Therapy Assistant service?’.

If so, this might be an option whilst your child is waiting for a Speech Pathologist!

Many young children under the age of 7 who are eligible for NDIS funding have  Key Workers who are early childhood intervention specialists.  If your child has a Key Worker but is still waiting for a Speech Pathologist, encourage your Key Worker to Contact Us us to discuss the possibility of some

Face to Face or Zoom Coaching

to build valuable knowledge, skills and confidence to support your child’s speech, language and communication skills during this interim period.

We now provide a range of tailored Professional Development packages to meet the needs of Parent Groups, Key Workers, Early Childhood Educators and Disability Support Workers.

We just love it when we get contacted to discuss collaborating to help more children.

Consider Tele-Practice

Whilst most families prefer Face-to-Face Speech Pathology services, there are several who decide to embrace  Tele-Practice once they have given it a try.

Tele-Practice can provides a great start whilst children are waiting for a Face to Face Speech Pathology appointment.  At Learn2Communicate as well as in many […]

2023-07-15T06:26:00+00:00
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Speech Ready: The skills our preschoolers need to transition to school

It’s that time of year again…when our preschool aged children will soon attend Kindergarten orientation programmes and transition to school!

Is your child, a child you care for, or a child you educate ready for school?

Do you have concerns or confusion about what skills are important to nurture in order to give your child the best chance of a successful start to his or her schooling?

Look no further. When it comes to speech, language and communication skills we have you covered.

As parents and early childhood educators, we play a crucial role in preparing our children for the exciting transition to kindergarten.  Among the many essential skills required for this milestone, strong speech, language, and communication abilities are particularly vital. In this blog, we will explore eight key areas that will help children thrive as they embark on their kindergarten journey.

Here are our handpicked top Kindy Readiness Skills and ways that you can support your child, a child you care for or a child you educate develop them over the next 6 months!

Get your free School Readiness speech and language checklist here

Learn2Communicate School Ready!

Initiate and Sustain Conversations

Encouraging children to start conversations with others and to keep these going back and forth over multiple turns  fosters social interactions and builds their confidence in expressing their thoughts and ideas. Be sure to give your child many opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations with you with opportunities for active listening and turn taking.

Answer a Range of Open Ended WH – Questions

Incorporate open ended WH-Questions into your daily conversations, asking your child about their day, their favourite activities, or their interests.  Questions starting with ‘what’ ‘where’ ‘who’ ‘when’ ‘where’ ‘how ‘ and ‘why’ will help conversations to keep flowing with your child and will encourage your child’s understanding and recall to develop.

You can also develop these skills when sharing story books together.  It is important to mix these questions naturally amongst other types of language such as comments and statements so that your child doesn’t feel pressured or ‘tested’.  Keep it fun and playful.

These skills are important for children when starting school to respond to questions from their teacher and during activities such as ‘show and tell’ when other children may ask questions or seek clarification about your child’s news item.

Understand and Follow Spoken Instructions

This is a big one!  One of the most important and obvious differences between home, early childhood settings and a Kindergarten classroom is that your child will now be in a large group of children with 1 teachers.  Your child will need to far more listening than ever before. He or she will need to tune in, listen to, understand and follow many spoken instructions throughout the day.  You can help you child by providing your child will opportunities at home to follow simple instructions.  They can gradually increase in complexity as your child becomes more adept.  Break the instructions down into smaller steps to make them more manageable and use visual cues such as gestures […]

2023-07-08T04:24:02+00:00
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When children just don’t seem interested in communicating with us

Many children who struggle with communication find it challenging to respond to the topics, questions and interests of others.

The more we try to seek their engagement, the more it seems they try to disengage from us.  Some children will dip further and further into their own interests, topics and scripts.  Others will turn away from us and seemingly ignore or not even seem to hear our attempts to engage them in conversation.  Other will find our constant efforts quite dysregulating and may either shut down or exhibit challenging behaviours.  What to do when your child or a child you educate struggles to engage in back and forth conversation or interaction?

The Power of Declarative Language

The day a parent of one of my young clients suggested I read The Declarative Language Handbook by Linda K Murphy really turned things around for me.  This brief but incredibly insightful and helpful little guide provides adults with a range of simple tools that have the power to really transform the way we interact with children who some would describe as ‘disinterested’, ‘daydreamers’ or even ‘non compliant’.  Since making a concerted effort to implement the strategies that Lindy recommends I have seen incredible results.

