Monthly Archives: November 2018

The ABCs: Strategies for Handwriting

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Despite our ever changing world of technology, handwriting remains an essential part of school curriculums and mode of daily communication. Legible and efficient handwriting allows your child to participate in school tasks and keep up with their homework load. Your child may be reluctant to participate in handwriting tasks if it is difficult or if it takes him or her extra time to complete the task. Handwriting doesn’t have to be only copying letters or sentences. Let’s learn how to make handwriting more motivating for your child, so it is less like “work” and more like “play!”

What are the underlying components of handwriting?

  • Fine motor coordination: Handwriting requires the coordination of our small hand muscles and the ability to use both hands for two separate tasks (i.e. holding the pencil and stabilizing the paper).
  • Visual motor and visual perceptual skills: Copying or creating letters requires hand-eye coordination, or using visual input to guide hand movements. Visual perceptual skills also include our ability to discriminate between letters, as well as remember the letters written on the board in order to copy them to our paper.
  • Motor planning: Our ability to use the information in our environment to create, execute, and carry out the motor action of creating letters or sentences. If your child has motor planning difficulties, they may have difficulty with letter formation and legibility.
  • In-hand manipulation: The skill of “shifting” consists of moving the pencil up and down, using your fingers to make small adjustments to your pencil grasp. In order to erase with a pencil, “rotation” is utilized by rotating the pencil to use the eraser and then back to resume writing.
  • Proprioception: The sense of knowing where his/her body is in space allows your child to use the appropriate force on writing utensils.

What can I do to help promote handwriting skills with my child?

  • Promote visual perceptual skills:
    • Mazes
    • Dot-to-dots
    • Word finds
    • Scavenger hunts
  • Do the “Wet-Dry-Try” method:
    • Write a letter on a chalkboard
    • Provide your child with a small wet sponge and a small dry sponge
    • Have your child write the letter using a wet sponge, then using a dry sponge
    • Finally, have your child use chalk to create the letter themselves
  • For older children, try these functional handwriting activities:
    • Write a letter to Santa, the Tooth Fairy, etc.
    • Write a grocery list
    • Help create the family calendar by writing down events
    • Write out a packing list for a trip
  • Promote fingertip grasping patterns by breaking crayons in half. This makes it difficult for your child to grasp the crayon with their whole hand, facilitating a more age-appropriate grasp with fingertips.
  • Facilitate grasping with hand-strengthening activities:
    • Hide beads or coins in Theraputty or PlayDoh and have your child retrieve the small items by pulling apart and pinching the putty
    • Have your child pick up items with a tweezer such as cotton balls, pom poms, or beads. You can also have your child place these items into an egg carton or cut-up foam pool noodles to address fine motor precision
    • Have your child place different sized clothespins on a picture or board
    • Make a 2-inch slit in a tennis ball. Place small items (beads, coins) inside of the tennis ball and have your child retrieve the small items by using their whole hand to squeeze the ball and retrieving items with the opposite hand.

Ways to encourage sensory-based learning with handwriting:

  • Practice forming letters in shaving cream! You can also use food coloring to die the shaving cream.
  • Try sensory bags: You will need a gallon freezer bag. Fill the freezer bag with clear hair gel, then add a few drops of food coloring. Feel free to add glitter! Mix the contents and apply tape over the top of the Ziploc bag. Have your child practice letter formations by tracing over the sensory bag, you can also place a piece of white paper underneath the bag to increase their visual feedback.
  • Write letters on foam sheets for increased sensory input by requiring your child to firmly press their writing utensil into the foam.
  • Encourage letter formation with motivating sensory media: Create letters with Wikki Stix, PlayDoh, beads, or pipe cleaners.
  • Use motivating visual input: Practice letters with a Lite Brite game or using rainbow scratch paper.
  • Turn out the lights and practice forming letters in the dark with a flashlight.
  • Use sidewalk chalk or washable window chalk.
  • For a movement break, have your child attempt to form letters with their body.

Questions or concerns?

If you have questions or concerns about your child’s responses to noise, please contact us at info@playworkschicago.com or 773-332-9439.

