http://www.constellationspeechtherapy.ca/

Orthophonie Constellation Speech Therapy, Montreal, QC (2025)

08/11/2021

✨✋🏻The Power of Pausing✨✋🏻

Holding space for your child to communicate by PAUSING is a key strategy to build early communication skills.

There are 2 really powerful early language boosting strategies that come to mind when I think of pausing:

1️⃣ Following your child’s lead-waiting, watching, and listening while your child directs the play activity. Then, joining in and building language along with THEIR chosen activity. This may sound passive, but it’s not. While you’re waiting:

✨ You stop talking

✨ Stay present

✨ Lean in and look at your child

As soon as your child communicates (with words, gestures, actions):

✨ Respond with interest and enthusiasm (e.g., “Look! You are stacking blocks!”)

✨ Join in and play with them

✨ Imitate/copy their actions, sounds or words

✨ Narrate what you are doing

✨ Narrate what they are doing

2️⃣ Expectant pausing to hold space for a child to take a turn-using a familiar routine (i.e., one they know inside out and can guess what’s next), pause and give your child a chance to show you what comes next. While you’re pausing:

✨Lean in and look expectantly at your kiddo

✨Really give them time to show you what’s next

✨If they do not respond, show them what their turn should look like and try again

A good time to pause is right before a “high point” in a routine, like right before you push the swing or blow bubbles.

For example, take that bubble wand, hold it in front of your mouth with your cheeks full of air and look at your child…pause, and wait for them to tell you or show you what to do!

What fun routines does your little one know inside out? Where could you try adding “pause” into your day?

08/04/2021

🔥 Speech Therapy and Growth Mindset :: Reflecting Inward 🔥

Who among us hasn’t caught ourselves looking for external praise and approval from somewhere or someone? No judgment here!🙋‍♀️🤦‍♀️

One of the things I always try to do with my clients is to balance positive feedback (to build their understanding/awareness of what we are working on and how it’s going, (e.g., “You did great on that ‘s’ sound! Tell me how you did that!”) with encouragement to look inward for feelings of success and growth. It also helps build self-awareness, which is a key aspect of learning!

To make sure I work on this during sessions, I try to use statements like:

✨ “Wow, you should be proud of how hard you worked today!”

And questions like:

✨ “How do you feel about our learning today?”.

I think it is good to remind ourselves often that we should look inward when trying to reflect on our progress, learning, successes, and setbacks. As parents, SLPs and human beings, this isn’t always easy, but it is an important “muscle” to train.

Do you use this with your children or clients? What about when working through your own new learning or challenges?

07/22/2021

🌲Outdoor Play and Language Part 5 :: Boosting Language While Walking Outdoors ☀️  Let’s walk and talk!

This summer, I’ve been sharing some fun and easy ways to boost your child’s language while playing outside.  Today is all about boosting language while walking.  Some fun ways to boost your child’s language during water play include:  🛑 Read the Signs: If you’re walking around in a city, take advantage of the chance to point out and talk about the pictures and words you’re reading on signs. Talk about the letters you see on the signs and what the beginning letters sound like. Looking at writing in the world around you boosts early print awareness skills (i.e., understanding that print is organized in a specific way and has different functions in the world).  📜 Have a Scavenger Hunt: Ask your child to help you look for specific things while you walk. These can be pretty concrete (e.g., a bird, a stop sign) or more abstract (e.g., something shiny, something smelly, something alive).  🔍 Go on a “Sense Walk”: Listen, look, touch and smell! Use describing words (adjectives) to talk about what you both observe. Start by talking about the weather—think: hot, cool, windy, rainy. Comment on what you hear, see, feel and smell as you walk around. Try a new take on the classic “I Spy” by trying “I hear with my little ear” or “I feel with my little hand”.   What’s the most interesting thing your child has picked up while on a walk?

07/20/2021

❓✅ SLP FAQs❓✅

This is another question we get all the time: “How many words should my child be saying by [choose any age]?”

Often, parents ask this to me with a hint of frustration because they have gotten different information from:
➡️ Their friends
➡️ Their doctor
➡️ Google

And they are trying to make sense of what the actual answer is.

Why is information so mixed up? Why is there such a range out there? Here are some possible reasons:

✨Sometimes people and websites are reporting the MILESTONE (i.e., what most kids can do by a given age).

✨Sometimes they are reporting the AVERAGE (i.e., what around half of kids can do by a given age).

✨Sometimes they are reporting the range of appropriate skills (i.e., the space between the milestone and the average).