It all starts with taking the perceived pressure to communicate OFF the child and establishing a lovely connection.

Declarative Language put simply means to make simple comments about what one can observe (see, feel, smell, taste) and what one thinks whilst interacting with a child.  Instead of asking questions, change your language into simple comments.

Using words that include 1st person pronouns such as I, We, Let’s, My and cognitive verbs such as “I wonder”  “I know”   “I am thinking that…” really does open the child up to considering different possibilities and ideas and tempt them to enter the world of their interaction partner and tune in even if just for a moment.

Interested in Learning More?

I would highly recommend purchasing the text of course but, to start, you can look no further than this lovely summary blog here where Linda provides a free to download Declarative Language Cheat Sheet. https://www.declarativelanguage.com/sunday-snippets-of-support/declarative-language-cheat-sheet

Speaking from experience, it does feel awkward at first when you start intentionally using this type of language, but stick with it.  It really does yield some pretty amazing results with many children and is a good reminder that sometimes it is not the child we need to change but the environment in which that child is growing and interacting.

Declarative Language techniques can be used with children of all ages.  Give it a try.  You won’t be disappointed.

2023-06-26T10:49:36+00:00
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The Power of Playful Imitation

Imitation is how young children learn many skills; including how to communicate

What a child is not talking, there is a fair chance that he or she is not yet imitating

Imitation is an important skill to teach a late talking toddler.

Imitation is a foundational skill that serves as a precursor to language development in toddlers. We can help our children to develop speech, language and communication skills via engaging in playful imitation.  In this week’s blogpost we will delve into the significance of imitation as a vital precursor skill for language development in toddlers. By understanding the link between imitation and language, you can facilitate the development of your child’s language skills in a fun, playful way.

The Skill of Imitation Develops in Stages

First young children will start to imitate your actions upon objects. For example, your child might imitate you patting a dog, drinking from a cup, washing hands, popping bubbles, building a tower with blocks or pushing buttons on a musical toy.

Next young children will start to imitate actions and gestures that they see demonstrated. This is when children start enjoying simple songs that involve actions.

Soon after, children may start to imitate your simple vocalisations and sounds that they hear in the environment such as trucks, sirens and animal sounds.

Finally, children start to imitate words and short phrases.

Tips to help your child learn to imitate gestures by 12 months

If your child is imitating actions with objects and playing appropriately with a variety of toys, it is time to make yourself the toy and encourage your child to imitate your gestures.

Start with some simple body actions and gestures in games like ‘Give me Five’ ‘Peekaboo’ ‘Round and Round the Garden’, clapping, waving hi/bye and banging on a table with your hands.

Some simple gross motor actions like jumping, marching and dancing to music are other fun ideas to help your child imitate actions during play.

Once your child can imitate these types of simple actions, you can teach some simple natural gestures or key word signs to help your child communicate.

Some Helpful Natural Gestures and Key Word Signs to teach young children

Only teach signs when your child is imitating earlier gestures.  Model  / Demonstrate these signs 3-5 times in natural situations and play and then look expectantly at your child…giving him or her time to attempt to imitate.  Here are some good signs to start with:

up

more

eat

drink

all done

mine

help

open

Imitation can help your child to learn:

How to engage in back and forth reciprocal conversation

How to use verbal and nonverbal communication for a range of social purposes with others

Vocabulary

How to combine words using grammar and syntax to build combinations of words in phrases and short sentences

Speech Sounds

Imitation is a fundamental precursor skill for language development in toddlers.

By incorporating opportunities for playful imitation into your interactions and activities, parents and carers can create a rich learning environment that supports their child’s speech, language and communication skills to grow.

Through imitation, toddlers acquire vocabulary, grasp sentence structure, develop conversational skills, […]

2023-06-17T06:10:26+00:00
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When Should I Seek Help for my Toddler’s Talking?

Have some questions or concerns about your Toddler’s Talking?  Not sure if he or she is on track?

We often have concerned carers contacting us with questions about their little ones’ development.  It can be an unsettling feeling to hear and see other little toddlers in your mother’s group meetings who are talking in sentences whilst your child is yet to say much at all.

When should I seek some Speech Pathology support?

What can I do if my child is late to talk?

Why is my child later to talk than others his or her age?

Should I be worried?

Does this mean that my child may be on the Autism Spectrum?

The list of questions goes on and on…let us answer a few for you now.

Speech and Language Delays are very common among children with Autism but also very common amount children without Autism

Autism seems to be in the back of many carers’ minds when they contact us with concerns about their child’s development so let’s address this early.