Robyn Geist, MS, OTR/L
Occupational Therapist

Feder, K.P. & Majnemer, A. (2007). Handwriting development, competency, and intervention. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology 49, 312-317.

Photo Credit: Robin Brenner via brooklinelibrary.org

The Function of Echolalia

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Echolalia is the repetition or “echoing” of sounds, spoken words, phrases, or sentences. Echolalia is a typical function of early language development seen in young children as they begin to learn spoken language. Echolalia can also be a symptom of various disorders including aphasia, dementia, traumatic brain injury, schizophrenia, or Tourette’s Syndrome; however, it is most often associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It may be difficult to discern typical versus atypical echolalia and whether or not it is a functional part of your child’s language skills, but there are specific qualities to look out for in order to differentiate the underlying causes.

Types of echolalia:

There are two types of echolalia: immediate and delayed. Immediate echolalia is when a child repeats what they just heard. For example, if a parent asks a question, “Do you want a cookie?” and the child responds with, “You want a cookie?” rather than responding to the question. Delayed echolalia is when a child repeats something they heard hours, days, months, or even years prior. For example, the child may repeat a line from a video they saw earlier that day or a phrase heard at the park the week before.

Functional versus non-functional echolalia:

For some children, echolalia is just a meaningless imitation of sounds or words strung together. These children may imitate things they’ve heard recently or in the past with no communicative intent. For other children, echolalia serves a purpose to express wants and needs when they are unable to produce novel statements of their own.  When a child “scripts” (i.e. recites exact lines) from shows or movies, it may appear that they are producing long, meaningful utterances, when in fact they have no comprehension of what they are actually saying. In these instances, they may be using the familiar and memorized words and cadence as a calming strategy, but not to convey a specific message. Functional echolalia, however, is the use of learned words or phrases to make requests and otherwise express wants and needs. Some children will use exact words and intonation in order to get their needs met in a functional way even though they may not yet be able to produce their own novel word combinations. For example, they may say “Are you hungry?” to request food, as opposed to simply stating they are hungry or requesting specific food items. It is significant to note, the child who is “scripting” lines from a movie, may also be using those words as a way to request that movie at that time.

When is echolalia considered typical?

Echolalia is seen in typically developing children during early language development between one and two years of age. While we will continue to see some repetition of overheard language between two and three years of age, we also expect to see a consistent increase in novel words and phrases as well. By three years of age, echolalia should be observed minimally in a child’s spontaneous language, and by four and five, a child is expected to engage in conversations using completely novel language. Children with a language delay or autism spectrum disorder may demonstrate these echolalic characteristics beyond three years of age depending on the severity of the delay or disorder.

While first instinct may be to try to stop the echolalia altogether, it is important to recognize it as either a functional communication tool your child has developed, or as a stepping stone into functional expressive communication skills that can be further developed with the help of a speech therapist. If your child’s echolalia has continued past an age considered part of typical language development or appears “non-functional,” it may be helpful to consult a speech and language pathologist. They can help identify the underlying causes and use these emerging verbal skills to target and build functional communication.

Questions or concerns?

If you have questions or concerns about your child’s echolalic language, please contact us at info@playworkschicago.com or 773-332-9439.

Therese Brown, MS, CCC-SLP
Speech-Language Pathologist
Photo Credit: Echolalia Autism (repetitive speech)-Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment via hearingsol.com

The Importance of Promoting Early Literacy Skills

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Literacy skills develop from language skills and language skills begin to develop as soon as your child is born. Your baby begins communicating through eye contact, smiling, crying, facial expressions, and gestures and relies on your response with words and attention to lay the foundation for language and literacy development. Your child’s brain develops the most during those early years, and frequent exposure to language and reading will help build your child’s vocabulary, comprehension, story-telling, reading, and writing skills.

Why is Early Literacy Development Important?
Research shows that babies and toddlers who participate in literacy activities with their caregivers are more likely to develop a sustained interest in reading and writing. Developing an interest in reading and writing early on will have a positive impact on your child’s academic readiness.