Also, the truth is, there is a WIDE range of what is considered developmentally expected for a given age!

If you’re worried that your child does not talk enough, connect with a Speech-Language Pathologist today. We can help answer your questions!

Do you have a speech and language question? DM us and we’ll give it our best shot!

References:
* Milestone data retrieved from:
KidsHealth.org (2019): https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/comm-2-to-3.html

Brightfutures.aap.org (2017):https://brightfutures.aap.org/Bright%20Futures%20Documents/BF4_POCKETGUIDE.pdf

** Average data retrieved from:
LinguiSystem Inc. (2009). Guide to Communication Milestones.

Paul, R., Norbury, C., & Gosse, C. (2018). Language disorders from infancy through adolescence: Listening, speaking, reading, writing, and communicating (4th ed.).

07/17/2021

✨Helping Your Toddler Learn to Use the Pronouns “I”, “Me” and “You” Correctly✨

Picture this…

Mid-meltdown, your toddler yelling, “Help you!”.

You respond, “You mean, ‘help me’” or you tell them, “YOU say ‘help ME, not help YOU!”… Everyone getting confused here already? Yeah, I thought so. 😵

That’s because pronouns can be hard to learn and confusing for little ones! If your little one is struggling with this, know that it is SUPER common and that you are not alone.

When do children learn to use “I” and “me” correctly?*

💫 We typically expect “I” to emerge between 12 and 26 months.
💫“Me” and “you” come a little later, between 27 and 30 months.

👍🏼 Rule of thumb: We expect to see the pronouns “I”, “you” and “me”, used correctly before 3 years old.

Using “I”, “you” and “me” correctly is something we’re working on currently in this house. Here are some of the strategies I’ve been using to help Lyra and that might help your little one too:

💫 Modelling more :: Like with so much language learning, simply giving your child LOTS and LOTS of examples of you using “I”, “you” and “me” clearly and correctly is helpful! Hearing it done right teaches them how to do it too. Often as parents we say things like, “Mommy is working”. Instead, try saying, “I am working”.

💫 Emphasize them :: Put extra stress on the pronouns in your sentences to make them stand out more clearly in your speech.

💫Pair with a gesture :: When you say, “I”, point at yourself or pat your chest. When you say, “you”, point at your child. When your child makes an error, simply repeat it back correctly rather than you’re repeating it back correctly, if they’re comfortable with touch, you can gently put their hand to their chest and then model back the correct way of saying it. For example, if your child says, “You want water”, you can gently move their hand to their chest and say, “I want water”.

Did your child mix up “I”, “me” and “you”?

* LinguiSystems Inc. (2009). Guide to Communication Milestones.

07/14/2021

🔥 Speech Therapy and Growth Mindset :: Effort Over Achievement 🔥

Last week, I posted about what growth mindset is and why it’s an important tool for speech therapy.

Here’s a strategy that I try to use in every single session:

Praise and acknowledge effort-not just success or achievement.

An important part of building a growth mindset is providing the people I work with (children and adults alike) with feedback that focuses on effort and the learning process. Acknowledging that their hard work matters is an important part of emphasizing the importance of the journey of learning, rather than just the destination of achieving our goals.

As an SLP, part of my job is providing both positive and corrective feedback when a client is working toward a goal. That being said, feedback such as, “Wow, you are working so hard! That’s awesome.” or, “I can tell that was hard and you kept working and learning!” underscores that getting things “right” is not the only way to grow, learn and achieve.

What do you say to your loved ones to encourage them when something gets tough?

07/12/2021

✨Getting Face-to-Face✨

Being face-to-face with your child makes it easier to connect with them. It’s one of the smallest but most powerful adjustments that a parent or caregiver can make to their reading and playtime interactions. Try getting down to your child’s physical level and position yourself so that you can look right at each other.

Why does it matter?

Being face-to-face…

💫Shows your child you’re focused on them and interested in the shared activity.

💫Makes it easier to pick up on subtler clues about your child’s likes, dislikes and interests.

💫Allows your child to get extra speech and language cues from you by watching your mouth and facial expressions.

What games or activities do you like to do while face-to-face with your little one?

07/09/2021

✨Factors Considered by SLPs When Assessing Speech Sounds✨

Here's the follow-up to my last ‘SLP FAQs’ post that addressed how Speech-Language Pathologists determine whether a child that has unclear speech requires speech therapy.