The cause of your child’s delay in speech, language and/or communication may be Autism or another underlying diagnosis such as Intellectual Disability.

Far more common, however, are children who are late to talk because of fluctuating hearing loss caused by Otitus Media (Glue Ear).  If you have any concerns regarding the development of your child’s communication skills, get a hearing test.  https://learn2communicate.com.au/tag/eustachian-tubes/

Irrespective of the cause of your child’s delay in speech, language or communication it is best to intervene early in order to get the best outcome for your child.  Early Intervention is super important.

So often we don’t know why a child is late to talk.  What is perhaps more important is knowing when to seek support and where to go to get the right advice.

When to Contact a Speech Pathologist

There is so much available now available via our keyboards and phones that it can get pretty overwhelming and difficult to sort fact from fiction.  Our simple checklists for parents are a great place to start https://learn2communicate.com.au/parents/

If you are wanting more detail, particularly for very young children, the HANEN website has some very good information for parents available here https://www.hanen.org/Helpful-Info/When-You-Are-Concerned/Warning-Signs.aspx

A few other red flags for when to contact a Speech Pathologist include:

Not combining words into short phrases by 2 years of age

Still difficult for others to understand by 3 years of age

Limited interest in responding to others and communicating

Be concerned but not alarmed if your child is late to talk or is showing signs of having a delay in their communication skills development.

Most speech, language and communication delays respond very well to early support and intervention.

Educate yourself about what ‘development’ looks like at different ages and stages and what the red flags are.

Contact us or your local Speech Pathologist if you have concerns.

There is plenty you can do to help your child and it sure beats sitting at home worrying about it!

2023-06-12T08:10:58+00:00
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Ways to Engage Your Reluctant Writer

Does your young child or a child your educate need assistance, not just with writing, but to find the ‘joy’ in writing?

This is a dilemma we face frequently particularly when working with school aged children who have struggled with speech and language skills since their preschool years.

They have often followed the trajectory of finding school work difficult.  Learning to read and spell has been hard going and the task of writing a narrative or expository text seems not only insurmountable but also just very unappealing.

It can be tricky to help these students.  We can only improve our writing by writing but how do you do this when the student is lacking in skill, motivation, confidence and interest?

Aaah…that last word….interest.  Harness their interest to find a spark and you might be surprised by how quickly a student can move from being disengaged to finding a love of writing.

Find what interests the child…what lights the fire in their belly?

For one of my students this Term, that fire has been all things Pokemon and Star Wars.  I can’t say that I know much at all about either of these topics but I am quickly learning.  It has not taken much digging to find a plethora of ideas out there to harness my student’s interest in these topics and to funnel this interest into a range of writing tasks.

We have had so much fun expanding our vocabulary and knowledge about these mythical creatures using resources freely available such as this beauty https://www.scribd.com/document/521042181/3

We have been able to look at foundational decoding skills by breaking the names into syllables to read accurately and to highlight the trickier spellings of consonants and vowel sounds.

We have also been able to use the names of Pokemon to target spelling with a focus upon mapping speech sounds to graphemes / letters.

Our Pokemon themed sessions have also provided plenty of ideas for planning narratives using these interesting characters.  Targeting oral and written narrative has so many far reaching benefits for all children but particularly for those who struggle with language and literacy.  Using scaffolds such as these Narrative Scaffolds Narrative Scaffolds with a Pokemon theme doesn’t feel like hard work at all for students who have a strong interest in these little critters.

If Star Wars is more your thing….

It only takes a quick Google and you will have so many fresh ideas to incorporate this interest into a writing task.  Whether it is a narrative, a description or information report, an opinion piece or any writing text you are targeting…there is an idea within the Star Wars theme that will work.

Remember that writing doesn’t have to be an all or nothing task either.  Why not help children who struggle to get started with writing to brainstorm all they know about a topic (and believe me..students who are interested in Star Wars know A LOT about this topic).  Encourage the students to write each idea or word on a single strip of paper.  At this stage, they […]

2023-05-30T04:58:51+00:00
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My child speaks in ‘gobbledygoop’!

Does your young child ‘sound’ as though he or she is telling you a long story and yet you can’t understand a word of it?

Perhaps your child uses amazing facial expressions and gestures to help communicate his or her message but you can only make out a word here or there.

This can be a pretty frustrating situations for parents, early childhood educators and children who have lots to say but insufficient vocabulary, speech sounds and motor skills to do so.