Literacy, which is the ability to read and write, is comprised of a variety of skills including letter recognition, phonemic awareness, use and understanding of vocabulary, and story comprehension. These skills begin to develop within the first year of life. For example, when your child is six to twelve months old they may begin to grasp books or pat pictures they are interested in. At twelve to twenty-four months your child may begin to turn board book pages, give a book to you to read to them, and point to and name objects in pictures. Between the ages of two and three your child may start to scribble, request the same story over and over, and begin to complete sentences or rhymes in stories that are familiar. As a parent or caregiver, you can provide your child with positive early literacy experiences, which will lay the foundation for language, reading, and writing skills to develop.

Tips For Promoting Early Literacy Skills:
1. Have fun while reading! If your child is engaged and enjoying themselves, they are learning. You can use silly voices and actions while reading your child a story. This will promote positive feelings towards reading for your child.
2. Talk about the pictures. Rather than reading the words on each page, try talking about the pictures. Point to the objects and actions in the pictures as you describe them so that your child will begin to make connections between the words you are saying and what they see. Eventually you can ask them to describe the pictures themselves.
3. Let your child interact with books. Let your child hold the book and turn the pages even if you need to help them do this. Remember that it is okay to skip pages and to talk about pictures rather than read all of the words.
4. Make books and stories a part of your daily routine. Have books in your car, sing songs and nursery rhymes during mealtimes or play, and make time to look at books before naps and bedtime. Provide your child with frequent opportunities to engage with books and story time.

Early Literacy Skills Are Developed Through Early Experiences:
Remember that early language and literacy skills are learned through every day experiences with you and your child. Through playing, talking, singing, and reading together, your child is developing early language and literacy skills. While your baby or toddler may not be ready to read or write yet, exposing your child to frequent opportunities to interact with books and tell stories will help to develop your child’s vocabulary, comprehension, story-telling, reading, and writing skills. Remember, it is never too early instill a love for learning and reading in your child!

Questions or concerns?
If you have questions or concerns about your child’s early literacy skills, please contact us at info@playworkschicago.com or 773-332-9439.

Claire Kakenmaster, MS, CCC-SLP
Speech Language Pathologist

Photo Credit: Child, Fun, Family, Love via Pixabay.com

Social Work: Destigmatized and Unfiltered

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When you first hear that a social worker is going to be making weekly home visits, what is the first thing that comes to mind? DCFS? Domestic violence? Child abuse? There are many misconceptions about what social work actuallyisand what social workers actually do.This blog will help provide some information to understand the differences between what social work is and how it can help.

What is social work?

The term social work can be a very broad and general term, so what do social worker’s actually do? They help people in need. Social workers work in a variety of settings including hospitals, nursing homes, and schools. As a pediatric therapist, sessions can occur in any and all types of environments that are best suited to address your child’s goals of the session.

Early Intervention:

Most Early Intervention social work sessions occur in the home and a social worker will work collaboratively with the family to target specific goals for the sessions. A social worker can facilitate and locate resources as needed within the community, such as food pantries and daycares. Sessions can focus on specific challenging behaviors/daily routines that your child may be struggling with. A social worker will provide parent education and implement strategies when working with challenging behaviors. Counseling services are frequently provided to all families and referrals are made as needed.

Private Therapy:

Social workers directly work with your child and family to focus on any area that your child is experiencing difficulty with i.e., difficulty in school, aggressive behaviors, emotional regulation, and mental health concerns. Social workers also provide counseling services to address topics of grief and loss, difficulty with family transitions, and facing peer pressure. Families are active participants in the child’s therapy through interventions and strategies that are learned and implemented at home.

How can social work help my child?

Social work services help children and families by providing education and interventions specific to each family. Working with a social worker can help create essential age-appropriate disciplinary techniques and establish boundaries within the home. Increasing your child’s social-emotional and regulation skills will help children communicate and become cognizant of their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Counseling services create a safe environment for your child to express their feelings while understanding how to self-regulate through everyday stressors.

Questions or concerns?

If you have questions or concerns about your child’s social emotional development, please contact us at info@playworkschicago.com or 773-332-9439.

Kelly Scafidi, MSW, LCSW, DT
Licensed Clinical Social Worker
Developmental Therapist

Photo Credit:Andrew Branch via StockSnap.io