In this post, I mentioned that speech sound developmental norms (i.e., the average ages that children learn to produce speech sounds correctly) are just one of many factors we consider when answering this question.

In this post, you’ll find a few of the many other things I look at when I am assessing a child’s speech sound production.

If you have questions or concerns about your child’s speech sounds, reach out today! We would be happy to chat and offer a free 20-minute phone call or Zoom consult. Reach out by DM today if you want to set one up.

07/07/2021

✨What is a growth mindset?✨

It is the belief that, with effort, we can change our skills. Having a growth mindset means knowing that we can learn to do new things, even if they are difficult.

✨What does this have to do with speech therapy?✨

For speech, this means building up our (or our kiddos’) abilities to look at challenges and mistakes as part of the learning process. It means building their resilience.

For the people I work with, communication is challenging. For some, it’s easy enough to shift the way we think about the process of learning and to start talking less about achieving goals and more about the steps on the road to getting there. For others, this can be a real shake-up to their perspective and challenge their perception of what it means to learn and what defines achievement or success.

Building a growth mindset has been a huge boon to lots of the clients I work with. It’s not always easy, but it is worthwhile. I try to foster a growth mindset with almost all my clients, from preschool age to adulthood. Tell me, do you try to encourage a growth mindset in your personal life? When parenting? When working with children or adults (as an SLP, educator, or in any role)?

The sign pictured here sits behind my desk, visible on-screen during sessions. Its message is 💯 just as much for me as for the people I work with each day.

Tune in over the next little while and I’ll share some of the strategies I like to use to build growth mindset into my sessions.

07/05/2021

🔥Baby and Toddler Book Reading-Hot Tip #4: Reading and Play🔥

Yesterday, Lyra made a little dollhouse out of her books during playtime. She told me that there were, “Two persons” in there (to which I repeated back, “Oh, you have two PEOPLE in there. Hello PEOPLE!”😂). This made me realize how interwoven reading and playing can—and should— be.

Reading and playing are not mutually exclusive activities. In fact, if you “market” your books like toys, then your little one is more likely to treat reading like a seamless part of playtime.

Here are a few ways to do this:

📚Accessible: Make books as readily accessible as the rest of their toys. Books should be easy for little hands to reach and available wherever fun happens for your child.

📚Easygoing: While having a specific “story time” can be great, it’s also great to make sure your child knows that they can pick up a book anytime and read (either with you or by themselves).

📚Versatile: Show your child different ways that you can read AND play with books. Unfold and line some up to make roads and bridges for toy vehicles, stack them up and make a house, or use the pictures on the pages as backdrops/scenery for pretend play.

Does your child play with books? Comment below and let us know!

07/02/2021

☀️Outdoor Play and Language Part 4 :: Boosting Language During Water Play 🌊

If you’re new to this series, I’ve been sharing some fun and easy ways to boost your child’s language while playing outside.

Today, I’m sharing some of my favourite ways to support your child’s language during water play.

Some fun ways to boost your child’s language during water play include:

💧Let them lead: Observe your little one’s interests while playing and follow their lead. There’s no wrong way to play in the water! Once they show you what they’re all about that day, join in! If they choose the activity, they will be a lot more motivated to engage with you during play.

💧Play pretend: Let your imaginations run wild. Maybe that small container is a boat, or perhaps you’re giving the dolly a bath, or washing her clothes. Maybe you are looking for fish under the water or cooking some spaghetti. Anything goes!

💧Use new vocabulary: There are so many words and concepts to introduce or emphasize during water play. Use verbs (action words) such as splash, pour, scoop, swim, stir, mix, wash. Model opposite concepts, such as empty vs. full, heavy vs. light, dirty vs. clean. Repeat these words several times while showing what they mean.

A lot of Lyra’s most imaginative play happens while playing with water. She pretends to water the plants, make coffee, cook eggs or make chia seed pudding. Once, Lyra told us how to make applesauce in the bath: “First you open it, then you scoop.” Yup, we clearly don’t make applesauce from scratch in this house😂.

Also…All of these water play language strategies can also be used during bath time!

What’s the funniest thing your child pretends to do while playing?

07/01/2021

And on today’s edition of “Things Only a Speech Therapist’s Kid Would Say”…🤦‍♀️

Orthophonie Constellation Speech Therapy

08/11/2021

08/04/2021

07/22/2021

07/20/2021

07/17/2021

07/14/2021

07/12/2021

07/09/2021

07/07/2021

07/05/2021

07/02/2021

07/01/2021

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