“Where do I start?” is a common question we are asked by parents and educators alike when I child is experiencing this type of communication difficulty.

Start by Acknowledging the Child’s Communication

This can be as simple as saying ‘yeah?’ ‘that’s right’ ‘uh huh’ and then repeating back what the child has said…even if that means that you also repeat the gobbledygoop.

Where possible, listen out carefully for any parts of the jargon that might sound like a single word.  Often these are louder or clearer than the rest of the message. This can sometimes give you a clue about what the child is trying to communicate.

Be a detective.  What has your child been watching or doing?  Context and shared experience can often give us clues about what a child might be telling us.

Listen closely for clues in the child’s use of intonation.

How is the child using gestures and facial expressions.  Do these give you any clues regarding the message that he or she is trying to relay?

Why do some children use gobbledygoop instead of words to communicate?

Some children just go through this stage on their way to developing intelligible strings of words.

Others are trying to communicate more than their ‘young’ motor systems can cope with in terms of motor coordination for the articulators.

Some children are what we refer to as Gestalt Language Learners.  They tend to learn larger chunks of language, tunes and repetitive sayings quicker than they do single words.

Other children are late talkers.  By the age of 2 years, they are yet to start combining words into clear, telegrammatic phrases.

Help your child by acknowledging their attempts to communicate and then modelling simple, repetitive ‘scripts’ that they can eventually learn to use on their own.  Keep your language simple, ‘tuneful’ and repetitive.  Don’t insist upon your child imitating you.  Simply use these scripts as conversational commentary as you interact with your child.  For example, your child rushes up to you and provides a string of gobbledygoop.  Using your detective work, you make a smart guess that this is in some way related to what just happened to the tower of blocks your child was building.  You can say “Look over there!  Oh no….Blocks fall down….Oh no….Build it up…Mummy help?”

By tuning into your child and first connecting by acknowledging any attempt to communicate, you will set the foundations for your child to absorb what you say next.

More information about the Gestalt Language Learning which is common in many of the children we work with at Learn2Communicate, read […]

2023-05-21T06:56:49+00:00
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Pop up Pirate

Ever wondered why every Speech Pathologist you have ever met has Pop up Pirate in the cupboard?

This little guy has a tough life getting nudged with swords of every colour on most days of the week until he finally pops out of the barrel!

Whilst it might just look like a fun, cheap toy, let me assure you that this this pirate is also a terrific therapy tool that is well worth adding to your toolbox if you are a parent or educator working with a child who has speech, language or communication difficulties.

Speech Sounds

Get your picture cards or real items ready.

Have your child either imitate the word after you with assistance or spontaneously say the word that includes your child’s target sound.

Encourage your child to say a word  –> before then selecting  a sword or (to get even more speech practice) encourage your child to say the word 5 times accurately before you give him/her a sword to stick into the Pirate.

Is your child working on ‘s-clusters’ ?  If so, Pop up Pirate is the perfect therapy tool and you don’t even need picture cards as your child can say ‘stick in’ each time a sword is stuck into the barrel.

The same is true if your child is working on the ‘s’ sound.  He / She can say ‘sword’ or ‘green /red / blue sword’ each time they have a turn.

If your child needs help with the /k/ sound, try incorporating a request into the activity e.g. “CAN I have a blue sword?”

The possibilities are pretty much endless when it comes to speech sounds and the use of Pop up Pirate.

For some children, the game can be played simply as a reward for completing a less preferred or more challenging activity.

Language Goals and Pop up Pirate

Pop up Pirate is not only helpful for making speech home practice fun. He can be used to help target a multitude of other goals including:

Taking turns with a play partner

Understanding the concepts of first –> next

Responding to questions such as “How many?” and “Where?”

Learning concepts of colour, number, sequence and location

Asking questions

Answering questions

Making predictions

Developing joint attention

There are so many ways to use Pop up Pirate to build communication skills.  Home practice can be fun!

So, keep your eye out for this fun toy and plenty of others like it which have so many uses and never fail to find a little one’s smile.

If you are wanting more tips on getting the most out of home / preschool / school practice, then please take a dive into the last couple of Chatterbox blogposts https://learn2communicate.com.au/i-dont-want-to-when-children-wont-do-their-speech-home-programmes/ and https://learn2communicate.com.au/struggling-to-fit-a-speech-home-programme-into-your-life/ and have some fun!

2023-05-15T09:12:59+00:00
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